Introduction

The Jackson Wall Manor is a historic property owned by the National Trust for the Cayman Islands in the Newlands district of Grand Cayman and consists of a ∼ 0.3 ac (0.12 ha) parcel of land containing the ruins of a historic stone staircase. Stuart Wilson, the current Historic Programmes Manager for the Cayman National Trust strongly felt that the Jackson Wall Manor site contained in his words, “an untold slave narrative.” After participating in the Reimaging Sites of Enslavement (RISE) panel with the International Trust Organization, Wilson believed that the Jackson Wall Manor historic property had potential for archaeological investigations into the lives of enslaved people on the Cayman Islands, an aspect of Cayman history that has been under-represented. The Jackson Wall Manor project would be the first archaeological project to specifically investigate enslavement on the Cayman Islands.

At the time of the abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean in 1834 roughly 54% of the 1,800 people living on Grand Cayman were enslaved, and of the enslaved population approximately 65% were considered “field slaves” (Williams 2011). Yet despite over half of the population being enslaved before emancipation, historian Christopher Williams of the University College of the Cayman Islands found from the ∼ 200 interviews he conducted with Cayman locals that over 90% of his respondants believed that slavery was “not an important feature” of Cayman history (Whittaker 2021).

Williams (2011) argues that historians have traditionally overemphasized the role of seafaring industries such as turtling and salvaging shipwrecks in Grand Cayman’s pre-emancipation economy and have downplayed the importance of industries that depended upon enslaved labor such as timber extraction and cotton cultivation on the colony. This near erasure is not only inaccurate but harmful, as Williams argues the legacy of slavery has repercussions to this day on Grand Cayman (Whittaker 2021).

History of the Jackson Wall Manor

The Cayman Islands were ceded to Great Britain along with Jamaica in 1670 with the first land patents for permanent settlement on Grand Cayman granted by the governor of Jamaica between 1734 and 1741. The Jackson Wall Manor site is located in the Newlands, which is among the earliest districts to be colonized and is the first district to see slavery on Grand Cayman with enslaved persons being brought from Jamaica to log Mahogany in the Newlands area in 1734 (Cayman Islands National Museum 2024).

In 1741 the land where the Jackson Wall Manor is located was surveyed by Thomas Newlands for Mary Bodden’s land patent, one of the first patents on Grand Cayman. John Shearer Jackson married an Elizabeth Bodden in 1774 and is said to have come to Grand Cayman and settled in the Newlands around 1770 (Hirst 1910). When Jackson arrived, Mary Bodden was no longer in the Newlands, though the land was reported to have already been cultivated by European settlers and contain wild goat (Hirst 1910). The stone staircase present on the current property is remembered by descendants to have been the home of James Shearer Jackson, the son of John Shearer Jackson, and to have been constructed in 1828 after James Shearer completed his prison sentence for murdering a man who shot his mare. From the Slave Records of April 2, 1834 recorded by James Minot Jr., we learn that James Shearer Jackson held Chattam, Collins, Paul Jones, James Carlow, Elizabeth Sophia, and Catherine Rachel in bondage (Cayman Islands National Museum 2024). Chattam, Paul Jones, James Carlow, and Elizabeth Sophia were enslaved field laborers suggesting agricultural production at the site, and Catherine Rachel was an enslaved domestic laborer. It is unknown how many people were enslaved by James Shearer Jackson prior to 1834 at the Jackson Wall Manor as the first detailed register of enslaved persons on the Cayman Islands was made in 1834 for the purpose of enslaver compensation. It is due in part to this absence in the existing records that Wilson felt so strongly that history of enslavement on Grand Cayman should be investigated archaeologically.

The goal of the initial field season at the Jackson Wall Manor site was to investigate eighteenth and nineteenth-century assemblages associated with the people held in slavery at the site as well as the Jackson family. Today many Caymanians, both with European and African ancestry trace their roots to the Jackson’s, making the story of Jackson Wall of great interest to many.

Archaeological Research at the Jackson Wall Site

Wilson recruited Petras, a historical archaeologist who had previous experience leading excavations at sites of slavery in the Caribbean, to be the PI of the Jackson Wall project. The first season of field work at the Jackson Wall Manor site was conducted in May, 2023. During this brief field season, three 1 × 1 m units and seven shovel test pits were excavated and over 2,000 artifacts were collected, processed, and catalogued. The majority of the assemblages had mixed stratigraphy with known manufacturing dates of European import ware types spanning the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries (Petras 2023). However, some earlier ware types such as delft were recovered in lesser quantities. In addition to factory-manufactured ceramics of European origin, which made up the majority of the ceramic assemblage, 15 low-fired coarse earthenware ceramic sherds hypothesized to be of more local origin were uncovered as well. This ware type, called Afro-Caribbean ware, is a Caribbean-made pottery manufactured both at the craft and industrial scale by enslaved and free potters of African descent. While on some colonies enslaved potters worked at kilns to make sugar wares for the plantation economy, enslaved and free people of African descent produced pots with local clays for household use and market sale throughout much of the Caribbean. Of the 15 Afro-Caribbean ware sherds recovered during fieldwork, 13 were analyzed at the Archaeometry lab at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) for Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA). In addition to offering insights into the history of slavery and Afro-Caribbean influence on the culture of the Cayman Islands, the NAA of the Jackson Wall sherds builds off and contributes to 15 + years of sourcing studies on this ware type in the Caribbean region. In the following section we summarize existing NAA studies on Afro-Caribbean ware in order to contextualize the contribution of the Cayman samples to emerging understandings of Afro-Caribbean ware manufacture and regional trade dynamics.

Sourcing Studies on Afro-Caribbean Ware

Since 2008, NAA of Afro-Caribbean sherds recovered at historic sites in the Caribbean has investigated centers of manufacture and the scale of distribution of this ware type. Hauser et al. (2008) analyzed 51 Afro-Caribbean ware sherds from seven eighteenth-century sites and one ethnographic context in Jamaica. Ethnographic studies and archival sources from Jamaica indicate that at least one type of Jamaican Afro-Caribbean ware (Yabbas) was handmade by women of African descent in house yards, with pot-making skills possibly originating in Africa being passed down from mothers to their daughters (Ebanks 1984; Hauser et al. 2008). Hauser et al. (2008) found that rather than being made solely for local household consumption, there was an extensive internal trade network of pots across Jamaica with Afro-Caribbean sherds recovered from historic sites on Jamaica’s north coast likely originating from the same potteries as sherds recovered from sites on Jamaica’s southern coast.

In a study of coarse earthenware from the French West Indies, Kelly et al. (2008) found that on Guadeloupe, industrial and wheel-thrown domestic ceramics were made locally while the hand-made wares uncovered seem to have been imported into Guadeloupe from Martinique. From Martinique, they found evidence for industrial, wheel-thrown, and hand-made manufacture (Kelly et al. 2008). In Hauser’s (2011) study of Afro-Caribbean ware sherds recovered on Dominica, it was concluded that pottery was not produced locally but imported in from nearby colonies. Domestic wheel-thrown wares were found to be imported into Dominica from both Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the hand-made domestic wares were found to be imported from Guadeloupe, Martinique, possibly St. Lucia, and other non-local sources (Hauser 2011).

On colonies such as Barbados, enslaved potters worked at kilns to make sugar wares for the plantation economy. Farmer et al. (2019) sampled ceramics from historic sites across Barbados including known kiln sites. They found that despite temporal and spatial differences, the majority of the samples fell into a single chemical group. Their findings suggest that there was a local pottery industry on Barbados with robust intraisland networks of distribution, while uncovering little to no evidence for interisland trade (Farmer et al. 2019).

Kirby (2020) submitted 114 ceramics and multiple clay samples from the slave village at Betty’s Hope Plantation in Antigua. The ceramics included gray-bodied coarse earthenware sherds that were hypothesized to be locally produced Afro-Antiguan utilitarian wares, and red-bodied sherds that were hypothesized to be involved with the sugar industry. The majority of the Afro-Caribbean utilitarian grayware sherds fell into compositional groups linked to local Antiguan production (Kirby 2020). Some of the redware sherds that Kirby sampled were determined to have been manufactured locally on Antigua as well, while most of the redware ceramics recovered from Betty’s Hope matched with chemical groups found on Jamaica, though not necessarily of Jamaican origin (Kirby 2020).

Ahlman et al. (2020) conducted a multi island comparative analysis with ceramic samples recovered from mid-seventeenth to nineteenth-century sites on Antigua (n = 4), Montserrat (n = 14), St. Croix (n = 5), St. Lucia (n = 7), Nevis (n = 136), St. Kitts (n = 80), and St. Eustatius (n = 61). They found that Nevis was a center of pottery production, with Nevis-made pottery found abundantly across the island and on other islands as well. Ahlman et al. (2020) also determined that Afro-Caribbean ware from other islands was rarely imported into Nevis, likely due to its strong internal pottery market. Their study found evidence for local production on St. Kitts and/or trade with chemically similar wares from Nevis. They also found evidence that some sites located near ports on St. Kitts had access to ceramics imported from other islands. Ahlman et al. (2020) found no indication of local pottery manufacture on St. Eustatius and believed that ceramics were imported in from multiple islands (including Nevis). As St. Eustatius was a hub for commerce in the Caribbean, the findings of ceramics imported from multiple islands are unsurprising. Ceramics recovered on Montserrat were mainly from one source, as were ceramics recovered on St. Lucia with both examples possibly manufactured locally though the sample sizes were too small to draw strong conclusions (Ahlman et al. 2020).

Most recently, Gray (2022) investigated Afro-Caribbean ware recovered on St. Croix and found that as with Nevis and Jamaica, St. Croix had a robust internal production of locally made pottery. Of the 50 sherds sampled by Gray all but 11 were conclusively found to have a local origin. When compared to the larger MURR Caribbean ceramic database, St. Eustatius sites were found to have some sherd with the St. Croix signature, but otherwise St. Cruzian pottery production seemed focused on internal markets rather than interisland export.

The distribution of Afro-Caribbean ware throughout the Caribbean (Table 1) appears to be influenced by a variety of factors. Colonies such as Jamaica, Nevis, Martinique, and St. Croix were found to have strong pottery traditions with most wares produced on island. Jamaican potters appeared to largely rely on internal markets for Afro-Caribbean ware distribution, while Nevis, Martinique, and to a lesser extent St. Croix, were found to export their wares to other colonies addition to internal trade. In some cases, interisland trade appeared to fill in gaps in local markets. On Antigua utilitarian wares were produced locally but some sugar wares were imported, while Guadeloupe produced industrial, and wheel-thrown wares but may have imported utilitarian hand-made wares in from nearby colonies. Barbados was found to have a robust internal production of wheel-thrown ceramics only, with no evidence of importation from other islands.

Table 1 Summary of the production and distribution characteristics from previous Afro-Caribbean ware NAA studies
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On St. Kitts there is evidence for small-scale local production or importation from nearby Nevis in some regions and a variety of non-local sources at port sites. Afro-Caribbean ware was not likely to have been produced on Dominica and St. Eustatius, but was imported into these colonies from multiple sources which is unsurprising given that both enjoyed free port status.

Analysis of the Afro-Caribbean ware sherds recovered at the Jackson Wall Manor site adds to our growing knowledge of production and distribution of Afro-Caribbean ware. Could the Jackson Wall sherds have been produced locally for internal Caymanian markets or even hyperlocally on site for household use? This would be a novel find as there is no archival or ethnographic evidence for a pottery tradition on Grand Cayman during neither the historic nor the pre-colonial periods. Could the sherds uncovered on Grand Cayman have been traded in from other islands, and if so which islands?

Evidence for the Source of Afro-Caribbean Ware Recovered on Grand Cayman

During a community meeting held in May, 2023 by the National Trust of the Cayman Islands the preliminary results of the Jackson Wall Manor excavations were shared with the public, including the recovery of Afro-Caribbean ware pottery at the site. Betty R. Ebanks, a local attendee, shared with us a photograph of her family’s heirloom Monkey Jar style pot that had been brought to Grand Cayman from Jamaica in 1913 (Fig. 1). In terms of paste color and consistency, Betty’s Monkey Jar appears similar to the Afro-Caribbean ware sherds recovered at the Jackson Wall Manor site in 2023. During the 2024 season a handle sherd diagnostic of the monkey jar form was uncovered in excavations which is similar in appearance to both Betty’s Monkey Jar and the 2023 sherds (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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Afro-Caribbean ware body sherd recovered from Jackson’s Wall Manor in 2023 (left) and Betty Ebank’s Monkey Jar (center), handle sherd from Jackson’s Wall Manor excavations in 2024 (right)

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Monkey Jars are large, low-fired, coarse earthenware vessels with a teapot-like spout used for storing water. Coarse earthenware water jars used for cooling, storing, and purifying water were made in the Caribbean from the early eighteenth century (Heath 1999). Hauser et al. (2008: 130) uncovered documentary evidence written by Edward Long in 1774 describing the local production of water jars on Jamaica by enslaved people for domestic use (Hauser et al. 2008: 130). The porous nature of earthenware vessels cooled water, and forms like the Monkey Jar were portable, allowing them to be used during work in the field (Hauser 2021). Sherds from Monkey Jar vessels have been recovered from late eighteenth-century Jamaican contexts at Drax Hall by Armstrong (see also Heath 1999) and were common market items by the early nineteenth century (Hauser 2008).

Jamaica and the Caymans have a long history of close ties. The Cayman Islands were ceded to Great Britain along with Jamaica in 1670 and throughout the eighteenth century the Caymans remained closely connected to Jamaica through trade and rather loosely through government. In the 1780s, Waide Bodden, a Magistrate appointed by Jamaica wrote “There is little communication between this Island and the Caymanas and this chiefly confined to small vessels conveying turtle to Port Royal and a small supply of corn to Montego Bay. The Grand Caymans… is distant from Port Royal about three hundred and fifty miles [563 km]” (Kieran 1992:30). In the late eighteenth through the first third of the nineteenth century, cotton was exported from Grand Cayman to Jamaica, especially to the ports of Kingston and Montego Bay, and enslaved people were brought to from Jamaica to Grand Cayman until about 1810 (Craton 2003).

While connected by commerce and family ties, the underdefined nature of the relationship between the Caymans and Jamaica was brought into focus in the months leading up to emancipation. Enslavers would be compensated for officially registered enslaved people and despite registration being a requirement since the 1817 Slave Registration Act, no such censuses had been made on Grand Cayman. It was debated whether the Caymans were a dependency of Jamaica or whether the island was without laws. The Caymanian enslavers argued that while a dependency, the Caymans had never been a Parish of Jamaica, nor had voted in Jamaican elections (Kieran 1992). Ultimately, the first registration was made in 1834 so that Cayman enslavers could be compensated, and compensation came from money allocated to Jamaica. In 1863 the Cayman Islands were officially made a dependency of Jamaica by an act of the Imperial Parliament in London until 1962 when Cayman elected to remain a Crown Colony after Jamaica’s independence from Great Britain (Cayman Islands National Archive and Government Information Services 2024).

While Jamaica and Grand Cayman were always closely connected, and ethnographic data suggests that Afro-Caribbean ware from Jamaica was brought into Grand Cayman at least in the early twentieth century, a Jamaican origin of the Jackson Wall Manor sherds was not a forgone conclusion. As Jamaican laws were not enforced on Grand Cayman leading to emancipation, people on Grand Cayman free and enslaved may have had connections with other islands including unsanctioned trade with non-British colonies such as nearby Cuba. As was common throughout the Caribbean, enslaved Caymanians were responsible for growing their own food from their own provision grounds. Surplus food could have been sold by enslaved Caymanians to purchase pottery from the markets they had access to. The NAA studies therefore set out to investigate the origin of the Afro-Caribbean ware sherds recovered on the Cayman Islands.

Cayman Samples Characterized by NAA

Fifteen red to reddish-brown Afro-Caribbean ware sherds were recovered from the Jackson Wall Manor site excavations and surface collection in May 2023, and 13 of these sherds were selected for analysis at the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor during the fall of 2023 (Table 2). The purpose was to compare the Jackson Wall ceramics and local clay to the Caribbean ceramic NAA database to determine their origin of manufacture. The clay sample was “yellowish-red” (Munsell 5.0 YR 4/6 ) in color and collected from a limestone pocket in the sterile final level of one of our units at approximately 50–60 cmbs. The sample was visually and texturally consistent with terra rossa, the red soil containing clays found in depressions in the karst terrain of Grand Cayman (Jones 2021).

Table 2 Site location of Jackson Wall Manor Samples for NAA
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Locus A Ceramics

Three plain coarse earthenware sherds were recovered from the locus associated with the Jackson family manor house. Two of the sherds were recovered from surface collections near the ruins of the stone staircase, one of which was a rim sherd, possibly of a flat-walled vessel. One body sherd was recovered from level 2 (10–20 cmbs) of a unit excavated in this locus to investigate manor house deposits. The majority of ceramics in this unit spanned in date from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century, suggesting a consistent 100 + year occupation of this locus.

Locus B Ceramics

Five coarse earthenware body sherds were recovered from locus B, the location of a previously unknown nonextant structure in the southern end of the property. The locus B structure was likely an outbuilding, and artifact analysis suggests it was in use between the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Three of the sherds were plain and recovered from surface collections in this locus. One plain coarse earthenware sherd was recovered in level 1 (0–10 cmbs) of a unit excavated in Locus B. One slipped coarse earthen sherd was recovered from STP5 (0–46 cmbs), located roughly 10 m west of the potential locus B outbuilding.

STP3 Ceramics

Three slipped and two plain coarse earthenware body sherds (n = 5) were recovered from STP3 (0–34 cmbs), an especially dense STP located near a twentieth century cement slab capping a septic tank. Over 100 ceramics were recovered in this STP spanning the late eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries (Fig. 2). STP3 may sample deposits removed during the construction of the septic tank.

Fig. 2
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STP3 ceramics. Five coarse earthenware sherds are pictured in the center of the bottom row

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NAA Experimental Procedure and Statistical Interpretation of Chemical Data

Ceramic samples were prepared for NAA using procedures standard at MURR (Glascock and Neff 1992; Neff 1992, 2000), and produced concentration values for 32 elements in most ceramic samples. Statistical analysis was subsequently carried out on base-10 logarithms of concentrations using all elements. The element composition data is provided in Supplementary Table 1. The data were subsequently interpreted using a series of multivariate tests routinely used in provenance studies, including principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), Mahalanobis distance equation, and Euclidean distance (Glascock and MacDonald 2023). These tests were used to examine the Grand Cayman samples independently, followed by a comparison to the extant Caribbean NAA database.

Analytical Results: NAA of Ceramic Pastes

Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) suggested the presence of two distinct compositional groups among the 13 clay samples, with ten sherds comprising one group and three sherds comprising the second group. Figure 3 is a dendrogram showing the results of the HCA.

Fig. 3
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Dendrogram showing the results of an HCA of the 13 Grand Cayman ceramics

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The element concentration data on the 13 ceramics and clay were analysed by PCA to further identify distinct homogenous groups within the sample set. Figure 4 is a biplot of PC1 versus PC2 showing the distribution of the 13 ceramic samples and one clay sample. The pattern observed in the initial PCA suggested the presence of one dominant cluster, Jackson Wall Group 1 containing ten ceramics, indicated by an ellipse drawn at 90% confidence. Jackson Wall Group 2 contains three sherds, which are differentiated by higher concentrations of Zn and Ba. The Jackson Wall Manor clay sample is not aligned with the either group, which indicates that the sherds were likely not produced from the clay source we recovered on Grand Cayman.

Fig. 4
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Scatterplot of PC1 (83.5%) versus PC2 (9.7%), showing the results of the 13 ceramic samples and one clay sample organized by group. The ellipse around Jackson Wall Group 1 is drawn at 90% confidence. Jackson Wall Group 2 samples are indicated by a dashed box

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The two compositional groups correspond with site provenience of the Jackson Wall Manor sherds. The three sherds recovered from Locus A, associated with the main manor house, all fall into compositional Group 2. While the sherds recovered from other loci (Locus B and STP3), all fell into compositional Group 1.

Comparison to the MURR Database

As the Cayman clay sample did not match either of the two compositional groups suggesting a non-Cayman origin of the Jackson Wall Manor sherds, a Euclidian distance search was performed to compare the sherds against over 3,300 previously analyzed ceramics and clays in the MURR database for the Caribbean Island region. The MURR database contains samples from Anguilla (n = 118), Antigua (n = 250), Barbados (n = 229), Cuba (n = 21), Dominican Republic (n = 406), Dominica (n = 348), Grenada (n = 56), Guadeloupe (n = 38), Jamaica (n = 545), Martinique (n = 78), Montserrat (n = 14), Nevis (n = 147), Puerto Rico (n = 53), St. Croix (n = 188), St. Eustatius (n = 109), St. John (n = 2+), St. Kitts (n = 120), St. Lucia (n = 40), St. Martin (n = 2) and Trinidad (n = 52).

The Euclidian Distance Search revealed that the clay sample collected from the Jackson Wall site did not match the Jackson Wall Manor sherds nor sherds from the larger database with any statistical significance (Euclidean distance < 0.025). It does not appear that any sherds recovered archaeologically in the Caribbean to date were manufactured on Grand Cayman. This finding aligns with the fact that no precolonial Indigenous or historic pot making tradition is known to have existed on Grand Cayman.

Euclidean distance calculations indicated that the Jackson Wall Group 1 sherds were strongly linked with compositional groups previously identified from Jamaica assemblages, particularly with compositional group JAM-21(Fig. 5). The Jackson Wall Group 2 sherds showed poor, but not zero, statistical relationships with Jamaican compositional reference groups.

Fig. 5
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Scatterplot of Cr versus Th (ppm), showing the distribution of Jackson Wall samples projected against previously established Jamaican ceramic compositional groups. All of the Jackson Wall samples fall squarely into JAM-21. Ellipses are drawn at 90% confidence

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To illustrate the relationships indicated by Euclidean distance, the relevant Jamaican reference groups were extracted and compared to the Cayman ceramic data. Figure 5 is a scatterplot of Cr versus Th (ppm), showing the distribution of Cayman samples against Jamaican groups. All of the Cayman samples (Jackson Wall Groups 1 and 2) fall within the confidence ellipse of JAM-21 in this bivariate elemental plot.

When zinc was plotted as a variable the Jackson Wall Group 2 sherds separated from the Jamaican and Group 1 Jackson Wall samples, as did some of the Jackson Wall Group 1 samples, though to a lesser extent (Fig. 6). This, coupled with knowledge on the site provenience of the sherds, suggests the possibility that Zn (and to a lesser extent, Ba), may have been a postdepositional contaminant in the soil as a result of the decay of the stone and mortar staircase located next to the original structure. Zinc and barium can be mobile elements in acidic soil, especially when adjacent to structural walls that may have lime-based mortars, which is true of the Jackson Wall staircase structure. Chemical analysis of the surrounding sediment is needed to further validate or refute this possibility.

Fig. 6
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Scatterplot of Zn versus Th (ppm), showing the distribution of Cayman samples against Jamaican groups. Ellipses are drawn at 90% confidence

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Jamaican Compositional Groups

Of the ten compositional groups identified in Jamaican ceramic assemblages, the Cayman sherds have a strong connection to JAM-21. JAM-21 sherds include samples in the MURR database recovered by Douglas Armstrong from multiple households in the Seville slave village, sherds submitted by Jillian Galle from the Papine slave village site, the Mona slave village and Great House sites, and sherds submitted by Hauser from the urban Old King’s House site, all which are sites located in East Jamaica. As is true of most of Afro-Caribbean ware sherds excavated from archaeological sites, the majority of the JAM-21 sherds are unidentifiable in terms of vessel form.

JAM-21 is the dominant ceramic group in Jamaica, and samples in this group were proposed to be linked to the Linguanea Plain clay source based on petrographic analysis of sherds falling into this group (Hauser 2009). Pottery manufacture in the Linguanea Plain region near Kingston was first referenced in the eighteenth century, and in 1838 the water-jar form in particular was attributed to Kingston area potteries (Hauser 2009). Kingston was among the ports most visited by Cayman ships and a port implicated in the trade of enslaved peoples between Jamaica and Grand Cayman. For example, Craton’s study of shipping records found that during the peak of the cotton boom between 1802 and 1804, 153 enslaved people were brought from Kingston, Jamaica, to Grand Cayman (Craton 2003). Clay samples, or an ethnographic collection of ceramics from the Linguanea Plain source, will need to be submitted to the MURR database to geochemically test this hypothesis and confirm compositional group membership.

Discussion

In summary, all the sherds tests from the Jackson Wall Manor site were highly likely to be manufactured on Jamaica and fall into two chemical groups, perhaps representing two different potters or recipes, but also potentially could be the result of postdepositional contamination. The Jackson Wall Group 1 sherds were made with the same recipes as sherds recovered from a variety of plantation sites on Jamaica including the Seville, Papine, and Mona slave villages. Sherds from this compositional group may have been manufactured from the Jamaican Lingaunea Plain clay source near Kingston, a port from which goods and enslaved peoples were brought to Grand Cayman.

The Jackson Wall Group 2 sherds are separated strongly by zinc and to a lesser extent by barium from the Group 1 sherds. These may have been made by a different Jamaican potter or they could have been contaminated by zinc and barium at the Jackson Wall site.

The Jackson Wall Manor assemblages span from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s. While it is not possible to confidently associate the Afro-Caribbean sherds to the pre-emancipation occupation of the site, some interesting patterns emerge when site provenience is considered. The Jackson Wall Group 2 sherds were found in the northern end of the site by the staircase and deposits associated with the manor house. The Jackson Wall Group 1 sherds were found in the south and mid yard in areas associated with possible out buildings. Pottery purchased for the manor house may have been obtained from different potters or markets than pottery purchased for the outbuildings, likely the locations where the people enslaved at the site worked and possibly lived. One of the Jackson Wall Group 2 sherds is a rim sherd, however it is not possible to determine if vessel form correlates with group membership as most of the samples were undiagnostic body sherds. While more data are needed to connect the sherds with a specific occupation of the site and definitive function, we can say with confidence that the presence of Jamaican sherds at the Jackson Wall site demonstrate Afro-Caribbean influence on material culture consumed in the Caymans before the twentieth century.

While ceramics were not known to be made locally on Grand Cayman, Caymanians relied on the expertise of Black women Jamaican potters to purchase clay pots that fulfilled local needs. Afro-Caribbean ware ceramic forms such as the water jars and the Monkey Jar were used to store, purify, and cool water in tropical climates (Heath 1999). As Grand Cayman lacks rivers, drinking water for the Jackson Wall Manor inhabitants would have come from rainwater collection or well water. Water-jar pots produced in Jamaica would have met these local needs of Cayman waterways. Betty Ebank’s Jamaican monkey jar that was brought to Grand Cayman in the early 1900s is ethnographic evidence that these forms were present on the island by that time, and likely earlier as suggested by the monkey jar handle sherd we recovered during 2024 excavations. Though speculative, the possible association of the Cayman Group 1 sherds with the Linguanea Plains source connects the Jackson Wall sherds to known manufacture areas of water jars. However, the 13 sherds tested from the 2023 season were too small to determine a specific vessel form.

Coarse earthenware pots and bowls were used by enslaved people to cook one-pot meals, which was a common practice in West African foodways (Heath 1999). By the early nineteenth century the one-pot meal had become a staple within the larger West Indian cuisine (Heath 1999). The enslaved or free creole population of the Jackson Wall site may have sourced such wares from Jamaica to prepare one-pot meals in accordance with Afro-Caribbean foodway traditions.

Jamaica was a main market for Caymanian goods and a main source of imports, which we now know includes ceramics made for market sale by people of African descent. While intraisland trade of Afro-Caribbean ware had been documented on Jamaica (Hauser et al. 2008), this study documents interisland trade of Jamaican-made ceramics to a nearby colony. As a robust pottery tradition was established on nearby Jamaica there may not have been a need to produce pottery locally or procure it from other international markets. The presence of Jamaican sherds speaks to the history of commerce between enslavers from Grand Cayman and Jamaica. At the same time, the preference for the Jamaican pots may reflect ties maintained between people enslaved on Grand Cayman and Jamaica. Many people enslaved on Grand Cayman were brought to the island from Jamaica and may have preferred Jamaican pots over others due to previous familiarity with the Jamaican potters or the maintenance of connections with Afro-Jamaican markets and people. Recognizing the small sample size of this initial study, further clay and ceramic samples from Grand Cayman will need to be submitted to MURR determine if Afro-Caribbean ware ceramics were locally produced elsewhere on the Island, if they were traded in exclusively from Jamaica, or if wares came from other interisland sources, or some combination thereof.

The Jackson Wall project fits within an emerging public reckoning with the history of enslavement on the Cayman Islands. In the year since Wilson’s hunches were taken seriously and supported by the National Trust with the Jackson’s Wall Archaeological project commencing in 2023, the Cayman Islands National Museum opened an exhibit on the history of slavery and emancipation on the Cayman Islands and Emancipation Day was reinstated as a public holiday for the first time in 62 years both in May 2024. The National Trust for the Cayman Islands intends to support a third season of excavations with plans for a field school involving local high school students to broaden its reach and impact. Future directions also include further NAA testing on Afro-Caribbean ware sherds excavated during the 2024 season including the monkey jar handle sherd which could clarify our speculative connections between the Jackson Wall sherd and this particular vessel form. While a small site in size, the Jackson Wall Manor Project brings large contributions to local heritage and broadens our understanding of trade dynamics and enslaved market participation in the Caribbean region.