You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Myriam Arcangeli argues in this study of ceramics that by analyzing how the people of Guadeloupe used ceramics, a larger social history of Guadeloupe emergers, a "ceramic culture" that broadens our understanding of race, class, and gender in colonial societies in both the United states and the Caribbean.
Ceramics serve as one of the best-known artifacts excavated by archaeologists. They are carefully described, classified, and dated, but rarely do scholars consider their many and varied uses. Breaking from this convention, Myriam Arcangeli examines potsherds from four colonial sites in the Antillean island of Guadeloupe to discover what these everyday items tell us about the people who used them. In the process, she reveals a wealth of information about the lives of the elite planters, the middle and lower classes, and enslaved Africans. By analyzing how the people of Guadeloupe used ceramics—whether jugs for transporting and purifying water, pots for cooking, or pearlware for eating—Arc...
"This book has essentially created a new field of study with a surprising range of insights on the ethnicity, class, gender, and foodways of French speakers of European and African descent adapting to life under British, Spanish, or American political regimes."--Gregory A. Waselkov, author of A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814 "Significant and intriguing. Strengthens the view that French colonists and their descendants are an important part of American heritage and that the worlds they created are significant to our understanding of modern life."--John A. Walthall, editor of French Colonial Archaeology: The Illinois Country and the Western Great Lakes Correcting...
While the military features of historic forts usually receive the most attention from researchers, this volume focuses instead on the people who met and interacted in these sites. Contributors to British Forts and Their Communities look beyond the defensive architecture, physical landscapes, and armed conflicts to explore the complex social diversity that arose in the outposts of the British Empire. The forts investigated here operated at the empire's peak in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, protecting British colonial settlements and trading enclaves scattered across the globe. Locations in this volume include New York State, Michigan, the St. Lawrence River, and Vanco...
What are the origins of agriculture? In what ways have technological advances related to food affected human development? How have food and foodways been used to create identity, communicate meaning, and organize society? In this highly readable, illustrated volume, archaeologists and other scholars from across the globe explore these questions and more. The Archaeology of Food offers more than 250 entries spanning geographic and temporal contexts and features recent discoveries alongside the results of decades of research. The contributors provide overviews of current knowledge and theoretical perspectives, raise key questions, and delve into myriad scientific, archaeological, and material analyses to add depth to our understanding of food. The encyclopedia serves as a reference for scholars and students in archaeology, food studies, and related disciplines, as well as fascinating reading for culinary historians, food writers, and food and archaeology enthusiasts.
"Artfully combines personal narrative, ethnographic insight, and an artisan’s treatise on material culture and production techniques to bring quotidian Caribbean ceramic wares to life as material expressions of cultural adaptation and markers of the region’s socio-economic history."--Michael R. McDonald, author of Food Culture in Central America "Weaves a complex history that links the Caribbean with Africa, Europe, the Americas, and India and draws together threads from indigenous cultures to the impact of the slave trade, indentured workers, colonial rulers, postcolonial politics, and global tourism."--Moira Vincentelli, author of Women Potters: Transforming Traditions "In the field of...
Archaeology in Dominica examines the everyday lives of enslaved and free workers at Morne Patate, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Caribbean plantation that produced sugar, coffee, and provisions. Focusing on household archaeology, this volume helps document the underrepresented history of slavery and colonialism on the edge of the British Empire. Contributors discuss how enslaved and free people were entangled in shifting economic and ecological systems during the plantation’s 200-year history, most notably the introduction of sugarcane as an export commodity. Analyzing historical records, the landscape geography of the plantation, and material remains from the residences of laborers...
It is little wonder that relationships between things and humans are front-and-center in the contemporary social sciences, given the presence of technologies in every conceivable aspect of our lives. From Bruno Latour to Ian Hodder, anthropologists and archaeologists are embracing “thing theory” and the “ontological turn.” In Practicing Materiality, Ruth M. Van Dyke cautions that as anthropologists turn toward animals and things, they run the risk of turning away from people and intentional actions. Practicing Materiality focuses on the practical job of applying materiality to anthropological investigations, but with the firm retention of anthropocentrism. The philosophical discussio...
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 ...
This volume uses archaeological and documentary evidence to reconstruct daily life at Betty’s Hope plantation on the island of Antigua, one of the largest sugar plantations in the Caribbean. It demonstrates the rich information that the multidisciplinary approach of contemporary historical archaeology can offer when assessing the long-term impacts of sugarcane agriculture on the region and its people. Drawing on ten years of research at the 300-year-old site, the researchers uncover the plantation’s inner workings and its connections to broader historical developments in the Atlantic World. Excavations at the Great House reveal similarities to other British colonial sites, and historical...