Material Cultures of Slavery and
Abolition in the British Caribbean
Material things mattered immensely to those who engaged in daily struggles over the character and future of slavery and to those who subsequently contested the meanings of freedom in the post-emancipation Caribbean. Throughout the history of slavery, objects and places were significant to different groups of people, from the opulent master class to enslaved field hands, as well as to other groups, including maroons, free people of colour and missionaries, all of who shared the lived environments of Caribbean plantation colonies. By exploring the rich material world inhabited by these people, this book offers new ways of seeing history from below, of linking localised experiences with global transformations and connecting deeply personal lived realities with larger epochal events that defined the history of slavery and its abolition in the British Caribbean.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Slavery & Abolition.
Christer Petley is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton, UK. Among his publications are Slaveholders in Jamaica: Colonial Society and Culture during the Era of Abolition (2009) and articles in Atlantic Studies, Slavery & Abolition and The Historical Journal.
Stephan Lenik is Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at St Marys College of Maryland, USA. He has published articles in Historical Archaeology, The Journal of Social Archaeology and Ethnohistory.
Material Cultures of Slavery and
Abolition in the British Caribbean
Material things mattered immensely to those who engaged in daily struggles over the character and future of slavery and to those who subsequently contested the meanings of freedom in the post-emancipation Caribbean. Throughout the history of slavery, objects and places were significant to different groups of people, from the opulent master class to enslaved field hands, as well as to other groups, including maroons, free people of colour and missionaries, all of who shared the lived environments of Caribbean plantation colonies. By exploring the rich material world inhabited by these people, this book offers new ways of seeing history from below, of linking localised experiences with global transformations and connecting deeply personal lived realities with larger epochal events that defined the history of slavery and its abolition in the British Caribbean.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Slavery & Abolition.
Christer Petley is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton, UK. Among his publications are Slaveholders in Jamaica: Colonial Society and Culture during the Era of Abolition (2009) and articles in Atlantic Studies, Slavery & Abolition and The Historical Journal.
Stephan Lenik is Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at St Marys College of Maryland, USA. He has published articles in Historical Archaeology, The Journal of Social Archaeology and Ethnohistory.
First published 2017
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Contents
Citation Information
The chapters in this book were originally published in Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:
Introduction
The Material Cultures of Slavery and Abolition in the British Caribbean
Stephan Lenik and Christer Petley
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 389398
Chapter 1
The Archaeology of Settler Farms and Early Plantation Life in Seventeenth-Century Barbados
Douglas V. Armstrong and Matthew C. Reilly
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 399417
Chapter 2
Blurring Disciplinary Boundaries: The Material Culture of Improvement during the Age of Abolition in Barbados
Stephanie Bergman and Frederick H. Smith
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 418436
Chapter 3
Plantations and Homes: The Material Culture of the Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaican Elite
Christer Petley
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 437457
Chapter 4
The Better Sort and the Poorer Sort: Wealth Inequalities, Family Formation and the Economy of Energy on British Caribbean Sugar Plantations, 17501800
Justin Roberts
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 458473
Chapter 5
Death and Burial at Marshalls Pen, a Jamaican Coffee Plantation, 18141839: Examining the End of Life at the End of Slavery
James A. Delle and Kristen R. Fellows
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 474492
Chapter 6
Unsettled Houses: The Material Culture of the Missionary Project in Jamaica in the Era of Emancipation
Natalie Zacek and Laurence Brown
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 493507
Chapter 7
Plantation Labourer Rebellions, Material Culture and Events: Historical Archaeology at Geneva Estate, Grand Bay, Commonwealth of Dominica
Stephan Lenik
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 508526
Chapter 8
Afterword: Survival and Silence in the Material Record of Slavery and Abolition
B.W. Higman
Slavery & Abolition, volume 35, issue 3 (September 2014) pp. 527535
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