Fishing and foraging strategies among enslaved children at Stewart Castle, Jamaica

Summary

Identifying children’s activities in the archaeological record is a difficult task. Enslaved children are especially elusive; forced to labor at a young age, their access to toys and time to play were limited. While archaeological contexts of slavery do produce children’s toys, the quantities in which they are found are too small to meaningfully support arguments about children’s roles in any given society. Looking for the remains of children’s work, however, can provide critical insight into the extent that children contributed to household economic strategies. For enslaved children living on Caribbean islands, shell and beach fishing was work that contributed to their household’s food supply. Here I explore temporal trends in the discard of shell and fish varieties at the Stewart Castle village, located on the north coast of Jamaica. Preliminary analysis suggests that children’s fishing activities may have increased a household’s economic flexibility, allowing for participation in local markets.

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-6,13