Potato Hill, Montserrat: The Role of Multi-Method Survey in Caribbean Historical Archaeology

Summary

This paper demonstrates the advantages of a survey-centered approach for examining cultural landscapes on Montserrat. Our case-study focuses on the multi-method survey of the Potato Hill landscape employed during the 2013 field season of the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project. Potato Hill’s artifact assemblage is the largest and among the earliest historic-period collections of artifacts to be recovered on Montserrat from the 49 archaeological sites we have surveyed since 2010. The evidence suggests that the site was a non-elite settlement occupied by multiple communities between the 17th and 19th centuries. Understandings of Potato Hill’s changing use and inhabitants over the course of its long occupational history are situated within our survey results from the surrounding landscape, especially historic-period sugar plantations and military structures. This case-study raises several questions concerning methodological approaches, temporal categories, scales of analysis, and material culture classification in Caribbean historical archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Historical Archaeology in the Caribbean: New Directions and Current Perspectives

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-6,04