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
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“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
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