Caribbean Colonialism and Space Archaeology

Summary

The analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery to aid archaeological understanding, or "Space Archaeology" as it is sometimes called, presents a largely untapped set of methodologies for historical archaeological work.  This project makes use of Normalized Differential Vegetation Indexes (NDVI) calculated on high-resolution satellite images of the British Virgin Islands.  These data are combined with historic maps to analyze the different productive potentials of different plantations and parts of former plantation sites, including the site of Kingstown, British Virgin Islands, home to a group of free Africans settled there by the British Government in the 1830s.  The technological analysis of the landscape suggests some of the impacts of colonial authorities’ ideas about "proper" farming behavior, possible adaptations by the Kingstown people, and the complexities of plantation life without slavery.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017   •
• Afterlives of Slavery on the Post-Emancipation Caribbean Plantation

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 365