The Colonial Caribbean
Landscapes of Power in Jamaica's Plantation System

The Colonial Caribbean presents an archaeological analysis of Jamaican coffee plantation landscapes.

James A. Delle (Author)

9780521767705, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 May 2014

266 pages, 48 b/w illus. 16 maps 7 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

The Colonial Caribbean is an archaeological analysis of the Jamaican plantation system at the turn of the nineteenth century. Focused specifically on coffee plantation landscapes and framed by Marxist theory, the analysis considers plantation landscapes using a multiscalar approach to landscape archaeology. James A. Delle considers spatial phenomena ranging from the diachronic settlement pattern of the island as a whole to the organization of individual house and yard areas located within the villages of enslaved workers. Delle argues that a Marxist approach to landscape archaeology provides a powerful theoretical framework to understand how the built environment played a direct role in the negotiation of social relations in the colonial Caribbean.

1. Landscapes of power in colonial Jamaica
2. His majesty's island: the colonial world of plantation Jamaica
3. The plantation mode of production
4. A class for itself: regional landscapes of the planter class
5. Contradictions and dialectics: village landscapes of the enslaved
6. Dialectics and social change: plantation landscapes after slavery
7. Plantation landscapes in comparative perspective
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Landscape archaeology [HDL], Archaeology by period / region [HDD]