'Threats To Archaeology, its Importance, Values and Development'

Sessions

200 Years: Archaeologies of the Precedents and Consequences of the African Slave Trade and Its Abolition in Jamaica.

SESSION ABSTRACT

In 1807 the British legally abolished the African slave trade in its Empire, marking an end to a major epoch of the colonial history of the Americas. The abolition of the slave trade wrought significant changes to the social, political, and economic realities of colonial Jamaica; a number of questions concerning these transitions remain to be answered. What material conditions anticipated the slave trade in colonial Jamaica? In what ways did the burgeoning trade affect the social networks of enslaved peoples? How important was the abolition of the trade for everyday-life of enslaved peoples? The goal of this panel is to consider the material worlds of colonial Jamaica, particularly examining how the Spanish and British colonial orders set the stage for the slave-based plantation system, how that system shaped the lives of Jamaica’s many peoples, including the European, indigenous, maroon, and African populations. Jamaica has been a major locus of inquiry into the archaeology of the colonial period; as such it provides an excellent venue to begin to address this question. This session takes as its starting point the 200 year anniversary of the formal end of the slave trade and focuses on the ways in which archaeologists have looked at the impact of the development of Jamaican society from its earliest colonization, the florescence of the slave trade, and its eventual abolition.

Papers and Presenters

Feudalism or Agrarian Capitalism - the Archaeology of the Early 16th Century Spanish Sugar Industry - Robyn Woodward, Simon Fraser University

Informal Markets in the Archaeology of the African Diaspora in Jamaica - Mark W. Hauser, University of Notre Dame

Household Market Activities among Early 19th Century Jamaican Slaves: An Archaeological Case Study from Two Slave Settlements - Matthew Reeves, Montpelier Foundation, Virginia

Consumption and Gendered Social Strategies among Slaves in Jamaica and the Chesapeake: An Archaeological Perspective - Jillian E. Galle - The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (www.daacs.org), Department of Archaeology, Monticello

Port Royal and Jamaica: From Piracy to Slavery, How a Plantation Economy Developed - Marianne Franklin, PhD

Evidence for Port Royal’s British Colonial Merchant Class as Reflected in the New Street Tavern Site Assemblage, Port Royal, Jamaica - Maureen Brown, M.A.

Jamaica and the Atlantic World: Maritime Connections in the Plantation Economy - Greg Cook, University of West Florida

African Metallurgy and Empowerment in Late 18th – Early 19th Century Jamaica -Dr. Candice Goucher, Washington State University Vancouver USA

The Village Of Marshall’s Pen: Spatial Analysis Of A Jamaican Plantation Settlement On The Eve Of Emancipation - James A. Delle, Kutztown University

Identity and Opportunity in Post-Slavery Jamaica - Kenneth G. Kelly, Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina

Race, Resistance, and Spirituality: Negotiating Power on a Jamaican Coffee Plantation - Paula Saunders, Borough of Manhattan Community College

Nanny & Nanny Town: Icon of Freedom in the Caribbean

E. Kofi Agorsah, Marcel Bent and Karen Thompson-Spence

Archaeology of Isolation: Approaching the Untold Stories - Paola A. Schiappacasse, MA Syracuse University