European Ceramics in the Caribbean: A Glimpse at Globalization during the Colonial Era

Summary

This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius (Statia) was a free port for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where the forces of globalization, such as people, resources, commodities, and ideas moved unceasingly, altering the world as it was and pushing it closer toward the world we know today. Through the colonial period, Statia profited from the successes of the Dutch “Golden Age,” the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and the American Revolution, and once housed goods from around the world in its 200+ warehouses. Statia has remained largely untouched by tourism and development, and the island’s archaeological record remains mostly intact, meaning that it is literally covered with colonial-era remains. This poster examines ceramic artifacts from recent investigations at a colonial-era industrial sugar complex in order to understand the origins of globalization and mass-consumerism as they emerged in the region and shifted throughout the colonial period. Ceramic assemblages from Dutch and British Caribbean sites were compared to the Statian assemblage to address whether any differences or similarities existed between Dutch and British consumerism during this period. The results of this research highlight the increasing complexity of international trade that formed the origins of globalization as we know it today.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32480