Archaeologies of slavery and freedom in the Caribbean : exploring the spaces in between / edited by Lynsey A. Bates, John M. Chenoweth, and James A. Delle.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Caribbean plantations and the forces that shaped them--slavery, sugar, capitalism, and the tropical, sometimes deadly environment--have been studied extensively. This volume brings together alternate stories of sites that fall outside the large cash-crop estates. Employing innovative research tools and integrating data from Dominica, St. Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Barbados, Nevis, Montserrat, and the British Virgin Islands, the contributors investigate the oft-overlooked interstitial spaces where enslaved Africans sought to maintain their own identities inside and outside the fixed borders of colonialism.

Despite grueling work regimes and social and economic restrictions, people held in bondage carved out places of their own at the margins of slavery's reach. These essays reveal a complex world within and between sprawling plantations--a world of caves, gullies, provision grounds, field houses, fields, and the areas beyond them, where the enslaved networked, interacted, and exchanged goods and information.

The volume also explores the lives of poor whites, Afro-descendant members of military garrisons, and free people of color, demonstrating that binary models of black slaves and white planters do not fully encompass the diversity of Caribbean identities before and after emancipation. Together, the analyses of marginal spaces and postemancipation communities provide a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of those who lived in the historic Caribbean, and who created, nurtured, and ultimately cut the roots of empire.

A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Outstanding archaeological work has been done on Caribbean plantation sites. This collection changes the focus and examines the cracks between plantations and the obscured economic niches outside the system of commodity production. It consists of an introduction, a critical conclusion, and 12 chapters, all based on original archaeological and archival research. A good mix of Greater and Lesser Antillean islands is covered in two main sections. Part 1 examines the social and economic life that functioned outside the plantation during the period of slavery. The essays explore interactions between poor whites and enslaved blacks, the function of dwellings dispersed in the plantation landscape, the evidence of original settler small plots superseded by plantations, and the kinds of production and exchange that enslaved people were able to carry on for themselves. Together, the chapters expose the existence of a parallel local economy alongside the plantation export economy. Part 2 examines the period after the emancipation of slaves, showing how the experiences and adaptations of freed people influenced the Caribbean of today. It also shows how historical archaeologists must deal with incomplete records and inadequate documentation. Summing Up: Recommended. For all college and university collections. --Riva Berleant-Schiller, University of Connecticut