Small-Scale Agriculture and Localized Food Processing: Overview of a Post-Emancipation Communal Sugar (and Mango) Processing Platform on Providencia Island, Colombia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Sugar production was integral to European colonization during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the archaeology of sugar has almost exclusively focused on industrial-level, surplus, and profit centered production at large plantations. This has resulted in a lack of data related to small-scale productive activities centered on localized sales and consumption. Sugar cane and other crops, such as mango, were and continue to be processed at varying scales for both personal use and limited commercial sale. This project documents what was likely a communal use platform utilized for processing sugar cane and mango—a deeply historical practice, which continues to this day on the Island—dating to the mid- to late nineteenth century and possibly earlier as there are multiple, hard-packed activity floors that suggest this space was actively used and maintained for a long period of time. Attached to the platform are what may be the remains of small cooling channels used to process boiled cane juice. Community archaeology and ethnographic approaches both informed the excavation of this site and support the current archaeological interpretation of the feature, which will be further explored during upcoming field research seasons on Providencia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36555.0