Un Canari dans la Cuisine: What Ceramic Cookware Shows about Enslaved Cooks in Colonial Guadeloupe, French West Indies

Summary

Sherds of ceramic cookware are almost all that remains of the work of slaves who toiled away in Guadeloupean kitchens during the colonial period. In Guadeloupe, cooking was a profession divided by gender. It included a few professional chefs ‘often men’ and a multitude of unspecialized servants, who were in many cases women. Ceramics offer a glimpse into their world and into the realm of the vernacular Creole detached kitchen. The coarse earthenware cookware used by the majority of cooks were imported from France, ’frequently, from the pottery of Vallauris, and also made locally. With a handful of generic vessels, enslaved cooks managed to create an array of dishes that sustained their masters' families and that laid the foundation for modern Antillean cuisine. The data for this study come from colonial sites and documentary sources such as probate inventories, cookbooks, diaries, postcards, or travel writings.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Ceramics from French sites: Current Directions

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-67,08