Locating the Rebels Hidden in the Archive: GIS of the 1733 St. Jan Slave Rebellion

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Rising Up Against Authority: Archaeological Approaches to Rebellion" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The 1733 St. Jan Slave rebellion in the Danish West Indies was an extraordinary fight for self-determination. Resistance by enslaved peoples are also ephemeral, and difficult to track in both the archival and archaeological records. By nature, enslaved resistance often used obfuscation and secrecy as tactics against their oppressors, rendering their signatures invisible. Using approaches to excavating the written record that have been developed across the digital humanities paradigm, the rebels and their actions could be made visible in ways that traditional approaches to historiography did not always make possible. Furthermore, the 8-month event on St. Jan resulted in transformations to the society as a result of the rebellion that could be read on the larger cultural landscape of the island. This paper explores ways that Geographic Information Systems was used to locate rebels during their fight for freedom, and how we can place them on a landscape that helps make their actions discernable across time and space.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rising Up Against Authority: Archaeological Approaches to Rebellion   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51001