Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean

Contextualizing Sites through Colonialism, Capitalism, and Globalism

Edited by Todd M. Ahlman and Gerald F. Schroedl

SERIES: Caribbean Archaeology and Ethnohistory

University of Alabama Press

New perspectives on Caribbean historical archaeology that go beyond the colonial plantation

Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean: Contextualizing Sites through Colonialism, Capitalism, and Globalism addresses issues in Caribbean history and historical archaeology such as freedom, frontiers, urbanism, postemancipation life, trade, plantation life, and new heritage. This collection moves beyond plantation archaeology by expanding the knowledge of the diverse Caribbean experiences from the late seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries.

The essays in this volume are grounded in strong research programs and data analysis that incorporate humanistic narratives in their discussions of Amerindian, freedmen, plantation, institutional, military, and urban sites. Sites include a sample of the many different types found across the Caribbean from a variety of colonial contexts that are seldom reported in archaeological research, yet constitute components essential to understanding the full range and depth of Caribbean history.

Contributors examine urban contexts in Nevis and St. John and explore the economic connections between Europeans and enslaved Africans in urban and plantation settings in St. Eustatius. The volume contains a pioneering study of frontier exchange with Amerindians in Dominica and a synthesis of ceramic exchange networks among enslaved Africans in the Leeward Islands. Chapters on military forts in Nevis and St. Kitts call attention to this often-neglected aspect of the Caribbean colonial landscape. Contributors also directly address culture heritage issues relating to community participation and interpretation. On St. Kitts, the legacy of forced confinement of lepers ties into debates of current public health policy. Plantation site studies from Antigua and Martinique are especially relevant because they detail comparisons of French and British patterns of African enslavement and provide insights into how each addressed the social and economic changes that occurred with emancipation.

Contributors
Todd M. Ahlman / Douglas V. Armstrong / Samantha Rebovich Bardoe / Paul Farnsworth / Jeffrey R. Ferguson / R. Grant Gilmore III / Diana González-Tennant / Edward González-Tennant / Barbara J. Heath / Carter L. Hudgins Kenneth G. Kelly / Eric Klingelhofer / Roger H. Leech / Stephan Lenik / Gerald F. Schroedl / Diane Wallman / Christian Williamson

Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean will have a receptive readership in Caribbean archaeology. The combination of studies, ranging as it does from faunal analysis to ceramics and postemancipation-era transitions, makes for a volume likely to stimulate future research projects.’
—Marco G. Meniketti, author of Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation: An Archaeology of Colonial Nevis, West Indies

This volume offers significant new insights into a range of Caribbean sites: plantations, free communities of color, military forts, frontiers, urban landscapes, households, and asylums. . . . The foci of each contributor also illustrate how historical archaeology in the Caribbean is shifting away from emphasizing plantation contexts, while still acknowledging the centrality of these estates.’
—Kristen R. Fellows, assistant professor of anthropology at North Dakota State University

Todd M. Ahlman is director of the Center for Archaeological Studies at Texas State University. He is coeditor of TVA Archaeology: Seventy-Five Years of Prehistoric Site Research.

Gerald F. Schroedl is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Tennessee. He is author of The Archaeological Occurrence of Bison in the Southern Plateau and Cherokee (Peoples of America).

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Contextualizing Caribbean Historical Sites through Colonialism, Capitalism, and Globalization by Todd M. Ahlman and Gerald F. Schroedl

Chapter 1. Kalinagos and Catholics in Dominica before 1763: Archaeology and History of Caribbean Frontiers by Stephan Lenik

Chapter 2. The Congo Free Black Village on St. Eustatius, Netherlands Caribbean by R. Grant Gilmore III

Chapter 3. Jamestown, Nevis, and Urban Resilience in the Early English Caribbean by Carter L. Hudgins, Eric Klingelhofer, and Roger H. Leech

Chapter 4. Inter- and Intraisland Trade of Afro-Caribbean Ware in the Lesser Antilles by Todd M. Ahlman, Gerald F. Schroedl, Barbara J. Heath, R. Grant Gilmore III, and Jeffrey R. Ferguson

Chapter 5. A Danish Colonial Merchant’s Residence in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas: Material Colonialism and the Intersection of Local and Global Trade at the Bankhus by Christian Williamson and Douglas V. Armstrong

Chapter 6. The Investigation of Daily Practice of Enslaved Laborer and Sharecropper Households on an Eighteenth- to Nineteenth-Century French-Caribbean Plantation by Diane Wallman and Kenneth G. Kelly

Chapter 7. From Slavery to Freedom: Changes in Afro-Antiguan Lifeways, 1790–1840 by Samantha Rebovich Bardoe

Chapter 8. The Military and Institutional Occupations of Charles Fort, St. Kitts, West Indies by Gerald F. Schroedl and Todd M. Ahlman

Chapter 9. Caribbean Heritage in 3D: New Heritage and Historical Archaeology in Nevis, West Indies by Edward González-Tennant and Diana González-Tennant

Chapter 10. Current and Future Directions in the Historical Archaeology of the Eastern Caribbean by Paul Farnsworth

References Cited

Index

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