The Landscape of Fear on the Edge of the World: Small island life on Antigua 1667-1815

Summary

This paper explores the concept of fear as a useful theoretical abstraction to help understand the social anxiety of life on the island of Antigua during the eighteenth century.  Fear comes from a tripartite of internal stress caused by the large enslaved population on the island, external stress coming from the constant threat of invasion by other colonial powers in the Caribbean as well as the ever present danger of dying from the withering effects of the tropics—disease.  Archaeologically, the anxiety that these dangers presented to the planter classes and free white populations, are manifested in the historical infrastructure still visible on the island today: a slave prison, a fortified coastline and cemeteries and mass graves.  By using fear in conjunction with a landscape archaeology approach, I open up a new way to understand larger social processes that affected these small colonial island outposts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Multicultural Caribbean and Its Overlooked Histories   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 159