An Archaeology of Supremacy: A Planter's Household at Stewart Castle, Jamaica

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Social Landscapes of Settler Colonialism in the Caribbean", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Settler colonialism shaped colonial societies from contact to the current moment through the organization of space, production, and consumption in plantation-based societies. It also structured power through organizing identity, particularly through the deployment of white supremacist practices. How white supremacy was enacted materially by planters throughout the North American colonies and through time was not monolithic. Instead, the strategies and tactics of supremacy were shaped by the scale and societal circumstances in which they were deployed. This paper describes evidence recovered from Stewart Castle, Jamaica; the home of a resident planter family during the “fall of the planter class” period to mark how the process of settler colonialism shaped the social landscape of a planter household in an era defined by a challenge to planter supremacy.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Social Landscapes of Settler Colonialism in the Caribbean   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow