Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Production Activities in the Household Economies of Plantation Slaves: Barbados and Martinique, Mid-1600s to Mid-1800s

  • Published:
International Journal of Historical Archaeology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Formerly British and French colonies, the eastern Caribbean islands of Barbados and Martinique were major players in the early development of European overseas empires dependent on African slave labor and the large-scale production of sugar. Utilizing documentary and archaeological data we discuss and compare the independent production activities or household economies of plantation slaves on these two islands. The household economy was one of the more prominent aspects of plantation slave life throughout the Caribbean, and in this paper we examine the multiple adaptive production strategies slaves employed to ameliorate the poverty of their material and economic lives.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Anderson, A. (1784–85). Barbados. MS. 610, Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. V. (1990). The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation St Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. V. (1999). Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Caribbean Plantation. In Singleton, T. A. (ed.), “I, Too, Am America:” Archaeological Studies of African-American Life, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, pp. 173–192.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. V. (2003). Creole Transformation from Slavery to Freedom: Historical Archaeology of the East End Community, St. John Virgin Islands, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. V. (2013). Trents Plantation, Barbados: small scale farming to large scale sugar production, capitalism, and slavery in Barbados. Paper given at 25th International Association for Caribbean Archaeology, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

  • Armstrong, D. V., and Fleischman, M. (2002). House-yard burials of enslaved laborers in eighteenth-century Jamaica. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7: 33–65.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. V., and Hauser, M. (2009). A sea of diversity: historical archaeology in the Caribbean. In Majewski, T., and Gaimster, D. (eds.), The International Handbook of Historical Archaeology, Springer, New York, pp. 583–612.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. V., and Kelly, K. G. (2000). Settlement patterns and the origins of African Jamaican society: Seville Plantation, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. Ethnohistory 7: 369–397.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. V., and Reilly, M. C. (2013). Drawing lines beyond the line: establishing a slave society in seventeenth-century Barbados, Paper given at the conference Africans in the Americas: Making Lives in a New World, 1675–1825, sponsored by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barbados Assembly (1818). The Report From a Select Committee of the House of Assembly, Appointed to Inquire into the Origin, Causes, and Progress, of the Late Insurrection. Bridgetown, Barbados.

  • Barbados Assembly (1790). Report of a Committee of the General Assembly Upon the Several Heads of Enquiry, etc. Relative to the Slave Trade. London.

  • Barbados (1826a). Slave Consolidation Act, October 23, 1826, in British Parliamentary Papers, Papers Relating to the Slave Trade, 1826–27, Slave Trade 73, Irish Universities Press, Shannon, pp. 285–310.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barbados, K. (1826b). Sunday and Marriage Act, October 23, 1826, in British Parliamentary Papers, Papers Relating to the Slave Trade, 1826–27, Slave Trade 73, Irish Universities Press, Shannon, pp. 357–358.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bayley, F. W. N. (1832). Four Years Residence in the West Indies, During the Years 1826, 27, 28, and 29, William Kidd, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaudry, M. C. (1999). House and household: the archaeology of domestic life. In Michael, R. L., and Egan, G. (eds.), Egan, G, Early America In Old and New Worlds, Oxbow, pp. 117–126.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beckles, H. M. D., and Shepherd, V. A. (eds.) (1991). Caribbean Slave Society and Economy: A Student Reader, Ian Randle, Kingston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergerac, J. (1786). Annales du Conseil Souverain de la Martinique ou Tableau Historique du Gouvernement de Cette Colonie Depuis son Premier Etablissement . . .. Paris.

  • Bergman, S. (2013). All my goods and chattels: archaeological perspectives on slaves’ property ownership at St. Nicholas Abbey sugar plantation, Barbados, 1650–1838, Paper given at the conference Africans in the Americas: Making Lives in a New World, 1675–1825, sponsored by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berlin, I., and Morgan, P. D. (eds.) (1993). Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Browne, B. (1926). In Nathaniel, H. (ed.), The Yarn of a Yankee Privateer, Funk and Wagnalls, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Browne, S. O. (2011). The Crafts Sector: An Ideal Vehicle for Preserving and Promoting The Cultural Heritage of Barbados. Doctoral dissertation, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.

  • Clarke, F. (1823). Plan of treatment of the Negroes on the estates in Barbados. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 2(1934–35): 29–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coleridge, H. N. (1832). Six Months in the West Indies in 1825, John Murray, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colt, H. (1631). The voyage of Sr. Henrye Colte Knight to ye islands of yea Antilleas. In Harlow, V. T. (ed.), Colonizing Expeditions to the West Indies and Guiana, Hakluyt Society, London, pp. 1623–1667.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colthurst, J. B. (1835–38). Journal as a Special Magistrate in the Islands of Barbados and St. Vincent, July 1835-August 1838, Ms. U. 1. 2, Boston Public Library, Boston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comitas, L. (1964). Occupational Multiplicity in Rural Jamaica, American Ethnological Society, Seattle, pp. 41–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Council, B. (1824). A Report of a Committee of the Council of Barbdoes, Appointed to Inquire into the Actual Condition of the Slaves in this Island, W. Sior, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • D’Orbigny, M. A. (1841). Voyage Pittoresque Dans Les Deux Ameriques. Paris.

  • Davy, J. (1854). The West Indies Before and Since Slave Emancipation, W. and F.G, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Debien, G. (1964). La Nourriture des Esclaves sur les Plantations des Antilles Françaises aux XVIIè et XVIIIè Siècles. Caribbean Studies 4: 3–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Debien, G. (1974). Les Esclaves aux Antilles Françaises, XVIIe-XVIIIe Siècles. Société d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe, Basse-Terre.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeCorse, C. R., and Chouin, G. L. (2003). Trouble with siblings: archaeological and historical interpretation of the West African past. In Falola, T., and Jennings, C. (eds.), Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed, University of Rochester Press, Rochester, pp. 7–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delle, J. (1999). The landscape of class negotiation on coffee plantations in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica: 1790–1850. Historical Archaeology 33: 136–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delle, J. (2000). The material and cognitive dimensions of creolization in nineteenth-century Jamaica. Historical Archaeology 34: 56–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Denbow, J. (2003). Archaeological perspectives. In Falola, T., and Jennings, C. (eds.), Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed, University of Rochester Press, Rochester, pp. 3–6.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dickson, W. (1814). Mitigation of Slavery. London.

  • Du Tertre, J.B. (1667–71). Histoire Generale des Antilles Habités par les Francais. 4 vols. Paris.

  • England, S. (1994). Acculturation in the Creole Context: A Case Study of La Poterie, Martinique. Doctoral dissertation, Cambridge University, Cambridge.

  • Farmer, K. (2011). Women potters?: a preliminary examination of documentary and material culture evidence from Barbados. History in Action 2: 1–8.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farnsworth, P. (1999). From the past to the present: an exploration of the formation of African-Bahamian identity during enslavement. In Haviser, J. B. (ed.), African Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean, Markus Wiener, Princeton, pp. 94–130.

    Google Scholar 

  • Farnsworth, P. (2001). Negroe houses built of stone besides others watl’d and plaistered: the creation of a Bahamian tradition. In Farnsworth, P. (ed.), Island Lives: Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 234–271.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finch, J. (2013). Inside the pot house: diaspora, identity, and locale in Barbadian ceramics. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 2: 115–130.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finch, J., Armstrong, D.V., Blinkhorn, E., and Barker, D. (2013). Surveying Caribbean cultural landscapes: Mount Plantation, Barbados, and its global connections. Internet Archaeology (35), Council for British Archaeology. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue35/finch_index.html

  • Gibson, H. (2009). Domestic economy and daily practice in Guadeloupe: historical archaeology at La Mahaudière Plantation. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13: 27–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunkel, A., and Handler, J. S. (1970). A German indentured servant in Barbados in 1652: the account of Heinrich von Uchteritz. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 33: 91–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, R. (1764). Acts, Passed in the Island of Barbados. London.

  • Handler, J. S. (1963a). A historical sketch of pottery manufacture in Barbados. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 30: 129–153.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1963b). Pottery making in rural Barbados. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 19: 314–334.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1965). The history of arrowroot production in Barbados and the Chalky Mount Arrowroot Growers’ Association, a peasant marketing experiment that failed. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 31: 131–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1966). Small-scale sugar cane farming in Barbados. Ethnology 5: 264–283.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1967). Father Antoine Biet’s visit to Barbados in 1654. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 32: 56–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1970). Aspects of Amerindian ethnography in seventeenth century Barbados. Caribbean Studies 9: 50–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1971a). A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627–1834, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1971b). The history of arrowroot and the origin of peasantries in the British West Indies. Journal of Caribbean History 2: 46–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1974). The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (1991). Supplement to A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627–1834. John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (2002). Plantation slave settlements in Barbados, 1650s-1834. In Thompson, A. (ed.), In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy, Ian Randle, Kingston, pp. 121–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S. (2009). The Middle Passage and the material culture of captive Africans. Slavery and Abolition 30: 1–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S., and Bergman, S. (2009). Vernacular houses and domestic material culture on Barbados sugar plantations, 1650–1838. Journal of Caribbean History 43: 1–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S., and Frisbie, C. (1972). Aspects of slave life in Barbados: music and its cultural context. Caribbean Studies 9: 5–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S., and Lange, F. W. (1978). Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handler, J. S, Conner, M. and Jacobi, K. (1989). Searching for a Slave Cemetery in Barbados, West Indies. A Bioarchaeological and Ethnohistorical Investigation. Southern Illinois University, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Carbondale.

  • Handler, J. S., and Jacoby, J. J. (1993). Slave medicine and plant use in Barbados. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 41: 74–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser, M. W. (2008). An Archaeology of Black Markets: Local Ceramics and Economies in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser, M. W. (2011). Routes and roots of empire: pots, power, and slavery in the 18th-century British Caribbean. American Anthropologist 113: 431–447.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser, M. W., and Armstrong, D. V. (1999). Embedded identities: piecing together relationships through compositional analysis of low-fired earthenware. In Haviser, J. B. (ed.), African Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean, Markus Wiener, Princeton, pp. 65–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser, M. W., and DeCorse, C. R. (2003). Low-fired earthenwares in the African diaspora: problems and prospects. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7: 67–98.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hauser, M. W., and Handler, J. S. (2009). Change in a small scale pottery manufacture in Antigua, West Indies. African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter. December.

  • Hauser, M. W., and Kelly, K. G. (2011). Colonies without frontiers: inter-island trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Caribbean. In Curet, L. A., and Hauser, M. W. (eds.), Islands at the Crossroads: Migration, Seafaring, and Interaction in the Caribbean, University of Albama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 41–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haviser, J. (ed.) (1999). African Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean, Markus Weiner, Princeton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heath, B. J. (1999). Yabbas, monkeys, jugs and jars: an historical context for African-Caribbean pottery on St. Eustatius. In Haviser, J. B. (ed.), African Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean, Markus Wiener, Princeton, pp. 197–220.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higman, B. W. (1975). The slave family and household in the British West Indies, 1800–1834. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6: 261–268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higman, B. W. (1977). Methodological problems in the study of the slave family. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 292: 591–596.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higman, B. W. (1984). Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 1807–1834, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higman, B. W. (1998). Montpelier Jamaica: A Plantation Community in Slavery and Freedom 1739–1912, University of the West Indies Press, Mona.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holder, H. E. (1788). A Short Essay on the Subject of Negro Slavery, with Particular Reference to the Island of Barbados, C. Dilly, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Horowitz, M. M. (1967). Morne-Paysan: Peasant Village in Martinique, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hovey, S. (1838). Letters from the West Indies. New York.

  • Hughes, G. (1750). The Natural History of Barbados. London.

  • Jordan, J. W. (1824). An Account of the Management of Certain Estates on the Island of Barbados. London.

  • Kelly, K. G. (1997). Using historically informed archaeology: seventeenth and eighteenth century Hueda-European interaction on the coast of Bénin. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 3(4): 353–366.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, K. G. (2008). Creole cultures of the Caribbean: historical archaeology in the French West Indies. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 12: 388–402.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, K. G. (2009). Where is the Caribbean? French colonial archaeology in the English Lake. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13: 80–93.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, K. G., Hauser, M. W., Descantes, C., and Glascock, M. D. (2008). Compositional analysis of French colonial ceramics: implications for understanding trade and exchange. Journal of Caribbean Archaeology 2: 85–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kimber, C. T. (1988). Martinique Revisited: The Changing Plant Geographies of a West Indian Island, Texas A&M University Press, College Station.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klippel, W. E. (2001). Sugar monoculture, bovid skeletal part frequencies and stable carbon isotopes: interpreting enslaved African diet at Brimstone Hill, St. Kitts, West Indies. Journal of Archaeological Science 28: 1191–1198.

  • Labat, J. B. (1724). Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l’Amerique. 6 vols. Paris.

  • Lange, F. W., and Carlson, S. B. (1985). Distribution of European earthenwares on plantations on Barbados, West Indies. In Singleton, T. (ed.), The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, Academic, New York, pp. 97–120.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lange, F. W., and Handler, J. S. (1985). The ethnohistorical approach to slavery. In Singleton, T. (ed.), The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, Academic, New York, pp. 15–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lavollée, P. (1841). Notes sur les Cultures et la Production de la Martinique et de la Guadeloupe. Paris.

  • Lenik, S. (2009). Considering multiscalar approaches to creolization among enslaved laborers at Estate Bethlehem, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13: 12–26.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leti, G. (1998). Santé et Société Esclavagiste à la Martinique: 1802–1848, Harmattan, Paris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lightfoot, K. G. (1995). Culture contact studies: redefining the relationship between prehistoric and historical archaeology. American Antiquity 60: 199–217.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ligon, R. (1657). A New and Exact History of the Land of Barbados. London.

  • Loftfield, T. C. (1992). Unglazed red earthenware from Barbados. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 40: 19–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loftfield, T. C. (1996/97). Archaeological evidence of Afro-Barbadian life at Springhead Plantation, St. James Parish, Barbados. Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 43: 32–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loftfield, T. C. (2001). Creolization in seventeenth-century Barbados. In Ogundiran, A., and Falola, T. (eds.), Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, pp. 207–233.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mandelblatt, B. (2007). A transatlantic commodity: Irish salt beef in the French Atlantic World. History Workshop 63: 18–47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, W. K. (1993). Provision ground and plantation labor in four Windward Islands. In Berlin, I., and Morgan, P. D. (eds.), Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Black Life in the Americas, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, pp. 203–220.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathewson, R. D. (1972). Jamaican ceramics: an introduction to the 18th century folk pottery in West African tradition. Jamaica Journal 6: 54–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathewson, R. D. (1973). Archaeological analysis of material culture as a reflection of sub-cultural differentiation in 18th century Jamaica. Jamaica Journal 7: 25–29.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDonald, R. A. (1993). The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyers, A. D. (1999). West African tradition in the decoration of colonial Jamaican folk pottery. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3: 201–221.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ministère de la Marine (1844). Exposé Général des Résultats du Patronage des Esclaves dans les Colonies Françaises. Paris.

  • Mintz, S. W. (1961). The question of Caribbean peasantries: a comment. Caribbean Studies 1: 31–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mintz, S. W. (1974). Caribbean Transformations, Aldine, Chicago, pp. 133–147.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mintz, S. W., and Hall, D. (1960). The Origins of the Jamaican Internal Marketing System, Yale University Publications in Anthropology, New Haven.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, S. (1801). The Public Acts in Force of Barbados. London

  • Moreau de Jonnès, A. (1817). Tableau du Climat des Antilles. Paris.

  • Moreau de Jonnès, A. (1840). Recherches Statistiques sur l’Esclavage Colonial et les Moyens de le Supprimer. Paris.

  • Munford, C. J. (1991). The Black Ordeal of Slavery and Slave Trading in the French West Indies, 1625–1715, 2 vol, E. Mellen Press, Lewiston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicholls, R. B. (1790). Testimony, in British Parliamentary Papers, Minutes of the Evidence Taken Before a Committee of the House of Commons . . . For the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Vol, 30, Slave Trade, pp. 325–360. House of Commons, London.

  • Orser Jr., C. E. (1990). Archaeological approaches to New World plantation slavery. In Schiffer, M. B. (ed.), Archaeological Method and Theory, University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, pp. 111–154.

    Google Scholar 

  • Orser Jr., C. E. (2010). Twenty-first-century historical archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 18: 111–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peterson, J. B., Watters, D. R., and Nicholson, D. V. (1999). Continuity and syncretism in Afro-Caribbean ceramics from the northern Lesser Antilles. In Haviser, J. B. (ed.), African Sites Archaeology in the Caribbean, Markus Wiener, Princeton, pp. 157–195.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pinckard, G. (1806). Notes on the West Indies, 3 vols. London.

  • Pinfold, C. (1762). Answers . . . to the Queries Proposed by the Lords of Trade and Plantations. June 1. Kings Mss. 205, British Library. fols. 456–473.

  • Poole, R. (1753). The Beneficient Bee; or, Traveller’s Companion. London.

  • Porteus, B. (1807). An Essay Towards a Plan for the more Effectual Civilization and Conversion of the Negroe Slaves, T. Cadell and W, Davies.

  • Poyer, J. (1808). The History of Barbados. London.

  • Price, R. (1966). Caribbean fishing and fisherman: a historical sketch. American Anthropologist 68: 1363–1383.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pulsipher, L. (1990). They have Saturdays and Sundays to feed themselves. Expedition 32(2): 24–33.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pulsipher, L. (1991). In Margolis, J. V., and Margolis, C. (eds.), Galways Plantation, Montserrat, Seeds of Change Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, pp. 139–159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reeves, M. (2011). Household market activities among early nineteenth century Jamaican slaves: an archaeological case study from two slave settlements. In Delle, J. A., Hauser, M. W., and Armstrong, D. V. (eds.), Out of Many, One People: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica, The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, pp. 183–210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Renouard, C. L. (1822). Statistique de la Martinique, Paris.

  • Roberts, J. (2006). Agriculture on two Barbadian sugar plantations, 1796–97. William and Mary Quarterly 63: 551–586.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robin, C. C. (1807). Voyages dans L’intérieur de la Louisiane: de la Floride Occidentale, et dans les isles de la Martinique et de Saint-Domingue, F. Buisson, Paris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robin, C. (2002). Outside of houses: the practices of everyday life at Chan Nòohol, Belize. Journal of Social Archaeology 2: 245–268.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rolph, T. (1836). A Brief Account, Together with Observations, Made During a Visit in the West Indies, Dundas, Upper Canada.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rufz, E. (1859). Enquête sur le Serpent de la Martinique. Paris.

  • Schoelcher, V. (1841). Des Colonies Françaises, Pagnerre, Paris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schomburgk, R. T. (1848). The History of Barbados, Brown, Green and Longmans, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schroedl, G. F., and Ahlman, T. (2002). The maintenance of cultural and personal identities of enslaved Africans and British soldiers at the Brimstone Hill Fortress, St. Kitts, West Indies. Historical Archaeology 36: 38–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheridan, R. (1984). The domestic economy. In Greene, J. P., and Pole, J. R. (eds.), Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 43–85.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shuler, K. (2005). Health, History, and Sugar: A Bioarchaeological Study of Enslaved Africans from Newton Plantation, Barbados, West Indies. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

  • Singleton, T. A. (2001). Slavery and spatial dialects on Cuban coffee plantations. World Archaeology 33: 98–114.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sketch of a Voyage (1794). Sketch of a voyage to and description of the Island of Barbados. The European Magazine and London Review 26(185–187): 282–285.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. E. (1992). Braudel’s temporal rhythms and chronology theory in archaeology. In Knapp, A. B. (ed.), Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 23–34.

    Google Scholar 

  • Society for Improvement (1811–16). Society for the Improvement of West India Plantership. Minute Book [June 1, 1811-April 6 (1816). Raymond Richards Collection, University of Keele Library, Staffordshire.

    Google Scholar 

  • Society for the Propagation (1827). Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Annual Report, 1827. London.

  • Soleau, A. (1835). Notes sur les Guyanes Francaise, Hollandaise, Anglaise, et sur les Antilles Francaises (Cayenne, Surinam, Demerary, la Martinique, la Guadeloupe). Ministere de la Marine des, Colonies, Paris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephen, J. (1824–30). The Slavery of the British West India Colonies, 2 vols. London.

  • Thibault De Chanvalon, J. B. (1763). Voyage à la Martinique. Bauche, Paris.

  • Thome, J. A., and Kimball, J. H. (1838). Emancipation in The West Indies, American Anti-Slavery Society, New York.

  • Tomich, D. (1993). Une Petite Guinée: provision ground and plantation in Martinique, 1830–1870. In Berlin, I., and Morgan, P. D. (eds.), Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, pp. 221–242.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wagley, C. (1957). Plantation America: a culture sphere. In Rubin, V. (ed.), Caribbean Studies: A Symposium, Institute of Social and Economic Research, University College of the West Indies, Jamaica, pp. 3–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walduck, J. (1710–12). Letters to J. Petiver, November 1710-September 1712. Sloane Mss. 2302, British Library.

  • Wallman, D. E. (2014). Negotiating the Plantation Structure: An Archaeological Investigation of Slavery, Subsistence and Daily Practice at Habitation Crève Coeur, Martinique, ca. 1760–1890. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

  • Wilk, R., and Rathje, W. (1982). Household archaeology. American Behavioral Scientist 25: 617–639.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilkie, L. A., and Farnsworth, P. (1999). Trade and the construction of Bahamian identity: a multiscalar exploration. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3: 283–320.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilkie, L. A., and Farnsworth, P. (2005). Sampling Many Pots: An Archaeology of Memory and Tradition at a Bahamian Plantation, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, S. M., and Rogers, J. D. (1993). Historical dynamics in the contact era. In Rogers, J. D., and Samuel, M. W. (eds.), Ethnohistory and Archaeology: Approaches to Post-Contact Change in the Americas, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 3–15.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

A much briefer version of this paper was presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Leicester, England. Wallman thanks the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 1117214), and the University of South Carolina, Richard L. Walker Institute of International Studies, for support of her research. She also acknowledges the continued assistance of the Service Regional d’Archeologie, Fort-de-France, Martinique, and Sandrine Grouard, laboratory UMR 7209 du CNRS, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. Earlier drafts of the present paper have benefited from the comments and suggestions of Douglas Armstrong, Linsey Bates, Mark Hauser, Kenneth Kelly, and Frederick Lange. Benjamin Guichard and Neil Norman have given research help, and a special thanks to Sally Vergette for her assistance.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 145 Ednam Drive, Charlottesville, VA, 22901, USA

    Jerome Handler

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1512 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Diane Wallman

Authors
  1. Jerome Handler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Diane Wallman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jerome Handler.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Handler, J., Wallman, D. Production Activities in the Household Economies of Plantation Slaves: Barbados and Martinique, Mid-1600s to Mid-1800s. Int J Histor Archaeol 18, 441–466 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-014-0265-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-014-0265-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation