"Not Unmindful of the Unfortunate": Giving Voice to the Forgotten Through Archaeology at the Orange Valley Slave Hospital

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Beginning in the summer of 2016, Monmouth University began a program of archaeological research at the Orange Valley Slave Hospital in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica.  Constructed in 1797, the hospital, now a ruin, dates from the amelioration period that preceded the abolition of the trade in enslaved people and their full emancipation.  Our archaeological investigations at the site have revealed a rich assortment of 19th-century artifacts.  These artifacts, when analyzed together with the building itself and the broader landscape in which it stands, speak to the lives of enslaved people of African descent who were patients in and worked at the hospital.  Today their lives and experiences are largely forgotten; however, archaeology is revealing how even in the direst circumstances, constrained by slavery and the brutal drudgery of sugar production, enslaved African Americans were able to create meaningful lives and identities, built on their own cultures and traditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 109