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THE HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF NEVIS, WEST
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EVOLUTION OF THE CARIBBEAN COLONIAL LANDSCAPE,

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1625-1833

presented by

MARCO GUIDO MENIKETTI

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THE HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF NEVIS, WEST INDIES:
CAPITALISM, ENVIRONMENT, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CARIBBEAN
COLONIAL LANDSCPE,1625-1833
By

Marco Guido Meniketti

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

2004

ABSTRACT
THE HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF NEVIS, WEST INDIES:
CAPITALISM, ENVIRONMENT, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CARIBBEAN
COLONIAL LANDSCAPE, 1625-1833
By

Marco Guido Meniketti

Keeping human ecology and landscape archaeology as the focal points of analysis,
this dissertation investigates the synergistic relationship between environment,
settlement, and economic transformation on the British colony of Nevis, in the Eastern
Caribbean. The time frame for this study is between first colonization by English planters
in 1625, through the developmental periods of the plantation system into an agro-
industrial sugar monopoly, and emancipation in 1833. Extensive archaeological surveys
and artifact analysis, are combined with historical source material to reveal patterns of
settlement over the landscape, environmental change, and their multi-tiered relationship
with the emerging capitalist Atlantic economy that acted at several levels and scales to
shape Caribbean colonial society. A world system perspective is used as an overarching
theoretical construct to explicate the important role Nevis played in the emergence of
capitalism and the affect of colonialism on the nascent globalization of the eighteenth
century. Although Nevis was of peripheral status in the British colonial system, the
ascendancy of capitalism embedded Nevis and other colonies in a network of
relationships that impacted the core state deeply, with inﬂuence on social and economic

transformations globally.

 

Copyright by
MARCO GUIDO MENIKETTI
2004

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to the organizations and individuals whose
assistance, encouragement, and hard work made this research possible. A project of this
scale usually requires substantial assistance. The Nevis Historical and Conservation
Society has been generously supportive and encouraging. John Guilbert, David and
Nancy Rollinson, David and Joan Robinson, David Small, Paul Diamond, have all been
valuable resources while working on Nevis. My work in the Archives at the Horatio
Nelson Museum in Charlestown was greatly facilitated by the Skills and professionalism
of Lomette Hanley.

I would like to make special mention of Lester Blackett and Wendy Elliot of the
Department for Physical, Natural Resources, and Environmental Planning who enabled
our ﬁeld seasons to go forward smoothly. I also extend my gratitude to Frederick Stevens
for granting permission to explore the Jamestown ruins on his property. Additionally I
want to acknowledge the assistance of Cardlos Walters, Ian Hart, and Clive Mitchell for
accommodations and countless kindness' during several field seasons, and Vince
Hubbard for his generous support and historical insights. I would like to thank the
members of my committee whose guidance, thoughtfulness, and insights have been so
valued by me, each in their own special way.

Each of the members of my ﬁeld crews from various seasons deserve mention for their
hard work in often difficult circumstances under the Caribbean sun: Paul White, Brown
University; Meredith Martin, Florida State University; Kathryn Forgacs, University of

Delaware; Kristen Ryzewski, Brown University; Kaitlin Deslatte, Northwestern State

University, LA; Sarah Surface-Evans, Michigan State University; Toby Ward, Michigan
State University; Bart Beecroft, Texas A&M University; Daniel Rourke, Bridgewater
College, MA.

Finally, and most importantly, I wish to express my deepest felt love and gratitude to
my wife Lisa, for her understanding and support over the years necessary to complete this
substantial task. She has served in many capacities during the course of events, as ﬁeld

crew, surveyor, editor, conﬁdant and spiritual counselor.

 

PREFACE

Nievis, sometimes Mevis or Meves. It consists of one mountain of about

four miles height to the tap, whence it is an easy decent to all parts of the

island, but steepest toward the town where there is a road. They have neither

springs nor rivers, but have what water they make use of in cisterns receiving

the rain. The ground is cleared almost to the top of the hill, where yet remains

some woods and where runaway Negroes harbor themselves in it... The town

or road is well fortiﬁed with batteries and fort. . .They have little money but buy

and pay with sugars which are blackish.
-- Hans Sloane,
A Voyage to the islands of Madera,
Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and
Jamaica, with the Natural History of the
Herbs and Trees, F our-footed Beasts, Fishes,
Birds, Insects, and Reptiles of the last of
those Islands. (London) 1707.

During his voyage in 1685 to the West Indies to collect botanical specimens, Hans
Sloane wrote the passage quoted above in his journal, which he later published in book
form about his memorable journey to the Caribbean.

A member of the British parliament, one hundred years later, felt so strongly about
the economic entanglement between England and the West Indies, that he quipped: “No
ships no sugar, no sugar no colonies.” He just as easily might have inserted the word
slaves at any point in this sardonic assertion. and been no less correct.

Captured in these two quotes are critical elements that help deﬁne the environmental
and socio-political landscapes of the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries: the degree to which the environment was reconﬁgured by human activity, and
the dependency relationships that crystallized between core colonial states and their far-
ﬂung outposts during the expansion of plantation colonization. Out of these two quotes
comes the basis for the present study of landscape conﬁguration during the ascendancy of

capitalism in the early colonial period of the Caribbean.

vi

 

The island of Nevis, in the Eastern Caribbean, became a colony of ﬁrst importance to
Britain in the seventeenth century and its historical trajectory provides a useﬁrl window
into the patterning of settlement and the evolution of colonial landscape across the
Caribbean during the mercurial rise of capitalism. Nevis is of minor signiﬁcance on the
world stage today, but the processes which brought it both prosperity and decline, are
active in the modern world, and with ever increased complexity, are shaping modem
landscapes. By studying a case where variables can be limited and deﬁned, I hope to
enhance fundamental understanding of key processes of settlement affected by a
capitalist world system.

Sloane’s observations of the landscape of Nevis describe an environment
transformed, standing in stark contrast to the wooded, wild place, encountered by
Columbus during his second voyage in 1493. Sixty years of aggressive land clearing and
planting since ﬁrst settlement in 1627 by English colonizers radically changed the
tropical climax rainforest into an agro-industrial outpost of the emergent global
marketplace. At its zenith in the middle of the eighteenth century, Nevis was a vital node
in the British agro-colonial complex situated in the Lesser Antilles, uniting several
seemingly unrelated industries into a growing interdependent network. Among these
were the sugar industry, shipping, metropolitan manufacturing, and slavery. But neither
the island colony of Nevis nor the British were alone in the Caribbean transformation.
French, Dutch, Danish, and even the Swedish, were competing among the islands that
once were the sole domain of the Spanish Empire.

In this study I propose that at the time of ﬁrst entry into the Caribbean, European

nations practiced a system of economics founded on feudal relations rooted in medieval

vii

 

 

 

hierarchical social traditions. Within two centuries the dominant economic system
changed, ﬁrst to a proto-capitalist model (so-called merchant capitalism) as social
relations that governed life in European core states and on island colonies began to shift
signiﬁcantly toward new relations of production and conceptualizations of property. By
the middle of the eighteenth century modern capitalism was in its ascendancy.

The same processes of plantation economy and environmental modiﬁcation advanced
on islands under French, Dutch and Spanish administrations, although the Spanish model
was signiﬁcantly different in scope. International rivalries and nascent global economic
competition fueled expansion of overseas enterprises and set the stage for unforeseen
changes in political and economic systems. Nevis, as one of the mother colonies of the
British Caribbean sphere served as a model for experimentation in the plantation system
and capitalism. Technological improvements in shipping facilitated exploration and
exploitation while concurrent improvements in sugar manufacturing techniques boosted
production in response to increasing product demand.

As the environment was modiﬁed to accommodate the expansion of colonial
settlement, the plantation system itself evolved into an agro-industrial macrosystem
unimagined by the early settlers of Nevis or elsewhere in the Caribbean. Eventually,
agricultural improvements proved necessary simply to keep supplies at standard levels
because of diminishing returns in degraded soils and marginal lands. Adjustments at
varying levels by colonists had profound as well as subtle affects on the landscape,
ranging from altered land use patterns to modiﬁcation of physical space, architecture, and
technological interaction with the natural environment. Subtle changes in the use of space

and its organization reﬂect ideological transformations as well. As I explain in Chapter

viii

Three, these many aspects of landscape and ideological reformulation are accessible
archaeologically and can be interpreted from the perspective of socio-economic
development through a world system lens.

My selection of the island of Nevis as a case study is strategic, in part because of its
historical importance, and because Nevis once served as a model for development that
had ramiﬁcations throughout the Caribbean and beyond. But also because the built
landscape of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remains largely intact and
continues to inﬂuence modern society, mobility, and self-conception of Nevisians.

There are clearly many facets of the panorama of Caribbean history that a narrow
work of this nature will be forced to ignore. The great prehistory of the Caribbean basin
that has received the attention of important scholars can be barely touched upon.
Furthermore, the various ways in which these processes took shape under different core-
states can not be adequately compared.

The archaeology that I have conducted over the past few years has been trained
simultaneously on speciﬁcs of the sugar industry and broadly on the landscape. On
Nevis, as elsewhere in the region, these two features are inescapably intertwined. In this
study I ﬁrst attempt to disentangle the agro-industrial plantation-complex from the
landscape to investigate its social, economic, and technological components, but then
reengage the landscape with the plantation system to reveal aspects of environmental

change wrought by colonial enterprises.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xiii

LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... xiv

PART I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

CHAPTER 1

ISSUES OF SETTLEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT ....................................................... 1
A Model for Capitalist Development ...................................................................... 3
Essential Questions .................................................................................................. 8
Landscape Theory and Social Complexity ............................................................ 11
Research Hypotheses ............................................................................................. l6
Toward a World System Model for Caribbean Settlement ................................... 22
Operationalized Deﬁnitions ................................................................................... 24
Why an Island Colony as Unit of Analysis? .......................................................... 25

CHAPTER 2

INFORMING THE STUDY: DEFINING THE CARIBBEAN AND THE

LITERATURE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH ................................................ 30
The Signiﬁcance of Nevis in Caribbean Research ................................................ 36
Nevis as Periphery ................................................................................................. 38
Historical Phases Deﬁned ...................................................................................... 41
Deﬁning the Region of Study ................................................................................ 43
Context for Historical Archaeology ....................................................................... 52
Regional Considerations ........................................................................................ 56
Literature of Related Archaeological Research ..................................................... 61

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ANALYTICAL LENS .................... 64
Space and Land Use ............................................................................................... 64
A Model of Nevis Development ............................................................................ 65
Synopsis of Pilot Study .......................................................................................... 73
Results Relevant to the Model ............................................................................... 77
2003 Field Season .................................................................................................. 83
Transects: Procedures and Results ......................................................................... 84
Documentation Protocols ....................................................................................... 92
Archaeological Testing .......................................................................................... 96
Procedures for Analysis ......................................................................................... 97

PART II ARCHAEOLOGY

CHAPTER 4

SETTLEMENT CHARACTER OF NEVIS, PHASE I 1625-1655 ................................ 101
Historical Prelude to Phase I ................................................................................ 101
Research Context for Phase I ............................................................................... 110
Survey Quadrats ................................................................................................... 111
Discussion: Environment and Settlement ............................................................ 118
Characterizing Urban Settlement ......................................................................... 120
Jamestown Artifacts ............................................................................................. 125
Industrial Sites ..................................................................................................... 129
Summary of Evidence .......................................................................................... 131

CHAPTER 5

NEVIS PHASE II, 1625-1655 ......................................................................................... 139
Historical Context for Phase II ............................................................................ 139
Survey Results by Environmental Zone .............................................................. 147
Environment and Social Change ......................................................................... 165
Industrial Landscape and Technological Artifacts .............................................. 169
Archaeological Testing ........................................................................................ 170
Characterization of Site Types ............................................................................. 176
Summary and Analysis ........................................................................................ 183
Sugar Markets and Nevis Prosperity ................................................................... 190

CHAPTER 6

SETTLEMENT PHASE 111, 1655-1785 .......................................................................... 195
Historical Context ............................................................................................... 196
Survey Results ..................................................................................................... 199
Artifact Assemblages and Capitalism .................................................................. 214
Summary of Evidence .......................................................................................... 219

PART III SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS

CHAPTER 7

SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS: SUMMATION PHASES I-III ........................... 224
Settlement and Environmental Change ............................................................... 226
Archaeological Landscape ................................................................................... 239
Variable Loads in the Colony .............................................................................. 240
Residential Patterns Across Phases ..................................................................... 247
Assessing the Model of Development ................................................................. 247
Nevis in the World System .................................................................................. 250
Periphery-Periphery ............................................................................................. 253
Economic Zonation .............................................................................................. 256
Landscapes of Capitalism .................................................................................... 257
New Knowledge .................................................................................................. 261
Future Research ................................................................................................... 263

xi

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 Descriptions of Sites Arranged by Parish and Phase ...................... 269
Appendix 2 Chronology of Sites ........................................................................ 300
Appendix 3 A Discussion of Artifacts from Jamestown .................................... 303
Appendix 4 Burial Excavation at Pinney Beach ................................................. 314
Appendix 5 Changing Technology of Sugar Production .................................... 317
Appendix 6 Bellin Map, 1758 ............................................................................ 319
Appendix 7 Map of Nevis by Governor Alexander Burke Iles, 1871 ................ 321
Appendix 8 Excavation Detail from SW Corner of Jamestown Foundations ....323
Appendix 9 Shovel Tests Proﬁles from Jamestown site ................................... 325
Appendix 10 Conﬂicts Inﬂuencing Colonial Development ................................ 328
Appendix 11 Mean Manufacturing Dates ............................................................ 330
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 332

xii

 

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 4-1 St. John Parish Survey Quadrats Phase I ..................................................... 114
TABLE 4-2 St. Thomas Parish Survey Quadrats Phase I ................................................ 116
TABLE 5-1 St. John Parish Survey Quadrats Phase II .................................................... 150
TABLE 5-2 St. Thomas Parish Survey Quadrats Phase II .............................................. 161
TABLE 6-1 St. John Parish Survey Quadrats Phase III .................................................. 201
TABLE 6-2 St. Thomas Parish Survey Quadrats Phase III ............................................. 205
TABLE Ap2-1 Chronology of Sites ................................................................................ 301
TABLE Ap3-l Jamestown ceramics ............................................................................... 307
TABLE Ap3 -2 Ceramics from Ridge house ................................................................... 311
TABLE AplO-l Chronology of Conﬂicts ....................................................................... 329
TABLE APl 1-1 Ceramic types, median manufacture dates. .......................................... 331

xiii

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGUREl-l Model 1. ........................................................................................................ 13
FIGURE 1-2 Model 2. ....................................................................................................... 14
FIGURE 1-3 Location of Nevis ......................................................................................... 27
FIGURE 2-1 Island of Nevis Viewed from the west .......................................................... 50
FIGURE 2-2 Caribbean as deﬁned for this study .............................................................. 52
FIGURE 3-1 Schematic of St. John Parish. Pilot Study regions shaded ........................... 76
FIGURE 3-2 Map of Nevis. Study parishes shaded .......................................................... 78
FIGURE 3-3 Map St. Thomas Parish as divided into survey quadrats ............... I ............ 88
FIGURE 3-4 Map of St. John Parish as divided into survey quadrats ............................. 88
FIGURE 3-5 Home propped up on stone piles .................................................................. 95
FIGURE 4-1 Principal sailing routes into the Caribbean ................................................ 103
FIGURE 4-2 Map of St. John Parish depicting quadrats ................................................. 114
FIGURE 4-3 Map of St. Thomas Parish depicting quadrats ........................................... l 16
FIGURE 4-4 Map of St. John Parish showing location of Phase I sites ......................... 136
FIGURE 4-5 Map of St. Thomas Parish showing Phase I sites ...................................... 137
FIGURE 5-1 Idealized plantation from French tretise .................................................... 145
FIGURE 5-2 Enlargement from Clarke estate map showing works ............................... 145
FIGURE 5-3 Enlargement from Clarke estate map showing slave housing ................... 145
FIGURE 5-4 Estate map of Nevis ................................................................................... 146
FIGURE 5-5 Map of St. John Parish. Quadrats with Phase II ......................................... 150
FIGURE 5-6 Coast round island road ............................................................................ 153

xiv

 

 

M

FIGURE 5-7 Boundary wall of stacked stone. Lower St John. ....................................... 154

FIGURE 5-8 South lower St. John. House platforms ...................................................... 154
FIGURE 5-9 Close up from 1704 map. Vicinity of Jamestown ...................................... 159
FIGURE 5-10 Coastal erosion ......................................................................................... 159
FIGURE 5-11 Enlarged section from Bellin 1758 map. Coastal defenses ...................... 160
FIGURE 5-12 Map of St. Thomas Parish showing Phase II ........................................... 161
FIGURE 5-13 St. John Parish map illustrating Phase 11 sites ......................................... 167
FIGURE 5-14 Map St. Thomas Parish illustrating Phase 11 Sites .................................... 168
FIGURE 5-15 Mt Nevis illustrating survey locations ..................................................... 169
FIGURE 5-16 Artifact of industrial sugar production. Pembroke .................................. 170
FIGURE 5-17 Documenting boiling train at Long Pt. Road site SJ9KR5/22-1 .............. 172
FIGURE 5-18 Structure associated with Pariss Garden estate ........................................ 178
FIGURE 5-19 Entrance to Ft. Charles ............................................................................. 180
FIGURE 5-20 Population demographis ........................................................................... 184
FIGURE 5-21 Nevis sugar exports .................................................................................. 192
FIGURE 5-22 Muscavado sugar prices in London ......................................................... 192
. FIGURE 6-1 Map of St. John Parish. Quadrats with Phase III components ................... 201
FIGURE 6-2 Map of St. Thomas Parish. Quadrats with Phase 111 components ............. 205
FIGURE 6-3 Images from 1871 map depicting three villages. Harpies village .............. 210
FIGURE 6-4 Images from 1871 map depicting three villages. Morgan's village ........... 210

FIGURE 66 Images from 1871 map depicting three villages. Vaughan's village ....... 210
FIGURE 6-6 Map showing all Phase 111 sites across St. John Parish ............................. 213

FIGURE 6-7 Map of St. Thomas Parish illustrating Phase 111 sites ................................ 214

XV

FIGURE 6-8 Percentages of assemblages comprising ware categories .......................... 217

FIGURE 7-1 Example of road system in St John Parish ................................................. 237
FIGURE 7-2 Road west from Village Cox ...................................................................... 238
FIGURE 7-3 Nevis Phase I settlement ........................................................................... 248
FIGURE 7-4 Nevis Phase II settlement ........................................................................... 249
FIGURE 7-5 Nevis Phase III settlement ......................................................................... 250
FIGURE 7-6 Cane ﬁeld laborers on St Kitts, 1910 stereoview ....................................... 268
FIGURE Apl -1 Unit 2 at Long Point Site ....................................................................... 273
FIGURE Apl-2 Wall proﬁles, unit 2 Long Point site ..................................................... 273
FIGURE Apl-3 Plan, Feature at Long Point site SJ9KR5/22-1 ..................................... 274
FIGURE AP1-4 Plan lower St. John site SJ 14MM5/16-2 .............................................. 276
FIGURE Apl -5 North and west elevations, lower St. John site SJ 14MM5/16-2 ........... 277
FIGURE Apl -6 Ridge house foundation plan. SJ4KDS/16-1 ......................................... 278
FIGURE Apl-7 Site plan Ridge mill-complex SJ4MM5/16-1 ....................................... 280
FIGURE Apl-8 Ridge mill-complex ............................................................................... 282
FIGURE Apl-9 Mill platform at Ridge mill-complex. ................................................... 282
FIGURE Apl-10 Ridge complex. West elevation drawing ............................................ 283
FIGURE Apl-11 Ridge complex. North wall elevation drawing ................................... 283
FIGURE Apl-12 Pembroke mill-complex SJ 15MM5/21-1 ............................................ 284
FIGURE Apl -13 Richmond-Lodge mill-complex, Plan, Area 2 .................................... 287
FIGURE Apl-14 Morgan's village. Section plan from survey ........................................ 289
FIGURE Apl-15 Vaughan's village. Section plan from survey ...................................... 290
FIGURE Apl ~16 Harpies village. Section plan from survey .......................................... 291
xvi

 

FIGURE Apl-l7 Photo of Unit I Jamestown, Feature A ................................................ 293

FIGURE Apl-18 Feature A, Unit 1 proﬁle, Jamestown ................................................ 293
FIGURE Apl-19 Plan Feature A and A-1, Jamestown warehouse ................................. 294
FIGURE Apl-20 Schematic site plan of Pariss Garden townhouse ................................ 297
FIGURE Apl-21 Site plan of mill-complex east from Jamestown, ST7aMM5/29-1 ..... 298
FIGURE Ap3-l Examples of clay pipes from Jamestown site surface collection .......... 308
FIGURE Ap3-2 Area plan for Ridge house artifact collection ...................................... 312
FIGURE Ap3-3 Jamestown artifact collection map. ....................................................... 313
FIGURE Ap4-1 Burial during excavation at Pinney beach ............................................. 316
FIGURE Ap5-1 Spanish train .......................................................................................... 318
FIGURE Ap5-2 Jamaica train ......................................................................................... 318
FIGURE Ap6-1 Bellin map of Nevis 1758 ..................................................................... 320
FIGURE Ap7-1 Governor A. Burke Iles map 1871 ........................................................ 322
FIGURE Ap8-l SW comer of Jamestown foundation .................................................... 324
FIGURE Ap9-l Shovel test schematics ......................................................................... 326
FIGURE Ap9-2 Cane hoes found during survey and shovel testing ............................... 327

xvii

 

 

Chapter One

Issues Of Settlement, Development and Capitalism

...thus the land and labour[sic] of the country being devoted to cultivation
of the sugar cane, the corn and provisions they raise are merely accidental...
to the sugar cane everything is sacriﬁced as a triﬂe to the major object.

---Richard Glover, 1775

A West India planter speaking before
Parliament on the need for continued
imports from continental colonies.

Caribbean frontiers were a crucible for processes in the evolution of European
expansion and political/economic domination in the New World. The islands were the
sites of capitalist experimentation and one arena in which the social relations of the
modern world were forged. By exploring the dimensions of agency and causality of
capitalism’s global ascendancy from its inception in the microcosm of the Caribbean we
can signiﬁcantly add to our understanding of the colonization process.

The Caribbean between 1600 and 1800 constituted a microcosm of the emerging
global market, of competition between European powers. The island colony of Nevis, in
the eastern Caribbean, was at the center of this historical development and can shed light
on the rise of capitalism regionally. The evolution of the landscape and the processes of
socio-economic development that played out on Nevis did so, not against the backdrop of
the rise of capitalism, but integrated with and in resonance with its rise to dominance,
perhaps contributing to its rise.

The present study examining the processes that Shaped Nevis and its historical

“alectory was necessary to ﬁll serious gaps in the historical archaeological record of the

region, to provide data relevant to settlement patterns as they relate to economic

 

 

development in the Caribbean generally, and to inform on how human ecology was
affected by capitalism's emergence. The nexus of these processes is found in the colonial
landscape. The objective of this study has been to combine archaeological evidence of
settlement patterns derived through landscape survey with economic data, drawn from
historical sources, to improve understanding of developmental episodes, processes, and
attendant consequences within the panorama of Caribbean history.

Current understanding of the earliest phases of colonial settlement in the Caribbean,
its spatial organizational, and how capitalism came to dominate the social and economic
spheres are vague and based on unsystematic study. This has in part been due to a lack of
analysis of colonial landscapes in the Caribbean structured by any strong theoretical
frameworks or guiding principles (Leonard 1993) despite the fact that it is there and then
that inchoate capitalism and nascent globalization as we recognize it gained momentum
and can be studied from its inception.

The origins of capitalism’s root causes, and especially its ﬂorescence in the period
straddling mercantilism and industrial capitalism, is hotly contested in the literature
(Abu-Lughod 1989; Braudel 1972; Wallerstein 1974; Wolf 1982). Disagreement exists
even on whether we can refer to merchant capitalism as a distinct phase. Arguments
about the nature of capitalism continue to ﬂutter like moths to a candle around the works
of Karl Marx and Adam Smith. The highly charged political nature of the arguments and
the elusive character of capitalism explain to some degree why consensus among scholars
should not be anticipated any time soon. Nevertheless, myriad authors suggest that even

Without an overarching political organization, capitalism developed beyond the point of

economics to become a complex social system touching all aspects of cultural life. If we

accept the premise that capitalism arose through internal systemic developments.
undirected by any governing body, as suggested, we must still wonder how it came to be
the dominant organizing system and how, as a system, it inﬂuenced the historical ecology
of the Caribbean regionally. What advantages were conferred and on whom? In part, to
study capitalism in any Of its forms is to study ourselves; the making of our own world
and condition.

A Model for Capitalist Development in Caribbean ColoniaLContext

In The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, Curtin (1998) asserts that early

Brazilian economics contained institutional elements from feudal Mediterranean systems,
but went on to postulate that "early capitalism" was transplanted to Brazil by the
Portuguese. However, his deﬁnition of early capitalism is vague and hardly
distinguishable from mercantilism. And this deﬁnition is at odds with scholars who View
the encomienda system as inhibiting systemic development of capitalism (Perry 1997).
Curtin presupposes a prom-capitalism in Portugal. While there is evidence that
experimentation in novel systems of exchange were underway in Europe in the early
Sixteenth century, such as sophisticated mechanisms for contracts and exchange of
promissory notes, and a decline of major fairs in favor of regulated money markets, the
real developments that separated economic systems from the middle ages came about in
the early 16005 with the rise in importance of stock exchange controlled in Antwerp.
Coinciding with this Shift was the rise in popularity of payment through transfer and the
practice of using agents, both important elements in the trade overseas (Schieider
1986:17). In contrast, trade systems of India, China, and Islam at large existed without

bi\\s of exchange or any stock exchange superstructure. Therefore we cannot be assured

that capitalism arrived in the Caribbean prior to the seventeenth century institution of
non-Iberian plantation systems.

With publication of his landmark series embracing the complete development of his
world-system theory, Wallerstein articulated a broad approach for analyzing the structure
of the modern world, its hegemonic powers, social hierarchies, and historical trajectories.

The current study does not have the burden of examining the issue of world system
impact on indigenous peoples per se, nor of addressing underdevelopment theory.
However, understanding the creation of a peripheral frontier and focusing on capitalism
in terms of modes and relations of production are fundamental. In particular, we need to
illuminate how production in the periphery came to embrace ideological restructuring
forcing feudal social hierarchies into a capitalist paradigm, and further, how the
Caribbean ﬁts into the economic zonation Wallerstein proposed.

Expansion of trade alone is insufﬁcient to cause socioeconomic metarnorphoses. The
ancient world engaged in trade over vast distances for beneﬁt of the state without arriving
at capitalism as an economic base. I believe an impetus for change can be derived from
the dynamics of colonialism in the frontier in the creation of an extractive periphery, a
slight modiﬁcation of the cosmopolitan frontier concept advanced by Steffan (1980).
Caribbean colonies were not isolated nor self-sufﬁcient--somewhat straddling the
deﬁnitions of insular and cosmopolitan frontiers--falling to a degree in line with
Hardesty's (1985) ecological conception of an industrial frontier.

Indeed, whether driven by mercantile or capitalist mentality, a signiﬁcant percentage

01" Europeans considered Caribbean ventures temporary, even among those who did not

become wealthy and by circumstance lived out their lives on colonial islands. By

 

 

postulating that European expansion into the Caribbean basin was initially extractive in
nature, I am grounding the study in economic terms similar to Hardesty's (1980)
approach toward mining districts, mining communities, and the resulting landscapes.
Signiﬁcant parallels are evident between the sugar industry on a colonial outpost, and
remote mining operations, as each imports a labor force, and exports proﬁts while
investing little on social infrastructure. My approach has been to scaffold perspectives
such as Wallerstien's foundational world-systems approach and Hardesty's localized
studies foregrounding relations of production within a landscape perspective. Herein lies
the basis of my schema; that the transition from feudal to capitalist socioeconomics
systems was ignited by the relations arising from the tensions of managing production in
peripheral colonies.

Critics of Wallerstein stress that he fails to establish a mechanism for the transition
from feudalism to capitalism in his world system model, especially failing to offer an
adequate explication of the dynamics of capitalism, focusing mainly on market processes,
commercial growth, and increased trade worldwide. Others complain that Wallerstein
sidesteps the Marxian insight of "paying attention to institutionalized relationships of
Producing and surplus-appropriating classes. . ." (Scocpol 1977:1079).

Both Immanuel Wallerstein and Eric Wolf examined capitalism in terms of stages or
Prerequisite conditions for its ascendancy, although their respective focal points and
conclusions concerning its maturation differ markedly. Wallerstein ﬁnds the roots of
Capitalism in a "crisis of feudalism" transpiring in the fourteenth century. The need for
markets was met, according to Wallerstein, by expansion and passage through stages of

merchant capitalism, currency markets, and the evolution of peripheral regions exploited

 

 

for the beneﬁt of the core states. Superior military technology, Wallerstein suggests, gave
Europe an edge over competitors and enabled European powers to maintain control over
distant outposts. In Wallerstein's model, capitalism begins in the banking houses and
currency exchange markets of the ﬁfteenth century, and emerges in the sixteenth century
as dominant. In essence, capitalism is deﬁned in terms of a system of production with
surpluses reaped by the core state. The metamorphoses of labor came about in response

to systemic needs of capitalism.

For Wolf, such an interpretation ignores fundamental transformations required of
states to institute mechanisms wherein wealth can become capital, such as movement
away from tributary states, and shies away from the issue of labor as central to
capitalism's rise. In Wolf‘s View, Wallerstein has collapsed capitalist world markets with
capitalist modes of production. Capitalism, in Wolf‘s analysis, was not simply a new kind
of feudalism, but a “qualitatively new phenomenon” (Wolf 1982:85). Wolf is critical of
the "crisis of feudalism" concept, and rejects the notion of merchant capitalism,
relegating such activities to simple proﬁt driven mercantilism having a long history,
Preferring to cast capitalism fully in terms of modes of production, with labor
transformation central to the concept. Prior to this time, according to Wolf, European
exPansion produced a vast network of "mercantile relations anchored in non-capitalist
modes of production." From this standpoint capitalism does not emerge until the late

eighteenth century (Wolf 1982:298).
The model of capitalist development at the foundation of this study borrows elements
from both scholars in the context of managing long distance trade networks. 1 frame the

rise of capitalism in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century as economies of

 

 

 

European nations became ensnared in interdependencics that were mutually reinforcing.
This study does not examine the causes behind European expansion, nor determines such
expansion as "necessary" for capitalism's development. However, evolution of a world
network of trade operated to sustain and conjoin various industries and merchant
enterprises into a system wherein capitalism arose and ﬂourished. Archaeology carried
out for this study targeted the shadowy period of early colonization and nascent capitalist
development at the dawn of the seventeenth century, where the economic machinery and
labor relations that became hallmarks of mature capitalism were in their infancy.

The working model employed in this study aligns capitalism with the emergence of
new relations between producers and consumers, between producers and production
managers, and ﬁnally, between the network of interests of primary producers and
secondary producers. In this schema a primary producer supplies commodities while a
secondary producer facilitates production, such as through shipping, or equipment
manufacture, and emerges as a signiﬁcant player in a world-system either in the core or
as a peripheral outpost. Each set of relationships can be viewed as creating dependent and
self-sustaining interest groups. Appropriation of labor in this model is an outcome, not a
precondition, of capitalism's ascendancy. This concept of labor in the schema of
capitalism is fundamentally different from Wolf‘s model. Yet my model nevertheless
recognizes and preserves the critical importance of production relations as perceived by
Wolf and others.

The fundamental premise for this study is that capitalism was not functioning at the
time European presence in the Caribbean increased, but that the establishment and

subsequent evolution of the plantation system created an environment in which the new

 

 

relations of production and capitalist development were nurtured. While I concur with
Wallerstein that basic economic structures enabling capitalism were in place in select
regions of Europe in the Sixteenth and seventeenth century, a shift toward capitalist
relations was not. Nor was it inevitable. I reject the concept of a "proto-capitalism" as an
effort to get around explicating the mechanism by which change came about.

The Caribbean, is for the purpose of this study, conceived as not only the leading
edge of European cultural expansion, but as the capitalist frontier, when and where both
the economic machinery and symbols of the new order by which people understand their
society, were in ﬂux. An important dynamic maintaining the impetus was the competition
between political and economic interests engaged in proxy conﬂict throughout the
Caribbean region.

Because Nevis is a bounded space, variables relevant to development and decision-
making become ampliﬁed, and can be more readily recognized and isolated. Variables
external to the island, but also necessary for colonial functions, such as transportation,
importation of raw materials, or political decisions in the metropole can be brought to
light and quantiﬁed for analysis in historical context.

@mtial OuestQLs

In order to develop hypotheses embracing capitalism and settlement it was necessary
to characterize settlement on Nevis through survey and description ﬁrst. Four essential
questions guided the study, focused on comprehensive understanding of the settlement
Iralectory of Nevis.

1. How did the colonial landscape [on Nevis] evolve between the period of initial

settlement in 1627, until emancipation in 1833‘? Based on the historic record we assume

 

 

 

that ﬁrst settlement transpired within a recognizably feudal socio-economic system. But
by emancipation the system was unquestionably capitalist. The transformation took place
between these temporal markers. What variables, and in what combinations, inﬂuenced
development trajectory? How did variable load affect development over time? Variable
load is deﬁned here as the degree to which a given variable carried priority or importance
within the context of development, for example, water availability versus soil quality,
local versus global economics, and so forth. The importance of distinguishing and
assessing these variables is related to comparing the landscape of Nevis under different
socioeconomic systems, feudal and capitalist. While it was possible to project a number
of variables onto the systems that logically had inﬂuence, I anticipated unexpected
variables to emerge from the study that did not have an immediately obvious logical
basis.

2. Does development identiﬁable in the landscape indicate accelerated or
countervailing resistance to changes in spatial organization, in social norms or the
relations of production in correspondence with identiﬁable historic phases? (Do they
precede or lag behind historic/economic indicators for change?) By examining
architecture, land clearing, roads, public works and other features of built landscape, we
can assign a chronology to the pace of development that can be contrasted to historic
chronologies. This may reveal underlying motivational forces of change, helping to
distinguish the degree to which change was based on economics or not, local or not, or
owing to factors unrelated to capitalism.

3. Which aspects of settlement or segments of society most reﬂect the integration of

capitalism and adaptation to social change? What evidence exists at the micro-level

 

 

supporting the contention that individual lives were inﬂuenced by capitalism? Because a
central theme of this study is cognitive change and the role of agency in economic
change, it is vital that the archaeological record be examined for evidence of material
culture that can be related to capitalism and the ideologies of capitalism. Here, artifacts
can be assessed in terms of embedded ideology, and architectural iconography can be
examined to elicit clues to concepts that reinforce capitalism's ideological underpinnings.

4. How does the case of Nevis inform us about regional trends (non-Iberian) in the
development of capitalism and inclusion of the Caribbean in a world-system? The
combined archaeological and historical records of Nevis can be used to create a
framework for comparing settlement and colonial trajectories on other competing
colonies. Archaeological research that questions ofﬁcial histories of colonies is lacking
for the region and the conclusions derived from this study will provide comparable data
in a testable framework for future studies.

I formulated these questions to facilitate combining archaeologically derived data
from the landscape, with independent lines of evidence from historical sources. Each data
set informs on the processes inﬂuencing colonial development and its effect on societies
in a Caribbean context. One result of this synthesis has been a set of deﬁnable phases in
the history of Nevis (detailed in Chapter Two). Although substantially incomplete, the
historical record nevertheless suggests three broad phases of development on Nevis
bearing rough correspondence to seminal events having broad inﬂuence across the
Caribbean, and inﬂuences on other colonies. Therefore, these phases have signiﬁcance

beYond Nevis and help situate the study in the wider Caribbean context.

 

 

Landscape Theolarnd Socglgomplem

One means of bridging the various levels of social complexity found in colonial
contexts is by interpreting the phenomena of alteration of the natural environment by
humans resulting from colonial enterprise. According to Rubertone (1989), “landscapes
are active” and space “in context is an artifact.” These processes can be accessed and
interpreted methodologically through procedures grounded in a landscape approach,
incorporating elements of ecology, geography, anthropology, and social history (Aston,
and Rowely 1974; Fox 1981; Magerauer 1995; Kealhoffer 1999; Butzer and Butzer 2000,
Zedeﬁo 2000). Settlement and space are tightly woven together in human culture and
highly revealing of social relations.

Steward's pioneering work in settlement studies, reﬁned by Willey in a landmark
study of the Viru Valley, Peru, provided structure to settlement pattern studies in the
repertoire of modern archaeology. Settlement pattern analysis coupled with an
environmental orientation has since become a sophisticated analytical tool (Parsons
1972). Approaches to environmental and landscape studies in historical archaeology have
been strengthened in recent years by many researchers (Lukezic 1990; Adams 1990;
Joseph 1992; Delle1998; Crowell 1999) who demonstrate how space and social relations
intersect in addition to exploring this nexus in terms of environment. Signiﬁcant
theoretical advances linking vernacular architecture and ideology have been contributed
by Classic (1975), who sought a "grammar" of building in historic contexts, and Leone
(1984, 1985), whose work in Annapolis and at Paca's garden fuse ideology with space.

Ortner (1990:90) and others have exposed the manner in which landscapes are

manipulated to reinforce received ideology, particularly in a conscious manner. Ortner's

 

attempt to describe a mechanism by which social restructuring proceeds, wherein the
schema has naturalness for actors and hence "coersiveness" over time, has implications
for the penetration of capitalist ideology into societies in the midst of economic
transformation, applicable to study of processes at work in Nevis. In terms of how space
can be used to resist imposed dictums, Zedeﬁo (2000) persuasively illustrated how
interaction-spheres encapsulated within landscapes pattern life or how different
worldviews structure how landscapes are perceived. This conceptualization is necessary
to interpret evidence that the landscape is not the product of stochastic processes. The
Strategy of landscape analysis applied by Armstrong (1990), Delle (1998), Paynter
( 1986), Lukezic (1994), and Lewis (1984, 1999), offer adaptable, foundational
methodologies for assessing settlement and economic adjustment in Caribbean context.
Settlements are tangible expression of material culture. Because empirical properties
of artifacts or features and their arrangement in the archaeological record “will exhibit
attributes which can inform on different phases of the artifact’s life” (Binford 1968) it
follows that settlements will contain traces of their developmental phases accessible at
different scales. Core beliefs of colonists are fundamental in settlement systems—and
represent functional relationships between sites and cultures (Parsons 1972, Wandsnider
l 988). Settlement and built landscape are not only relics but “. . .the physical
manifestations of systemic beliefs inextricably linked to received ideology-~the dialectic
between humanity and nature, and between sectors of society--serving in subtle ways to
reinforce core beliefs” (Deagan 1996:24). In Wallerstein’s analysis various aspects of
capitalism are mutually reinforcing. Here we see that landscape features can be

in terpreted as contributing to the reinforcement of ideological constructs of capitalism.

l2

Landscape is a powerful heuristic tool. As deﬁned here, landscapes are the built or
modiﬁed natural environments constituting the footprint of settlement. Examples include
such features as the organization of space, and symbolic attributes of the environment
reﬂecting processes of cultural and social interaction—and how these footprints may
differ. These attributes are assumed to be sensitive to change in processes of interaction.

A landscape approach was applied to gain insights into the forces acting on cultural

groups that shape their decision-making. We can not separate human motivations from
landscape evolution. In addition there are several variables acting independently on
settlement. Bearing in mind that Nevis was agro-industrial in scope, variables affecting

the colony most would be different from a colony of farmers or one based on the spread

of culture.

 

 

Human
Behavior

Landscape

 

 

 

 

Environment

 

 

Figure 1-1. Model 1. The landscape as a feature of the environment in which settlement occurs is
changed by human interaction with the environment. Human behavior is then affected by feedback
from built landscape, such as spatial ordering, land use, or artiﬁcial boundaries, and by
consequences of environmental modiﬁcation, such as erosion. (Arrows illustrate direction and
magnitude of inﬂuence between components).

I he variables may be similar but their prioritization is expected to differ. These can be
enumerated as, 1) natural resources: water, soil, weather, land availability, wind,

topography, 2) political and economic systems[including forms of investment or sources

of credit], 3) transportation: roads, distance to shipping, distance to markets, 4) conﬂict:
i external, internal, 5) technology and expertise, 6) labor and management, 7) prior
development and land division.
The schematic model presented above (Figure 1-1) highlights the synergism
between constituent parts of observable spatial ordering. Human behavior has signiﬁcant
impact on environment directly and landscape indirectly. Humans are affected in turn by

each element. In the second model shown below, hypothesized areas of inﬂuence on a

 

culturally bound environment/landscape dynamic are diagramed. Capitalism is shown to

ind irectly

 

Feedback. Reinforcement of
meanings through enacted
space. Spatial organization
channels behavior.

 

 

 

  
  
   

 

   
  

  

Landscape
And
Environment

Landscape
Meaning

 

 

  

 

 

Capitalism

 

 

 

Figure 1-2. Model 2. This second schematic models the dynamics hypothesized as systemic to
capitalism as it exerts inﬂuence on settlement via the cognitive domain of colonists. Economic
changes are viewed as leading to landscape modiﬁcations. Changes that support capitalist
development, particularly those affecting spatial organization, acquire new meanings among
colonists. New meanings of landscape reify changes as natural in the context of economic
change and are reinforced by new behaviors brought about by the modiﬁed spatial ordering.

‘ i I) . . . .
‘ *ﬂ uence human cognition though human Impact on the envrronment. Absent the human
e . .
l eInent, the landscape Is affected purely by forces of nature. In fact, In the absence of
Q‘. l . . . .
ltural perception of It, there Is no "landscape." Human behavror can have an effect at

S . . . . . .
Q\r’eral stations In thrs model, some accessrble for analysrs archaeologically, others not.

A

Far from being a post-modem, mentalist archaeology, these features of agency are
practical realizations that landscapes do not order themselves, but are relics of human
ecology and human decisions—decisions made within social boundaries and against a
backdrop of environmental variables. Of equal signiﬁcance are the exchange and
trarlsport networks that operate over space and time between groups at different levels of
society.

Modern (present and visible) landscapes are not an accident, and even if inadvertent,
are not random. They are products of planning, design, competing interests and attitudes
toward development, as well as the result of unintended consequences, forming a series
0f nested relationships. Settlement analysis is essentially a study of landscape. From this
PeI‘Spective, “landscape” combines quantitative data derived from spatial analysis,
archaeology, and environmental studies with qualitative data drawn from ethnohistorical
sources, semiotics, and historical documentation.

Landscape as a concept is potent metaphor, and instinctively felt by humans within
each cultural tradition. Hood (19962122) described this phenomena with a litany of
litll’han categories for landscape that have strong psychological pull, writing:

' . r — - landscapes are categorized into culturally relevant entities, even if these are the "edge
of the earth," "the unknown," "unexplored," "enemy territory" or "virgin land." Such
categorizations can have tangible consequences for how that space is utilized, which in
tul‘h affects the behavior of those perceiving the landscape in that particular way." These
Q0gnitive constructs inﬂuence interactions with nature. Thus, a strong link exists between
the ideological underpinnings of capitalism and the physical world expressed in

1itlement pattemrng. In passrve response, nature 18 nonetheless active In scope,

constraining or delimiting modiﬁcation. These are issues that are especially acute when
we attempt to demonstrate a tangible link between the emergence of such a powerful
socio-economic force as capitalism with changes in settlement, landscape, and

environmental modiﬁcation, as these phenomena might be related to forces unrelated to

capitalism.

Research Hypotheses

Capitalism was not simply a product of European political/economic development
transplanted to the Caribbean as a result of expansionism in the sixteenth century, but
rather, as hypothesized here, coalesced out of the Caribbean colonial experience. The
Caribbean experience is understood in this context as the phenomena of colonization
based on ascendancy of agro-industrialism, supported by slavery and politics in the
metropole, mercantile transformation, shipping, and the interlocking relationships of
these phenomena acting to stimulate socio/economic change.

Hypothesis 1. Capitalism was not operative at the time of ﬁrst colonization on Nevis.

1 l"litial colonists reproduced systems they knew (late feudalism). If this was the case, we
expect settlement patterns would be characterized by practices embedded in feudal
re lations. As capitalism came to dominate the economic and social arenas, changes in
Setilement in response to new social demands systemic to capitalism would manifest in
Settlement, including distribution, and be visible in the archaeological landscape. We
Q0lrld expect the earliest phases of commodity production on the island colonies to
eDiltibit landscape structure based on models of land use familiar to colonists and for

S13'c‘1tial dimensions of later periods to differ. These patterns should be expressed in spatial

 

arrangements of plantations, dwellings, and non-plantation features, artifact classes
associated with status, construction details, and in the scale of production.

Social relations within capitalism are inherently unequal (Orser 1996; Wylie 1999).
Indeed this too has become axiomatic in historical archaeology for describing capitalism.
But social relations predating capitalism were also unequal. How then to distinguish
inequalities? If Nevis is linked to a capitalist world-system, one should expect evidence
of participation in the market exchange of goods and ideas, with evidence of class
distinctions and power relations uniquely deﬁned by capitalist context and relations.

Penetration of capitalism into the social Sphere should inﬂuence individual and group
decision-making, behavior, and material culture, in forms categorically different from
feudalism, perhaps ﬁrst shifting social hierarchies away from traditional patterns. We
rnight expect this to materially be expressed in altered spatial dynamics. It should be
expressed at several levels in the archaeological landscape.

Hypothesis 2. Changes in settlement practices came over time as a result of a shift
toVsrard capitalism. These changes should be distinguishable during historically deﬁnable
Settlement phases. I suggest that the apparent differences and patterns should resonate
Mth new patterns of land-use stemming from emerging capitalist production systems.
One should see a shift in production from small scale to large, with associated changes in
IDI‘Ciduction facilities. Such an approach is dependent on new labor arrangements but is not
I:31‘edicated on wage labor systems. We should also ﬁnd realignment of plantations toward
gl‘eater differentiation of space into discreet activity areas divided between production
a*tlcl non-production, and socially between managers and workers—a widely recognized

31ltcome of capitalist hierarchical relations. Of course, stratiﬁed social relations existed

l7

be fore capitalism, therefore it will necessary to make explicit how hierarchical relations
of capitalism can be archaeologically distinguished from feudal. This will be discussed
fully in the chapter addressing methodology. It is sufﬁcient here to simply state that in a
peripheral colony these relations will be expected to appear in status associated artifacts,
mobility behavior, and degrees of access to imported commodities. Delle (1998:8)

co gently argued the relationship between social phenomena and its expression in the built
environment stating, “While many forms of material culture were certainly involved in
the negotiation of class, ethnic, race, and gender hierarchies, few have played as
ubiquitous a role as space.” The use of space, too, is an "artifact" of social constructs and
negotiated relations. The question of generalizability will be addressed by comparing
Nevis with other Caribbean colonies and entrepOts within the framework of globalization
in light of ﬁndings through analysis of derived settlement patterns.

Hypothesis 3. Finally, we should be able to discern increasing exploitation of the
e1‘IVironment to satisfy the systemic needs of production, either to make space for
production or through commodiﬁcation of space. As the colony expanded to increase
prOduction, land itself (and land quality) became an important variable in success.

H i storic records imply that less capital was required during early phases of settlement
than was the case during subsequent periods. But the technology of extraction and
lbl‘oduction was little changed. This suggests that increased costs were related to land
acquisition, and possibly the requirement of larger tracts in the case of marginal lands, if
D1‘(Dﬁts were to be realized. We should expect then that larger estates will be an indicator
Q ‘1 the landscape of secondary settlement phases. Artifacts and construction details should

Sl-lpport the landscape data by also dating to this later period of settlement. Human

l8

interaction with the environment at both macro and micro scales has been shown to
exhibit distinct patterns observable in the archaeological record (Binford 1968, Butzer
19 82). This is axiomatic to the discipline. These patterns can be shown to derive from
speciﬁc activities, modes of production, and cultural exchange. The primary database of
archaeological studies has been characterized by Charlton (19812129) as the remnants of
past cultures “within their spatial and environmental contexts” [emphasis mine]. As
capitalism is a distinct mode of production we can expect a distinct “changeable spatial
character” (Orser 1991, 1996:136). The “spatial character” of capitalism has not yet been
adequately examined, and not at all addressed in the Caribbean where it would likely
yield substantive data of the process. This spatial character should be deﬁnable and
testable archaeologically.

.Assumptions and Considerations Relating Capitalism and Landscapa

Capitalism has been labeled a “total system” embracing lifeways, conceptions of self,
and the individual (Johnson 1999). Colonial landscapes since the sixteenth century can be
construed as landscapes of capitalism because their genesis and evolution were
F‘et‘nbedded in the socio-economics of the capitalist process” (Wallerstein 1995). As
czipitalism emerged from its mercantilist foundation during the seventeenth century,
f\lll'ndamental restructuring of Euro-social relations proceeded as an unanticipated
Q0Itsequence.
Landscapes are shaped physically in the open environment and experienced

psychologically. Cultural praxis provides meaning to landscapes (Yate 1989;
Zedeftol 997; 2000; Butzer and Butzer 2000). How space is utilized varies among

q i fferent societies and socio-economic systems. Levefbre (1978) distilled this concept

 

further through his analysis of space in the modern capitalist social order, stating that:

" . - - even though the use of space has limits imposed by the environment, every mode of
production in history has produced a particular kind of space." Accordingly "cognitive
and historical features must be added to familiar environmental analysis if we are to
successfully model the dynamics of culture/social change" (Crumley and Marquardt

l 990:79). Tuan (1971 :49) explored the cognitive mapping of space, arguing that culture
and experience inﬂuence interpretation of environment.

Humans have always modiﬁed their environment, either through resource extraction
and exploitation, or through aggregation of population in familial units, Villages, towns,
and particularly through processes of urbanization and agricultural development. For this
l”eason, humans have always been agents of change within the natural environment. This
is the essence of human ecology: that there exists a "dynamic interplay between cultural
and natural processes over time" and "environmental interactions necessarily inﬂuence

interactions that follow" (Winthrop 2001 :206). However, humans also perceive the

re Sulting landscape through the lens of culture, in terms mediated by social constraints
811d potentials. Territorial and property boundaries, sacred places, and distinct spaces
re Served by meaning and function are hallmarks of human landscape interaction. These
Iiiay be apparent on a map but bare no visible distinction on the landscape the way a road
01‘ walls make evident. A given resource might not be used, for example, despite its
availability or applicability, purely for cultural reasons. Another resource may come to be
e3"Elrausted against the best economic interests of a society. Just as likely, environmental
é3'Kploitation of one resource my be detrimental to another. Space may be left untouched

f\(31' no apparent reason at all owing perhaps to notions Of sanctity. AS a result, a built

20

landscape or modiﬁed environment can have economic, cultural, and social
repercussions, which may resonate for generations. Cultural interaction with the

env ironment is not a closed system, external forces can penetrate that may give impetus
to change in the physical landscape. However, the "external forces" are of cultural and
social origin (Ortner 1990:77) and not so completely external as the term may imply. At
times land use decisions have unintended consequences that inﬂuence settlement long
after implementation.

Marx believed colonialism was a necessary prelude to capitalism (Bender 1986). But
a particular form of colonialism was called for. It was not simply a drive for proﬁts; this
can be found in basic mercantilism. As capitalism was institutionalized it became more
than a way of economics, it became a way of thinking, structuring life as effectively and
Potently as feudalism ordered society before it. Space itself developed as a commodity as
Cognitive space evolved as a manifestation of economic ideology. There also occurred a
fIlndamental shift in thinking about property and how wealth could be derived from
property. We are brought to the question: What is it about capitalism that limits or
DrQmotes reordering of space? As this dissertation will investigate plantation
organization, it might do well to rephrase the question: What is it about the plantation
8y stem that limited or promoted the reach of capitalism? This question will be taken up
again in the synthesis of data in Chapter Seven.
The ﬁrst consideration is that the "capitalist system" inﬂuenced cultural interaction

Wi th the environment in ways measurably different from that of feudalism, and grew to

q-Qminate the socio-political "culturescape." Secondly, that the plantation system as

21

 

practiced on Nevis, and elsewhere throughout the Caribbean, was the focal point of
env ironmental interaction.

Subsequently, settlement patterns will be affected as various communities adjust to
accommodate new "rules" of operation. By investigating the landscape resulting from
interaction between the plantation system and the environment this study will gain
insights into the system under which the plantation operated. The link between social
systems and landscape formation is assumed. lts form however needs clariﬁcation. What
we anticipated from archaeological survey was to isolate places ﬁrst settled while the
colony principally operated under a feudalist mode, then comparing identiﬁed spatial
organization with places on the island operating at later periods when capitalism was the

dominant socio-economic system.

TOWard A World System Model for Caribbean Agro-Industrial Settlement

 

A further foundational assumption of this study is that capitalism could not have
prevailed without the emergence of an Atlantic economy associated with a world-system.
World-system theorizing was at the center of scholarly research and controversy long
be fore Wallerstein's writing. Wallerstein's "system" is not without its ﬂaws and critics are
I"ll-lmbered even among his staunchest supporters. Skocpol (1977) argued that Wallerstein
built on a "preconceived model of capitalist world economy" that contrasts with the
eGenomies of empires in its functional division of labor, among other determining
Q1'ilaracteristics. Viewing this division as occupationally based in the context of empire,
Wallerstein frames the world system labor division geographically. This basic premise
S‘il‘uctures economic zones around particular activities with surplus ﬂowing to the core.

J list as each zone is differentially rewarded by the system, they also support given sorts of

dominant classes oriented toward world markets. Finally, the maintenance of the system
as a whole is dependent on differential strength of multiple states, with strong states
providing economic assistance to their capitalist classes to manipulate favorable terms of
trade in the world market. This clearly took different forms among the European
colonizers of the Caribbean. Skocpol argued that Wallerstein failed to reveal a
mechanism for change from feudalism to capitalism—why it should emerge at all—and
that his theory is more a description of history than an explanation of processes. On the
other hand, Wallerstein demonstrates the strength of capitalism as self-reinforcing, once
the system is established, "everything reinforces everything" (Skocpol 1977:1078). Once
capitalism becomes the dominant system its structure allows it to remain dominant. But
what is the impetus? This issue was taken up by DuPlessis (1977) in an examination of
the l iterature on the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It must be remembered that
capi talism is not just a new system of commerce, but a completely new way of
structuring society around labor and the meaning of labor. Furthermore, within the
def‘i nition adopted for this study, there is a restructuring of ideology of one's place in the
econOmic hierarchy.

Perhaps one of the more fundamental aspects is the contractual nature of labor that
marks capitalism, wherein exchange-value rather than use-value is the goal of production.
LabOr is not based on obligation or customary relations. Even labor becomes a
commodity. Slavery is not inconsistent with this arrangement. Capitalists not only own
the . .

1'l’leans of production, but the labor as well. More than forcrng producers to render
890110 . . . .

rmc servrce at wages less than market value of commodrtres, owners make no

Pa
yments at all, appropriating all labor along with surplus. What Skocpol and DuPlessis

23

¥

both recognize but do not articulate explicitly, is that system reinforcement is a

networked interdependency.

Unequal relations emerge from Wallerstein's division of core, periphery, semi-
periphery, measurable not simply from production relationships, but from what
Champion (1989: 14) described as “unequal," not so much from the cost of participating
in the relationship, but “from the cost incurred at trying to extricate oneself from the

relationship.” This hints at some as yet undeﬁned threshold, which once crossed,

inexorably leads to greater involvement in the "system."

Op_erationalized Deﬁnitions

 

Capitalism. Deﬁned here as a unique constellation of economic dependency
relations, the ideological structuring of consumption and hierarchical social ordering, and
a suite of specialized institutions reifying the social framework. Capitalism did not arise
simply as a means of supporting society but as a means of maintaining the elite in their
IOﬂy positions. Dependencies were an unforeseen by-product. Economic stability,
ho Wever, can only be temporary in a system where one trades independence for short
tenh gain. From this reasoning we arrive at a critical question. Did the observable
Sett lel'nent patterns that resulted stem from the systemic requirements of capitalist
dy 1"1"53-1’I‘rics or were colonialists active change-agents; consciously restructuring
Sett l eIIIent—willing architects of an emergent capitalist cultural schema and reifying
ide Q l o gy? The processes that may answer this question are observable in the historical

tr - o I o O
aJ e<-‘—tories of colonial settlements and is especially evrdent 1n Island colonies where

be
lulded space served to magnify the results.

24

 

Periphery. Broad historical patterns are often most visible, and frequently most
active, in peripheries of social systems (Green and Perlman 1985:9) suggesting that
investigating cases of peripheral development can lead to broader understanding of the
forces shaping social systems. In peripheral outposts the transition from feudal to

capitalist relations may be exposed to deﬁne how colonists both “manipulate and are

manipulated by their culture [through landscape]” especially as the capitalist paradigm

restructured a new social repertoire (Ortner 1990).
A peripheral region as applied in this study is one that is involved in commodity

production for the beneﬁt of the metropole and participates in economic relations in
colonial context, and dependent on the core for social and economic maintenance. I
restrict my deﬁnition to avoid the ambiguity of assessing types of periphery, such as
outposts carved out of sovereign states compared to those under home control, or
ex pl citation of indigenous people as opposed to exploitation of social sectors of a core
state 's own population. However, I do not suggest peripheries were powerless to assert

Val’)’ing degrees of self governance or develop internally, only that they functioned at the

largess of the core state. But autochthonous social development can be discerned in the

(:0an icts that arose between core state and peripheral colony as capitalism was

di f‘t‘€=1‘entially assimilated.
Win Island Colony as Unit of Analysis?

Caribbean islands on which the colonial system converged and where energy was
Foe llSed are relatively bounded, environmentally discrete units. These units are suitable

the study of decisions that, good or ill, directed the course of settlement. Colonial

PC) r
C 1eties are “not autonomous social realities; they are subject to the demands and

SO

25

~

 

interests of the metropolis” (Bolland 19812593). Even those within colonial societies

appearing to have
complete power, namely the plantocracy, were dependent in a number of ways—

economically, militarily, and above all psychologically on the mother country. Such
dependency relations are ampliﬁed in an island context. Dependency in the psycho-social
realm had far reaching inﬂuence on the decisions made by planters and colonists.

Another attribute of landscape with relevance to the discussion of space is distance.
Distance is not a built feature but one that is felt at every level of development. The
distance between plantations, between villages, between plantations and commercial
centers, between core state and colony, or between houses all have ramiﬁcations touching

on everything from social life to defense. These elements become psychologically
internalized, inﬂuencing choices, feeding fears, or shaping attitudes. In Rogozinski’s

( 1 992:73) history of the Caribbean, he argues that distance prevented the Crown
appointed Governor on Barbados from exercising any real control over Nevis. However,
trade winds made Nevis accessible by sea in under a week. I must suggest that other
factors were at play, namely economic and social rivalry as well as petty politics. It is
6213 i er to sail from Europe to Barbados than Cuba to Barbados. This simple fact
und erscores one of the fundamental realities of the Caribbean basin—that environmental
con Straints have played a signiﬁcant role in settlement history. In fact, trade winds were

the tIlost important factor in transportation, communication, trade, plantation technology,

and aSpects of seabome conﬂict until the invention of the steam engine and steam

E 3 Wered ships.

26

   
  
 

   
  

    
   
  

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....- w ., _
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aw) , News Agam'c

(”Pu _ 0631']
sf 0 “

Q
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_ ‘ ‘ ‘ ' .° aBarbados
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...A ,— ‘ t
1 a m Penna V" I 'f“ _ 7 \Sum )’ I":
l 0 500ml: m k t" (‘ LA/‘(N’
' N \ f- '

 

l:igure 1-3. The location of Nevis in the northern Lesser Antilles. Nevis was among the smallest of all
the sugar colonies, yet was among the most prosperous for its ﬁrst 100 years. The map of the island
Shows the few major roads encircling Nevis. The principle road used today is the same one completed
by 1700. The probable location of Jamestown, the ﬁrst settlement in 1627. is indicated in the island
l"nap. Charlestown is the capital. Underwater surveys were conducted at Cades Bay.

 

27

l

The transformed natural landscape of most island colonies reﬂects political history as
well as the social and industrial past. The needs of plantations and pressure applied by the
plantocracy ultimately reconﬁgured other industries in the core through feedback
mechanisms and induced innovation in commerce that served as a mainspring for
industrial capitalism (Mintz 1971; Williams 1994). Concurrently maritime needs and
constraints acted to shape patterns of far-ﬂung settlement as well as industrial-
codependence, while at the same time embedding colonies in the wider global economy
developed during the sixteenth and later centuries. Spanish colonies in Hispaﬁola and
Cuba suffered as Iberian shipping concentrated more on mainland settlements at the
expense of insular Caribbean colonies, whereas the Lesser Antilles gained importance
through shipping. Additionally, the growth of maritime power among various non-Iberian
European nations can be traced to the needs of colonial industry and for defense of
co 1 onial holdings—no less true in the eighteenth as the sixteenth century.

At this scale of analysis the “spin-off’ industries which supported exchange in the
pe ri phery, such as shipbuilding, insurance brokering, reﬁning, manufacturing, trade in
slaves and many others, can be analyzed to expose attributes of consumption and market

forces vital in the rise of capitalism. An insight to the extent and nature of annual import
trade from the West Indies can be gained from Customs House documents. For example,
Inspector General Thomas Irving (1790) compiled data for shipping clearing London
docks. In 1788 alone the West Indies accounts for 153 ships or 14,009 tons in
c()r7‘11‘rtodities! Goods included ginger, pimento cocoa, brown sugar. Coffee accounted for

794 300 pounds. Molasses for 53,000 gallons. Hard woods (lignum vitae and mahogany),

hldes, limes spirits and rum, salt, tar and pitch, and cotton rounded out the shipments.

28

Fish from Newfoundland shipped to the West Indies amounted to 22,196 quintals dry and
803 barrels wet. Fish sent to the Caribbean?

Clearly the complex nature of Caribbean settlement and the rise of capitalism cannot
be explicated by any single avenue of inquiry. Therefore, in this study I have attempted to
marshal evidence relating to the processes of settlement development from myriad
sources and theoretical platforms to contrast historical content with the archaeological. In
the next chapter I examine the literature that has informed my thinking and exposed the
need for the integrated approach that I have followed on Nevis.

Organization of this Dissertation

 

This dissertation is divided into three sections. Section I chapters One and Two
1' ntroduce the issues and the literature that has stimulated this research. The methodology
employed in the ﬁeld and theoretical links are discussed in Chapter Three. In Section II
are haeology is the focus. These chapters have been organized around development phases
for Nevis. Chapters Four, Five, and Six speciﬁcally describe the archaeology carried out
to access environment, settlement history, and capitalism's penetration into sociocultural
spheres as expressed in material culture. Chapter Seven in Section III serves as synthesis

and conclusions, presenting the value of this research in terms of new knowledge gained

wh i he highlighting the potential of future research.

 

 

Chapter Two

Informing the Study:

Deﬁning the Caribbean and the Literature of Archaeological Research

A West-India estate consists of two parts; the lands, with their adjuncts,
buildings, etc., and the living stock, viz. cattle and negroes, all which are
as much property of the planter as it is possible for the most authentic
statutes of the British Senate and Colonial assemblies to make them.

----A West India Planter (I788)

The insular Caribbean is comprised of three island groups. First of these are the
Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Hispaﬁola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica. Of these,
only Jamaica passed from Spanish control. Hispaﬁola came to be split between French
control in the west as Saint Domingue (Haiti), and the Spanish in Santo Domingo
(Dominican Republic). The Bahamas, where Columbus made his ﬁrst landfall in 1492,
comprises a second major group (Morrison 1974). The Lesser Antilles forms a third
gro 11p constituted by the small islands that extend south from Puerto Rico, like a string of
pearls, toward Venezuela. The largest of the Lesser Antilles are Trinidad and
G uadeloupe. Trinidad, originally a Spanish dominion, fell under British control in 1799,
aﬁer brief periods of Swedish and French control. Nevis lies at the northern end of these
SII'liill land masses.
Shaped like a "candy kiss," Nevis is a mere 35 square miles (56.3km2) much of it
S loped, rising from sea level to over 3232 feet (985 meters). The division of the Lesser
Antilles into Leeward and Windward Island groups is somewhat confusing, largely

LI bitrary and based on cartographic convention of notorious inapplicability—part

30

geographic and part possession based.1 The terms will be applied in only the narrowest
definition in this study to the Leeward Group of Nevis, St Kitts, Antigua and Montserrat.
The total land mass of the Lesser Antilles is less than that of Puerto Rico. Indeed, the
importance of the Lesser Antilles in economic and political history is completely out of
proportion to its scale geographically. The Lesser Antilles rides on two separate tectonic
plates dividing Nevis and islands to the north, from neighboring Montserrat and the
islands south. The southern islands continue to be volcanically active, the most recent
eruptions occurring on Montserrat with devastating affect in 1997, and as late as the ﬁeld
season of 2003. The wind and current patterns having the greatest inﬂuence are the trades
which steadily blow from the SE and bring moisture laden clouds to the mountains.
These winds are among the critical environmental variables inﬂuencing settlement
patterns, placement of windmills, watch towers, and harbors.
Although exceptions can be cited in the Spanish Caribbean, where, for example.
Deegan's (1995) work at Puerto Real shed light on early settlement strategy as true
ex tension of culture, it has generally been assumed that Europeans came to the
Caribbean, “not to live, but to make a living,” to use Lowenthal’s (1972:33) evocative
Phrase. That settlements came to be permanent belies the fact that most colonies were
de S i gned to generate proﬁts and wealth for the initial colonizers, the metropole, and serve
as Qutposts not homesteads.2
This much is certain, the Caribbean frontier was dominated by agro-industrial

de Velopment founded on the plantation system, international economic rivalries, and

 

\
i STahe cartographic error, with which we are now stuck, placed islands trending westerly as leeward and
for 1"ids trending southerly as Windward, but by convention came to be assocratedwrth nationalities. Thus.
W i e>(ample, once Saba, one of the Leeward islands, was captured by the Dutch, it became one of the
“dwards, even though north and west of the other Leewards.

3l

i local adaptations of European models of colonization. Sugar estates rose to primacy
within the colonial context regardless of the market system at the core.3 While attached to
plantations, Estates should be understood as qualitatively different from plantations.
W hi 1e plantations were functional economic and industrial enterprises, the Estate
embodied social and cultural components.

Over time, commodities such as tobacco, indigo, cotton, and ginger continued to
have an important, but lesser, place in the agro—industrial product stream from the
Caribbean. A sugar planter held generally higher status than other planters, a social fact
noted by contemporaries. Networks of trade, regulated and otherwise, developed between
peripheral region, as important as between colonies and their core states. In some cases

networks grew through family or by planters owning plantations on several islands. Thus,
N evis was connected to, and affected by, developments in North America or Barbados as
m uch as in England. Indeed, Nevis was adversely affected directly by the interruption of
trade with British North American Colonies during the revolution more than was England
1 eEnding to the comment that "England lost the war and 19 colonies" (Carrington 2001).
The Caribbean has been an important facet of a world-system from earliest contact.4
The Caribbean can be viewed, in this light, as a regional site of capitalist experimentation
Where models for plantation systems were instituted and reﬁned. No longer a central

re g ‘ . . .
10n of wealth accumulation, it remains a part of global networks of exchange and

R

13.
gorge!) religious colonies, like that of ill-fated New Providence, nevertheless were commercial in nature and

A Uced marketable commodities to sustain operations.
3% 11 Obvious exception is Holland, which had such small holdings in the Caribbean that sugar manufacture
I ante less signiﬁcant to the economy than shipping the sugar of other colonies.
twt‘.‘ Dortance is a relative term. The Caribbean has been as much a scene for power struggles in the
BI §§htieth century as throughout the eighteenth. The United States has been involved militarily in Cuba.
S Q It}, Granada, Panama, and politically in St Kitts, Dominican Republic, and other locations. The former
‘ et Union also played out the "cold war" in the Caribbean American tourism constitutes a signiﬁcant

 

32

A——

 

 

consumption today, evidenced by international politics, ever increasing tourism, off-shore
banking and tax sheltering schemes, illicit drug trafﬁcking, and population migration. In
these activities they are simply adapting to survive in a capitalist global economy.
A review of the literature suggests that much of the historical archaeology in the
Cari bbean has been conducted without regard to the greater context of global economy,
too focused on the individual estate or plantation, or simply lacking theoretical
foundations fusing local development to the inﬂuences of distant, yet connected, cultural
continuity. Outside the Caribbean, researchers are departing from this pattern to construct
a successful fusion of theory with a recognition of globalization. Crowell's (1997)
investigation of Russian enterprises in the extremes of Alaska, during the latter part of the
e i ghteenth and early nineteenth century is an example of how a focus on capitalism can
i mprove understanding of critical processes internal to globalization. Early nineteenth
century Russian fur trapping was a blend of market capitalism and territorial imperialism
that brought Russian and indigenous cultures into conﬂict and ultimately a relationship of
ex PIOitation. Crowell ﬁrmly seated his analysis in a Wallersteinian framework of core-
pe Iiphery relations to illustrate that surplus extraction by Russians was not a classic
M arXian conception of capitalism based on wage labor, but nonetheless was founded on
u rleven relations. The plantation system operating on seventeenth and eighteenth century
Q aribbean islands has parallel dimensions of exploitation, utilizing an imported
l_lrlc1erclass in the absence of an indigenous population.
Although Crowell's study is couched in a period of mature capitalism, two features of

hi

8 Study are noteworthy, 1) incorporation of indigenous populations into the equation of

e
QQrQentage of economic stability in the region. European tourism in Cuba boosts the otherwise failing
Q"lomy of Castro's regime. The United States continues to maintain a doctrine of regional inﬂuence.

 

33

A

ca pitalism and settlement dynamics, and 2) movement away from a strictly imperialist

viewpoint that examines capitalism as only affecting European communities. In this latter
aspect, Crowell follows the lead established by a number of social historians to broaden
our understanding of the penetration of capitalism.

Lightfoot and Martinez (1995) took colonial settlement studies further into what
might be called intraculturalﬁontiers, in an investigation of boundaries and landscapes
at F ort Ross, California, when it was part of the Russian American frontier. West (1966)
for instance, situated colonial history in a world-system, but critically underscores the
Euro -orientation at the base of the greater portion of literature on colonialism to the

1 960 s. For broader application to the Caribbean system generally, Sheridan (1969)
exarnined the "revolution" of the plantation system and its inﬂuence on capitalist
industrialization within the Atlantic economy. Hoy (1971) compared indigenous practices
wi th French colonial sequences and frames his study of social conﬂict and dependency
O n the core by periphery as a complex interaction between environment and policy. In
m i S Context, focus has been on avoidance of a purely Eurocentric explication of social
dynalnics.
Delpuech (2001) attempted to situate archaeology of the French West Indies into the
a(lei perspective of Caribbean development through historical studies on Guadeloupe,
b ‘11: . . . . . .
decries the lack of historical archaeological research in the French sectors. Hrs study
the seventeenth and eighteenth century processes of urbanization and landscape
f‘ts
Nation constitute the only viable comparative study available.
An analysis of slavery and trade arrangements between the islands and North

A
‘heﬁcan colonies was undertaken by Goveia (1965) in a preview of what came to be the

34

 

study of an Atlantic economy. King (1990) framed cultural and spatial dimensions of
l
’ co 1 onialism and imperialism in the creation/incorporation of peripheries using India as a
case study. Interestingly, by 1800, sugar production in India was adversely impacting
production in the British Caribbean and driving economic depression, heavily felt on
Nev i 3. Serious modern economic studies of the Caribbean cannot avoid linking external
markets to historical developments, as shown by Carrington (2002) in his study of the
su gar industry and abolition of the slave trade. Each of these works have sought to
connect the Caribbean dynamic to global developments. Unlike social historians,
archaeologists have been slow to examine the Caribbean setting of capitalism, its
industries, or the way in which embedded landscape features were articulated with
capitalism's material ideology. As Williams (1994)[1944] cogently pointed out, slavery
p l ayed an active role in development of capitalism. There is no contradiction in joining
s l avery with capitalism.
Armstrong's (1982, I990) seminal examination of Drax Hall in St Ann's Bay,
J anaica, shed light on communities of slaves, and was a signiﬁcant departure from works
th at exclusively focused on Great Houses and white planter society alone. This important
" Qrk tied plantations to global economics. However, I disagree with his unsupported
s
tance that "cultural systems that evolved in the New World were created in isolation
“1 Africa. (Armstrong 1990:6). As Will be argued here, Caribbean socreties were not
‘ S()lated as imagined. All levels of socrety Within the Caribbean retained tethers to
éxt
eI‘nal social and economic systems through networks of communication (Scott 1986,
1 e
96) and through infusion from abroad. Communication networks are easy enough to

e
1'7‘1prehend for the plantocracy, where mobility was unrestrained and ofﬁcially

35

A——

 

 

0g:

. .A
.\ .<
knit

T1

'2.) l
' uh I
\

Wm]

01.;
. 34

tar:

i
l

Cam

sanctioned, but there is no reason to assume that all communication systems were
explicit, ofﬁcial in nature, nor that parallel systems were necessarily clandestine.
Communication during premodem colonial periods was by sea and traveled no faster than
the fastest ship. Information and ideas sailed the same seas but often reached different
segments of colonial society in starkly different form. The continual inﬂux of new
bonded Aﬁicans meant a steady, if erratic, absorption of African cultural elements, if not
the ﬁll culture. Just as European colonists were aware of the latest trends in Europe,

slaves societies were cognizant of their cultural roots, other slave communities, as well

as the values and motives of their oppressors.

The Signiﬁcance of Nevis in Caribbean Research: A Case Study Approach

This study describes the evolution of the built enviroment——one might say the
colonization gradient5 in island context--as colonies became increasingly networked to a
g l obal economic system, modiﬁed here with emphasis on the synergism arising between
C 0 re states and peripheral settlements during the pivotal eras of capitalism's ascendance.
I his is an appropriate model as it enables comparison between colonies in a conﬁned
area With those on a "limitless" frontier. Colonies in bounded areas may fall under more
ll 1 rect control from the core and may come to look more like the core as a result.
Macro-regionally, Nevis serves as a sample from the British Caribbean that can be
111pared to island colonies under different metropolitan control sharing the same fate
d u e . . .
l‘lrlg regional decline. At one time the most developed and best defended of the

0tires under British dominion, News was nonetheless a peripheral region in the sense

 

\

e"llieth Lewis The American Frontier: An Archaeological Study ofSettlemem Pattern and Process (Academic Press

‘V York) 1984

36

A

 

that the colony was founded for purposes of resource extraction beneﬁting the core state.
This was the situation throughout the Lesser Antilles.

Cases can be highly informative and useful in theory building (Vaughn 1992;
Eisenhardt 1995, Rossignol 1992). “Cases embody causal processes operating in
microcosm” (Walton 1992). Nevis, with its rapid ascendancy from founding as a satellite
colony of St Kitts in 1625, its commanding position of wealth in 1700, to its near
abandonment aﬁer 1833, during collapse of world sugar markets, uniquely qualiﬁes the
location for the study of capitalism and social transformation. Nevis stood brieﬂy at
center stage in the nascent world-system resulting from European expansion—one of
Britains “mother colonies”——a principal player of economic importance in a European
global economy based on slaves, shipping, and sugar. Nevis and the colony on St Kitts
were the model followed by other colonies from Barbados to the Carolinas. Although the
l atter settlements eventually eclipsed Nevis in importance, Nevis nonetheless continued

to function as a hub in the British Caribbean.
Following a qualitative case study approach, this dissertation is founded on the
p I‘efnise that the social and environmental dynamic in the Caribbean did not occur in
i SQlation, that the sea acted more as highway than barrier for development--forming the
backbone for feedback between core states and peripheral colonies--as well as serving as
Conduit for nurturing contact between peripheral areas. Nevis represents an important
lFIQde in the European world system, part of an interconnected social system having
acroscale systemic relations, with core and periphery divisions (Wallerstein 1974,
1 395- Chain ' 1989- L 1999 ' ' " '
, pion , eone ). News was a periphery of the British colonial

blitplex embracing several islands and with arms that reached to Africa and Asia. Its

37

A— _

population was a producer of commodities valued by the core state and a consumer of

goods manufactured by the core. Trading companies that were born as suppliers to

co 1 onies evolved into important cogs of the economic machinery stimulating growth in
the rmetropole. At the same time, relations were established between colonial sectors that
hel ped maintain the network. I suggest that Nevis was so embedded in the processes of
capitalism's development that explicating how these processes ran their course on Nevis
can inform us about the process generally. An important attribute of Nevis for this study
is that demographic change and drastic population decline after emancipation largely left
the early colonial landscape intact. Modern development on Nevis has only begun since

i ndependence in 1984, with little of the vast transformation of landscape so prevalent on

i slands that have catered to the burgeoning tourist trade.

Nevis as Periphery and Relations with the Core

In the classic sense, Wallerstein's "periphery" is a geographic area exploited for the
beneﬁt of the core (or center) through economic specialization, taking advantage of
Variations in costs of labor and raw materials (Champion 1989214). The core is the net
C O nSurrier. Here I slightly modify the concept to mean an economic zone apart from the
c 0 re State, regulated by the state, but networked through socio-economic relations
b i rlding the state to the relationship. While the core remains a net consumer, there is
g1"'Eiater emphasis on dependency at the core in my conceptualization. Champion (1989)
argues that as investment increases, the political structures involved "ensnare the
IDQriphery ever more ﬁrmly." I suggest the opposite is true, it is the core that becomes
e» .

er more ensnared. Heuristically, this model allows us to readily comprehend why

“repean powers clung so long to failing colonies and expended so much for so long.

38

 

A long held assumption has been that capitalism was a transplant, stowing away with

settlers, perhaps in the minds of Puritans (if not the Conquistadors) as they entered the
New World. At the very least this posits capitalist relations as already systemic, but to
date this is unsupported by archaeological evidence (Johnson 1999). Indeed, recent
evi deuce suggests the contrary, that economic exchanges between core-metropole and
col onial-periphery were feudal in character for the beneﬁt of the crown (Hoffman 1980).
Ind iViduals found new avenues for economic gain and achievement, and capitalist
development was not simply a linear continuation or expansion from processes already at
haIld. European ventures into regions of other states met long-standing trade networks.

W ith advent of the Caribbean trade in luxury commodities, however, a peripheral

economic zone was born where rival states were engaged in parallel development rather
than systemic confrontation.

In a Wallersteinian sense, the Caribbean was a peripheral region of European
hegemony. But there is a crucial distinction to be made. As far as Nevis and many of the
Sugar colonies are concerned, indigenous populations were not being exploited to serve
the hEgemonic state. Rather, a colonial society was crafted from annexation of

Z hvironments suited to particular requirements of production in much the way mining
l 1 Stl‘icts are developed. Labor was imported using known models. First settlements
i th .
Domed familiar social relations around which initial colonial society was molded. One
W . .
ollld expect then that the ﬁrst settlements to great degree mirrored the core soc1ety. In
th . . . . .
e frontier context these relations gradually changed in character. Diaries of early
Velers do not describe settlements in manners fundamentally different from European

V i 1 . . .
lages, but do remark on the leveling of rank apparent in dwellings and labor (leaders

39

A

engaged in manual labor alongside commoners, for example). Within thirty years, rank
distinctions were signiﬁcant in property and display.

In the context of periphery Wallerstein’s views of world-systems have not gone
unchallenged. Stein (1999) for example asserts that a world-system perspective distorts
our understanding of developmental change by overemphasizing external dynamics--a
foc us on the core at the expense of the periphery. We must further deconstruct the
peri phery concept. A distinction between primary peripheries which played leading roles
in the development of colonialism and capitalist development, and secondary peripheries
which were marginal in both political and economic dynamics seems warranted. By

examining a case within a primary peripheral region this study “scales-down” to reveal

internal dynamics of a periphery. Even so, the expectation is that the core state will

dominate in speciﬁc exchanges.

Historical records persuasively suggest that in the case of Nevis, as soon as they
0 Ould afford to, planters returned to England and left agents in their place to run
p 1 antation affairs, lending support to the concept that many were there to "earn a living"
i I) an extractive frontier. A rare few elected to remain, and these gradually formed the
Core of a wealthy elite (Pares 1950), with aspirations to English aristocracy, educating
their children in England. Most planters who lived out their lives on Nevis did so out of
I_l'acessity, being either too in debt to depart, or having holdings too small to turn
re asonable proﬁts to support their desired lifestyles. That being the case, archaeological
fe
atmes on plantations should conform to the expectation that dwellings will be modest,

l'lile planters' status will be exhibited in dress, diet, and household artifacts.

40

 

 

Smal l holders often were in tenuous ﬁnancial situations that could not easily recover
from the unpredictable calamities brought by the weather or politics. It is obvious that
plantations were beset by several environmentally related problems, in addition to
economic and political issues. A sense of the urgency and despair experienced by even
successﬁll planters can be detected from a series of letters between an absentee

landowner and his agent on Nevis, excerpted below from Gay (1929) (original spelling

and punctuation retained):

Dec, 20 1728 From Joseph Herbert, Nevis

. - . the plantation goods are not arriv'd. The negroes are bare of cloaths and pinch'd in their belly
having lost a abundance of potatos by the great rains in August and September..

Au g. 3, 1730 From David Stalker, Nevis

-- - The well is emptied but no water to be found. The charge is art least 60. They design to have a
We 1 I digger from St Christopher. They are forc'd to go to the bath for water wich is four miles...

Dec. 3, 173] From Charles Pym, St Kitts

- - - I am very sorry for the miscarriages on your estate from dry weathers and accidents and I will
make the stricktest enquiry that’s possible...

May 5. 1732 From Joseph Herbert, Nevis

- - - The weather favorable and your estate extremely well in all its circumstances but bent one
Wh ich is the want of slaves a general complaint in all these islands, for want of that free trade from
Boston which the French and Dutch have almost engrossed to themselves and must in short time

inevitably ruin the British sugar colonies...
I\TxlciﬂﬁiCa\lPhases Deﬁned
To understand development history on Nevis, archaeological surveys were

undertaken to document environmental modiﬁcation, settlement development, and

features of built landscape. Chronological assessment of these features were set into a

41

 

framework of settlement phases. Within the designated period of study, three phases are
proposed based on my analysis of economic, demographic, and social data.
Phase I signals the entry of non-Iberian settlement throughout the region with
agronorrl i C colonization—a mainly feudal social system is assumed (but in need of
testing)-—merging with the second phase as new technologies and a shift in agricultural
focus led to intensiﬁcation of settlement and production. This phase was brief, spanning
in essence from 1625-1655. There was a marked upsurge in population toward the end of
the phase which witnessed an increase in the scale of agricultural production,
intensiﬁcation of the slave trade, expansion of the plantation system to the level of
industry, and extensive competition between European powers, especially in the Lesser
AﬂtilleS, as sugar colonies became important peripheries of economic development. In
I 655, British interests in the Caribbean expanded and Jamaica was captured from Spain,
Which triggered an exodus of planters with their slaves from Nevis to Jamaica.
Phase II on Nevis begins in 1655, demographics, politics, and agro-industrial
p1- actices all undergo fundamental reconﬁguration on Nevis and last several years,
reﬂected both in settlement patterns and socio-economic restructuring. The process
continued well into the next century until 1785, ending when French expeditionary forces
Occupied many of the British islands, leading to subsequent failure of many estates. A
major cri Sis in the sugar economy globally occurring at this time contributed to decline.
The archaeological record is the most informative for this phase. Across the island there
Was exDansion into nearly every accessible plain or slope for ever larger estates. This

appears to be the pattern on other islands, French or British according to historical

Sources .

42

 

Phase 111 Sharp declines in production and demographic change again are used to
demarcate this phase. Also marking this period are changes in sugar production
technolO gy. The phase carries into the nineteenth century but terminates for purposes of

this study with emancipation in 1833, as labor structures, migration, and land use patterns
drastical 1y change the face of Nevis and many islands of the region. The industrial
revolution reaches Nevis through adoption of steam engines by a few planters who also
engage in speculative estate consolidation as others quit the island.

Chapters describing the archaeological component of this study have been organized
around these identiﬁed phases. The central focus is landscape and the historical narrative
Offers a background against which the archaeological data casts its shadow. Material

Culture studies with such artifacts as ceramics, smoking paraphernalia, industrial
debitage, architecture, and changing spatial organization are used throughout to inform
on aSPCCtS of social and economic discourse among colonists, and between the Nevis
c 0101138 its parent nation, and competitors.
We Region of Study
Spanning nearly 2600 miles in an are from western Cuba to Trinidad, the Caribbean
i S SOCially and politically one of the most complex and problematic regions of the western
World to deﬁne. Exhibiting surprising geographic diversity, this polymorphous landscape
i S as diVerse as the people who inhabit the region. Myriad languages, religions, and
D~Qlitical Systems operate throughout the region. The blending of cultures, creolization,
and hiStoI‘ic marginalization of speciﬁc ethnic groups, both during the period of slavery
and after, has produced a uniquely variegated quilt of socio/cultural relations and

10331993. Caribbean history is paradoxical and problematic. Aside from the very real

43

difﬁculty of deﬁning the elusive boundaries of the region, brieﬂy alluded to in Chapter
One, there is also the task of characterizing its cultural composition, due in part to the
ever-changing affiliation and alternating sovereignty of some islands. Each of the islands
and mainland components harbor different traditions, differing languages, and play host
to ethnic and national heritages so varied that the socio-cultural aspect of the Caribbean is
better understood as a mosaic than as a tightly woven fabric. This is despite being one of
the most "western" of societies (Lowenthal 1973; Mintz 1971). Thus one can speak of a
Spanish Caribbean, British Caribbean, French, Dutch, and so forth, but also of the legacy
of maroonage and Afro-Caribbean cultural elements. How then to refer to The Caribbean
With any meaning? While each island constitutes a separate experience, they nevertheless
Share a suite of historical attributes. Among these are systematic eradication of

indigenous populations, Western European dominance, a unique plantation system based

 

 

011 slavery—-the likes of which the world had never before witnessed—and economic
dependence on external states and markets. Just as signiﬁcantly, history of the region is
l i “Cd t0 the power struggles of Europe through proxy interaction. The purpose for this
d iSCUSSion is to make the case that the cosmopolitan nature of the Caribbean was
adventitious and a product of the processes that supported the rise of capitalism and
dreserves incorporation into regional context.

In deﬁning the region, one is also faced with determining what component of the
mainland is Caribbean in character. Indeed, what constitutes Caribbean character at all?
EU what Criteria is inclusion to the Caribbean to be measured? Geographic proximity

a1 one is insufﬁcient and may even be misleading. For example, is Florida to be

CQnSidel‘ed Caribbean, or Colombia, or Guyana? Certainly these regions have Caribbean

44

 

attributes , but are generally counted to be part of non-Caribbean spheres of interest,
socially, politically and historically.6 Still, a case might be made to include them. If the
Bahamas... why not Florida? What difference a few miles? The Gariﬁina of Belize have a
distinctly Caribbean history but what of the rest of the population? If Belize is viewed as
Caribbean, why not Honduras? Even without immediate answers to these perplexing
issues, in deﬁning the Caribbean as a region it is less important to know where its
boundaries are as to ask when the deﬁnition is being applied. This is critical because the
variable load relevant to decision making of one period may be found to be profoundly
altered in another, or by decisions made in earlier periods. A few examples illustrate this
point. Some islands remained under control of a single European state throughout the
StUd)’ Peri 0d while others changed hands frequently. A few had shared sovereignty such
as St Kitts, St Martin, and Hispaﬁola. Nevis managed successful defense against invasion
by rival European powers for its ﬁrst century while other, potentially more productive
c QIORieS, were victims of constant conﬂict during the same period.
A Popular comparative phrase in the seventeenth century was "as rich as a West India
1:) lanter." Barely a century later the phrase was mockingly restated, "as poor as a West
I hdia Planter." What tides in history brought about so sweeping a shift in perceptions?
AM! What else was swept along by those tides impacting settlement? I have previously
d iscussed the possible impetus behind economic zonation that signiﬁes the periphery.

Q0019 Planters have had greater control over their economic fate by ﬁercely resisting a

Q apitaliSt model or by embracing it more completely?

K

Intel'eStingly, Guyanese immigrants to Nevis are not thought of as Caribbean or even West Indian by
most NeVisians. Although part of the Commonwealth, they nevertheless are subject to much prejudice.

45

 

Env ironmean factors on some islands favored the use of differing technologies.
Innovations in lending practices and investments also affected planters in disparate ways.
These are all details of history that directly inﬂuenced speciﬁc aspects of the variable
load suggested in Chapter One. One result of these circumstances is that planters on
Nevis prospered early and out of proportion to the scale of their production. Furthermore.
soils on Nevis were superior to that found on other islands, at least until over cultivation

and erosion depleted the resource (Merrill 1958, Watts 1999).
Some states of the Caribbean can boast of long histories of independence from
Europe--if not necessarily from European and American political/economic hegemony--
gained through armed conﬂict. Jamaicans, for instance, are prideful of a heritage of
resistance (Armstrong 1990) that includes armed struggles and slave revolts. Haitians
must be acknowledged for the ﬁrst successful revolution among Caribbean colonies, and
f‘ll‘St emancipation. Others, however, have achieved independence only in recent years.
There lFerriain several colonial holdings, special departments, and protectorates of
European and North American nations. Recent trends in anthropological and historical
Studies to examine the “post-colonial world” must account for the fact that the status
termed Post-colonial is not yet a reality throughout much of the Caribbean (Trouillot

1 992) It Should also be noted that landscapes built during periods of colonialism

Q ontinue to shape life-pattems and behavior of citizens in the modern Caribbean.

To this almost bewildering complexity can be added issues of self-identity. The term

(ifm-Caribbean is of almost no value within the Caribbean in the same sense Afro-

 

\w\
7 .
News, currently independent in Federation with St Kitts, is striving to attain a separate independence from

the Federation, as if by mitosis, within the next year or two. At the time of ﬁeldwork for this dissertation,
evrs Was preparing for a referendum on secession from the federation with St. Kitts. A previous

referendum in 1997 fell a bare 3% shy of the required 67% plebiscite.

46

__ , ..A‘VA____A.

American has meaning in the Untied States (Rogozinski 1992). Indeed, the very term has
only an external application. Its counterpart, Euro-Caribbean, is at best an awkward and
i11-applied nomenclature. More colorful perhaps, but equally misleading, is the term West
Indian, a phrase that seems to deny heritage in favor of a hopeful unity of identity. While
clearly designating a regional afﬁliation, a West Indian might as easily be of European,
African, East Asian or even indigenous Carib ancestry, and quite possibly a blend of
several. Creole, mulatto and other terms, on the other hand, have speciﬁc meanings in
different contexts within the Caribbean not replicated in North America, and
categorizations of color are reﬁned in many societies, each burdened with historical
baggage. Ethnographers illustrate unique social conﬁgurations at the base of Caribbean
regional identity. Gonzalez’s (1969) look at the Garifuna or Black Carib, a unique tri-
partite narrative by Price (1983) of Surinamese Maroon history in “their voice,” and
Steward, et a1 (1956) examining the many facets of latter-day Puerto Rico, demonstrate
the sc0pe of Caribbean cultures and the futility of attempting to imagine a single
Caribbean identity. It is necessary to be cognizant of these distinctions as they bear direct
relevance over interpretations of the past.

For the purposes of this study, the Caribbean is deﬁned as an amalgam of social and
political history, overlying the traditional geographic boundaries of the insular Caribbean.
Th6 region is uniﬁed by shared history of plantation economies based on slavery,
colonialism and, following Olwig (1987, 1995, 1997) and Mintz (1971), a Caribbean

‘ forward" perspective of the populations. In other words, a tendency of general
population to "think" Caribbean rather than to be focused on mainland interests, and to

Seek eXternally for support rather than internally. Thus, Cuba and Hispaﬁola are here

47

 

under 616 umbrella of Caribbean as opposed to Latin America (of which they are also a
part). Because of dense jungle on its western side, Belize in effect is a mainland island
that fronts the Caribbean sea. Its population a transplant from the British Caribbean and
under he umbrella of British Caribbean colonial inﬂuence, its recent history more
aligned with insular islands than with other Central American states. The Bahamas have
traditionally been incorporated by geographers into the Caribbean, and their histories are
tied to plantation systems throughout the insular Caribbean. All of the Lesser Antilles are
Caribbean in scope, and despite proximity to Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, as well as
the Dutch islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire fall within the Caribbean "boundaries."
The when of the Caribbean for this study begins in 1627, when Nevis was ﬁrst
colonized, straddling the period of transition between capitalism from feudalism, until
emancipation in the British sphere. The earliest period coincides with the loosening of
Spain's tight grip on the Caribbean as its policies led to retraction and consolidation of
mainland possessions, and ﬁrst settlement in the region by non-Iberian Europeans. These
diStimtiOns have historical as well as logical precedents. A review of historical maps
reveals a pattern of redeﬁnition of the Caribbean by geographers and cartographers
between 1 500 and the mid-16003, and again during the "age of revolutions."
Emancipation in the British sphere in 1833 brought about signiﬁcant demographic
and eC0rlomic: reconﬁgurations (F rucht 1966). Such a distinct shift offers a logical
terminal point for the current study. The plantation period, lasting from ﬁrst European
Settlement until the early twentieth century, can logically be divided between epochs of
Slavery and emancipation, and by details of competing systems, the epochs deﬁned by

Unique Socio-cultural circumstances and socio-economic structuring. We might logically

48

 

divide i t as well between Iberian and non-Iberian spheres. Cultural and social variation
has allowed historians and social scientists to refer, for example, to a “Spanish
Caribbean,” a French Caribbean or a “British Caribbean.” Discrete differences in social
order have been used to justify these divisions. Archaeological research has broadly
focused on constructing pre and post European contact "Caribbeans." But the situation is
not so simple as categories with a bent toward European societies implies (Watts 1999).
Although in many respects sharing a common history, the Caribbean is neither
homogeneous culturally nor socially. Nor is there any strict political boundary. Still, the
threads 0 f common history are strong and sufﬁciently binding to allow the Caribbean to
be viewed both externally, and internally, as a deﬁnable region with identiﬁable
characteri stics distinguishing it from European and African roots, or from its Latin
American neighbors.8 This deﬁnition will again have bearing on regional discussions in

the concl uding Chapter Seven when history, economics, and archaeology are brought to a

S ynthesi s -

\——-—\

, How the Caribbean can be deﬁned is taken up in a subsequent chapter. Here I make explicit that Latin nations such as
[)OW‘P‘Can Republic and Cuba are Caribbean in nature even though aligned with Latin America. Latin America has
t‘rad‘t‘onally included MesoAmerica, Central America. and South America. along with Caribbean components.

49

 

 

Figure 2-1. The island ofNevis viewed from the west. Note the precipitous rise of Mt. Nevis
and the ever present rain clouds hovering above.

Various scholars have sought to deﬁne where the Caribbean begins and ends. Among
the hypotheses are shared social links (Lowenthal); shared experience of the plantation
System (Mintz); shared colonialism (Troulliot); a history of slavery (Williams); and
Colonial capitalism (Wolf). Strictly geophysical perameters have also been ventured
( Blume 1974). Lowenthal (1972) excludes Spanish countries, but includes continental
exceptions of Guyana and Suriname adding the concept of "insularity" to the equation,
While others elect to retain Spanish islands in the deﬁnition for geographic reasons. And
Naipaul (1973) has invested considerable energy to question of whether Trinidad is
Caribbean in texture or under greater inﬂuence from Venezuela.

One inescapable attribute is the fact that its "history" coincides with a period of
dramatic expansion of European nations and the economic proto-globalization, into
which it was rapidly absorbed. This fact in itself justiﬁes the Caribbean as a critical locus

for study and an important data source for analyzing the rise of capitalism. While

50

Wallerstein (1974, 1995) perceives this period as the infancy of the ﬁrst true world
system. This study views the Caribbean as the nursery.

This complexity is not simply a by-product of colonization, however, but part of the
globalization of social interaction rooted in the sixteenth century. As Crowell (1997:17)
cogently observed, New World colonial societies should be viewed as dynamic systems in
which "efforts to uphold the distinctions of class, race, and ethnicity were continually
countered by the tendency of such distinctions to erode through material, genetic, and
c ultural interchange..." The Caribbean may have "fuzzy boundaries" as Trouillot (1992)
phrases the problem, but operational outlines can be ascribed. The Caribbean for

purposes of this study includes the insular islands and those regions of mainland that
Shared the colonial plantation system. Furthermore, regions sharing historical—economic
trajectories, regardless of language of the dominant group, can be included. Finally, the
somewhat ephemeral but nonetheless discemable "external attitude of the population" as
deﬁned by Olwig, allows segregation of areas that share some Caribbean features
(Florida, or Honduras for instance) from the Caribbean zone.9 The map shown in Figure
2 -2 below illustrates the Caribbean as Operationalized for this study. Such a

conceptualization allows the internal Caribbean to be examined as a discrete unit of study

detached from mainland colonization.

 

9 Both Florida and Honduras, along with Yucatan and all of the northern coast of South America were
considered the Spanish West Indies by many cartographers before 1700. By the last quarter of the

eighteenth century these regions had largely been re-categorized outside the West Indies as non-lberians
inﬁltrated the basin.

51

 

 

   
    
 
   
 

O 800 km
_.

 

a e 0 500 mi
fjr'lﬁ_ \‘TQ\\ .
”J DCulTa‘Wv “L> ‘4 Nevrs
M 1”“ €{W\\ 1
.d g > (:7 .,/_
., Jamaica MAM” ~
‘rx,> 9

Caribbean ,
Atlantic
Ocean

 

7;“ f— T ‘\ a
( ’ 7‘
/

Figure 2-2. The Caribbean region as deﬁned for this study. The areas outside the lines are considered
external arenas to the developments discussed in this text. The insular region is viewed as having
extended periphery-periphery exchange relations.

In the preceding discussion I have provided the basic historical and archaeological
underpinnings for the present study and emphasize the complexity of examining any part
Of the Caribbean dynamic in isolation. The developments being studied on one island can
never truly be divorced from others in the region. Yet. through the use of a case study, I

eXpect to derive a generalizable model of the relationship between settlement and human

ecology.
g3 ontext for Historical Archaeology in Caribbean Research
There were several problems to be overcome in this study. Slavery is embedded in
recent historical colonialism, the unequal relations of plantation society, and the
emergence of institutional class distinctions deﬁned by capitalism. As Trouillot (1992)
has interpreted Caribbean slavery, it was not merely part of the system, it was the system.
Just as Historical Archaeology has been the "archaeology of capitalism" (Paynter 1988) it
is also almost axiomatic for capitalism to be identiﬁed with inequity. Paynter (1989)

attempted to set an agenda for historical archaeology with his forceful book titled The

 

Archaeology of Equality and Inequality, tracing the literature from Service's typology of
social organization through to modern capitalists states. Inequalities existed before
capitalism and the earliest settlements of Europeans were hardly egalitarian enterprises.
First colonies were led primarily by "gentlemen adventurers" aided by indentured
servants who, while under contract, were little more than chattel slaves.10 How does one
archaeologically distinguish or detect the inequities of capitalism from inequalities based
on any other system of relations? One suggestion is that elements of material culture,
organization of space, and display of identity offer avenues for analysis (Wobst
1977,1997; Lightfoot and Martinez 1995. Mangan (2000) in particular has been
innovative in unexplored dimensions of spatial transformations during the transition from
feudalism, ﬁnding transitions in conceptualizations of space in households as capitalism
evolved.

The institution of slavery poses unique challenges in archaeology. Slave societies did
not exist in a vacuum and the societies that evolved were as bound up with the mores and
practices of the plantocracy as they were an amalgm of African cultural elements. Slaves
were integral to the economic system. There are literally thousands of works on the
subject with a variety of perspectives on slaves; their lives, their economic importance,
their resistance, and their ultimate role in shaping the modern Caribbean. Classic works
of this genre relevant to the present study include Curtin (1969), Mintz (1985), Dunn
(1972) and Goveia’s(1965) examination of English slavery in the Eastern Caribbean.
Goveia in particular ties Caribbean economic development to dependency on North

American colonies. Williams (1994) [1944] asserts an economic functionalism. These

 

'0 A key difference between actual slaves and indentured persons was the indentured could anticipate
freedom (if they survived) and their status was not inheritable. However. their contract was considered

53

 

authors have inﬂuenced the treatment of slavery as it is incorporated into this study—as
an economic constituent and form of technology. Planters not only owned the means of
production but also the labor. This distorts the traditional meaning for relations of
production within capitalism.

It would be a trivial study of colonial capitalism to ignore the role of slavery in
colonial society, and meaningless to talk of landscape without recognizing the role slaves
and slavery played in its transformation. From the way villages were organized to the
development of markets, cultivation of domestic staples, slaves were in every way
participating in a nuanced evolution of landscape.

The historical archaeology of the Caribbean is not extensive, yet is desperately
necessary to ﬁll in the gaps in knowledge of the region while challenging long held views
of settlement supported less by data than by Eurocentric sensibilities. A review of the
1996 publication Archaeology of 1 6th and 17th Century British Colonization (Society for
Historical Archaeology) lists barely a dozen regional and site speciﬁc studies. The greater
portion are reports or papers on material culture or have a North American focus. One
can learn more about pewter spoons than about the societies that used them. Few are
explicitly theoretical, that is to say, making sense of the phenomena under study in the
context of social development. Despite the lacunae it is evident, however, there have been
three fundamental concerns: reconstructing the prehistoric ecology (receiving the most
attention); the African diaspora viewed through the plantation system; and particularistic
studies of colonial material culture. Therefore this study charts new territory.

Comparable surveys of archaeological research for the colonial Caribbean are rare. A

recent collection of historical archaeology in the Caribbean demonstrates the breadth and

 

estate property and could be sold or bequeathed just as slaves.

54

—l

scope of research acknowledging landscapes as signiﬁcant indicators of social change
(F arnsworth 2001). Yet the various summaries do not address capitalist progression.

Hamilton’s (1991) report on a decade of excavations at the entrepot Port Royal,
Jamaica, summarizing the rich material culture and cosmopolitan nature of early
seventeenth century colonies is in contrast to the less revealing documentary evidence.
Hamilton builds on the work of Mayes (1971 )and Link (1960 ) before him. Port Royal
offers a unique glimpse at a densely populated urban center of the seventeenth century
that mirrored European towns but was uniquely Caribbean in complexion. Artifact
assemblages from Port Royal form a comparative collection for material from other
Caribbean, and even North American sites. Material culture represented by artifact
assemblages in the Caribbean frontier have parallels at Ft Michelimacinac, Michigan,
Mobile, Alabama, and Jamestown, in tidewater Virginia, among other locations,
including Nevis. Unfortunately, much Caribbean research prior to 1960 reads more like a
travelogue than science.

Analysis of colonial settlement strategies has been enhanced for the Caribbean by
only a few, strong analytical works. Deagan (1995) and Castillero-Calvo (1999) each
present comprehensive investigations of model town settlement in the Spanish Caribbean
frontier in what later would be Haiti. Deagan's analysis ranges from community to
household scales and examines environmental factors affecting colonists. Castillero-
Calvo produced, what is perhaps the best analysis of Caribbean settlement interpretation,
by framing town construction within a coherent Imperial schema. His comparisons of

French, English and Spanish traditions of urban planning (or lack thereof) bridges

55

archaeology and landscape by establishing analytical techniques applicable to non-
Iberian colonies.

Delle (1994, 1999) has closely evaluated social systems in the context of coffee
plantations and aspects of landscape manipulation by the plantocracy. Contributions
from the Dutch arena has produced limited but useful studies from Keur and Keur (1960)
and Delle (1994). Each surveyed at St Eustatuis (Statia). A broader descriptive landscape
study of the island has received ongoing attention by Barka (2001). As this island is near
enough to Nevis to be visible on a clear day, the contrast in land use patterns may be of
considerable interest. Statia once ﬁgured prominently in Nevisian economic history, as
"neutral" trader, entrepot, and site of smuggling until its total destruction by British naval
forces in 1781. One colony was tightly controlled in a closed economic system, the other
a free port. Each of these researchers has highlighted environment and colonial
landscape evolution in the analysis, although not as a central thesis. Nevertheless, they
provide comparative settlement models under distinct economic parameters. Clearly,
several factors and scores of players were involved in colonial dynamics and a regional
approach is paramount.

Regional Considerations

Reconstruction of the landscape and ecology on Nevis prior to colonization is possible
through several channels (Merrill 1958; Williams 1963; Hall 1971; CCA1991, as well as
from historic sources: Hilton 1685; M011 1708). The nature of the historic record permits
a demarcated entry point for systemic change to be proscribed and the tracking of
environmental change. Furthermore, it has been possible to compare environmental

change with the transformations described by researchers on other islands and coastal

56

 

 

 

areas (Keur and Keur 1960; Pulsipher 1977, 2001; Clement 1997; Barka 2001, for
examples) providing a base for generating statements of regional value, revealing broader
patterns systemic to capitalist development.

Although islands throughout the Caribbean share a common experience of
colonialism and mercantile exploitation, and in general, absentee governance (Horowtiz
1971 :3), the Caribbean has nonetheless not meant the same thing to all nations at all
times. At least two distinct geo/temporal Caribbeans can be identiﬁed as well as two
socio/political spheres overlapping the study period (Hoffman 1980). A comparative
analysis of the differing natures of Spanish and non-Spanish experiences in the Caribbean
raises the following questions: why, within the same environment, were settlement
trajectories so markedly different? As will be shown through discussion, a probable
answer to this question is to be found in the nature of the economic relationships that
linked colonies to their core state. The present study examines the economic development
of a non-Iberian colonial relationship, which can only inform on half of the question. But
it will provide a basis for testable hypotheses. We also can conjecture that the Caribbean
has not been static as a region. Understanding how the region itself has undergone
redeﬁning can help clarify why Iberian and non-Iberian settlement objectives were so
varied.

Historic Sources Framing the Study

There is very little historical archaeology in the region that can be cited or that
provides insights for settlement. Historical development in the period between European
contact and the immediate post-contact era, 1492-1600, has been contested in the

literature by historians and archaeologists alike. In particular, whether the Caribbean

57

basin was densely or thinly populated, to what degree Spain exerted control, and matters
concerning establishment of towns and development of urban centers. In part this is due
to the incomplete nature of the historic record for this period, which allows for
considerable leeway in arguments. The period of 1600-1700 is hardly better. This leeway
persuaded Higman (1985) to characterized Caribbean research as consisting of "slabs of
history" devoid of social context and too dependent on documents that are few in number
and too ofﬁcial in character. With a lack of historical archaeology to provide insights
Higman's appraisal remains largely valid. Goveia’s (1956) focused analysis of British
historiography for the region was compelling in this regard, illustrating that national
agenda often gave historical accounts a positive spin. Compounding historical and
archaeological interpretive difﬁculties, is the fact that the vast prehistory, beginning with
the ﬁrst peopling of the Caribbean, is poorly understood, due principally to the
astonishing rate at which indigenous cultures were exterminated before even basic
ethnohistories could be recorded by scholars. Archaeologists and historians alike must
rely on questionable accounts from Conquistadors, missionaries (whose mission often
included eradicating the very subjects of their writings), self-promoting mariners, and
travel diaries. Each source provides minimal material for representative history, and must
constantly be weighed, one against the other, although many have merit (Terrell 1997).
Historic documents and contemporary secondary sources bearing directly on Nevis
were consulted in the construction of history relevant to the current study. Hilton's (1685)
account of the ﬁrst ﬁfty years of Nevis, published by the Hakluyt society; Moll's (1708)
history of the British colonies; Letters from Planters, published by Gay (1929) as well as

documents from the capitulation to the French in 1785 (Watts 1929), were especially

58

 

 

 

helpful in establishing a chronology of signiﬁcant events and for subtle clues relating to
economic decline on Nevis. Moll provides a wealth of environmental information. citing
the numerous plants and animal species that were eradicated, simultaneously
incorporating accounts of known events during Nevis' ﬁrst century. In Dunn's words,
"there is a paralyzing paucity of information of English settlement in Nevis. . .and almost
no seventeenth century records survive on any of the islands" (Dunn 1972:118). Not until
1670 did authorities in England even keep any correspondence with planters of the
Leeward islandsl '. All who work on Nevis feel obligated to cite Iles (1871). Having been
a Governor of Nevis, his narrative is of general value. 1165' detailed account of plantations
in operation and the technologies employed is quite valuable from an industrial
standpoint. The Iles map of Nevis is an important document despite its geophysical
distortions and spatial compression, for it at least depicts relative positions for estates,
villages, and road networks—lacking on other maps. In all cases it was necessary to
extract details from these documents through strong inference.

The Calendar of States Papers (CSP) Colonial Series and assorted Proceedings for the
Nevis Council and Assembly also served to establish island chronology. Several
document compilations, especially copies of estate maps located by him in the British
Museum, London, in the Nevis Archive. The several volumes of Caribbeana, compiled in
1919, consisting of assorted documents, wills, memorials, and parish records from the
various colonies has been a rich source of data, as well as arcane information. It is
important to note, that primary documentary sources for Nevis prior to 1800 are rare,

placing a greater burden on archaeological research. Invading French armies in 1706 and

 

” E.C.Baker compiled the very useful A Guide to records in The Leeward Islands for the British
Caribbean. Little of Nevis is to be found outside the Nevis Archive or the standard sources.

59

 

again in 1785, both succeeded in destroying documents of colonial administration in
conﬂagrations intended to disrupt functions of government and society. '2

It is not my intent within these pages to write yet another Caribbean history. Regional
histories are plentiful, voicing a variety of interpretations, (Davis 1962; Newton 1933;
Rogozinski 1992; Parry and Sherlock 1956; Solnick 1970; Dunn 1972;Williams 1970, to
mention but a few). Some histories are narrowly focused on speciﬁc eras (Ragatz 1963;
Pares 1936). This does not diminish their value.

Without doubt, key events, such as the outbreak of war between European states
leading to hostilities directly impacting island colonies, or legislation and tariffs bearing
on colonial development hold conspicuous positions in Caribbean historical trajectories.
One example are the Navigation Acts which forbid colonies from trading with the
revolutionary United States, undercutting prosperity on Nevis by eliminating a key
trading partner. These events have been addressed by several historians through
particularistic studies (Crouse 1948; Hall 1971; Goslinga 1971; Emmer 1998; Pick 1990;
Klooster 1998; among others) and serve as background in the present analysis for
comparing Dutch, French, and English settlement. However, scholarship has brought
minimal consensus regarding fundamental issues of settlement strategies, or the role
capitalism played in Caribbean colonial history (Wolf; Williams; Mening 1986;
Engermann 1996; Orser 1996).

Environmental inﬂuences are often ignored altogether in histories of the region. This is
ironic in my view in that environment is the chief reason there were any colonies at all.
However, environmental studies have recently been expanded by the work of Watts

(1987, 1999). Years of drought, hurricanes, and blight were powerful factors in individual

 

'2 This disruption continues to this day with numerous unsettled land ownership disputes.

60

island histories as important to inhabitants as invading armies (Grove 1997). These
climatic elements, along with economic upheavals must be examined together to fully
grasp some of the contradictions apparent in the history of settlement. My primary
objective here is to place the history of Nevis in Caribbean context, not as unique but as
exemplary.

Literature of Related Archaeological Research

In comparison to ethnohistories and historical treatise, archaeological investigations,
are, in a numerical sense, quite rare. Spanish Caribbean sites have received considerably
more attention than other areas of the insular Caribbean. Studies of Caribbean
development have generally sought greater understanding of prehistoric societies (Wilson
1986,1989; Watters 1997; Rouse 1948; Watts 1999; Goodwin 1979; Keegan1994,1996,
2000), and another body of literature has concentrated on slave communities (Curtin
1969, 1990 ; Beckles 1998; Dunn 1972; Blackburn 1988,1997; Johnson 1996, to cite only
a fraction). The institution of slavery evolved in unique ways to be as important
economically to core states and colonies of the periphery as the agricultural product they
produced. Scholars have produced a multitude of works on the economy and sugar
industry within the context of slavery (Mintz 1985; Williams 1970,1994; Sheridan 1969,
1974; Ragatz 1963; and many others).

As for Spanish control over the Caribbean, Hoffman (1999) presented fresh analysis
that counters prevailing attitudes, mostly based on British historiography, that Spain did
little to protect its insular Caribbean domain in favor of mainland development or that it
was unable to resist because of naval inferiority. Hoffman argues persuasively that Spain

effectively prevented "foreign" colonization of the Caribbean for more than a century and

6l

maintained constant vigilance against encroachment. Indeed, Spain's desire to control the
Caribbean was a critical factor in the ﬁrst two years of colonization on Nevis.

Economic history in the Caribbean is inextricably tied to sugar and tobacco
production, and these to slavery. Essential for testing Wallerstein’s economic models is
analyses of these industries as they relate to world-system evolution, particularly
commodities labeled as luxuries and the process wherein luxuries became staples. The
principal products of the Caribbean all began as high proﬁt luxuries, but consumer
markets helped transform these into necessities. Several notable historians and
economists have explored this issue and analyzed the impact of agricultural production in
terms of world economy (Edel 1969; Batie1976; Mintz 1985; Engerman 1996; Ferry
1997; Carrington 2002). Davis (1962) has been unsurpassed in the analysis of merchant
shipping and its economic role, both at the core and in the periphery. In addition to this
ﬁne work, knowledge of the socioeconomic relations of shipping and slavery have been
signiﬁcantly enhanced by Duffy(1987), whose data on the development of port cities
such as Liverpool, Bristol, in England, or Bordeaux, Nantes, and others in France. during
the rise of the slave trade provides a strong basis for linking these regions to the
Caribbean economies. Bristol was the second leading port after London in the ﬁrst half of
the eighteenth century, with twenty sugar reﬁneries in operation. In the latter half of the
century Liverpool gained prominence. Between 1700 and 1800 the population of
Liverpool increased from 5000 to 78,000 as the city became the second largest in
England and its second major port with more than half of its ships engaged in the Africa-
West Indies trade. In France the story is similar as sugar from Saint Domingue (Haiti)

caused a boom in trade. Forty-seven percent of all trade in Bordeaux, for instance, was

62

 

West India produce. Associated industries, such as reﬁning, distilling, and shipbuilding,
among others, grew up in the surrounding region as part of the expanding support
structure (Duffy 1987).

In the next chapter I Operationalized the research design detailed in the introductory
chapter, detail the characteristics of the model of development for Nevis, and describe

the methodology deployed in ﬁeld work addressing my speciﬁc hypotheses.

63

 

 

Chapter Three

MethodologyLArchaeologvand the Analytical Lens

"Cognitive and historical features must be added to familiar environmental
analysis if we are to successfully model the dynamics of culture
and social change."

Crumley and Marquardt (1990)

A project of this scope demanded several phases: background research, piloting
survey methodologies, and intensive full coverage survey in a systematic controlled
sample. Locating colonial structures and distinguishing site types within the landscape
was a primary objective. At the broadest scale, various sites were mapped relative to
island topography. Individual sites were documented at more ﬁne-grained scales of
analysis. This strategy permitted successful determination of temporal/spatial dimensions
for several features critical to the study, such as the initial location of population centers;
plantation development episodes; periods of expansion and decline; construction of
roads, harbors, or defensive works. These data have been compared to designated
developmental phases for Nevis (see Appendix 2 for detailed chronology).

Space and Land Use: Methodological Considerations

It bears repeating that on most islands, nearly all resources are scarce and land
suitable for development is at a premium. Its use and division into socially constructed
specialized activity zones can be analyzed relative to changing terms of social relations,
labor, requirements of status, and symbolic display, all within the extant power structure
that mediates environmental usage. Archaeological landscape studies examine both the
concepts of space and place, and the resonance between the two (Rossignol 1992).

Therefore, for example, qualitative distinctions between house and home can be posited.

64

 

 

At the micro level, the structure of a “house” is a space lived in but is on public display,
containing messages for outsiders; while a “home” is the place lived in “privately.” The
concept of privacy (inhabited space) itself taking shape from the culture at large. In a
micro-archaeological analysis of settlement space and function that cuts to the heart of
the matter, Portnoy (1981) reﬁned Yellen’s (1977) model of living space showing how
the home environment may be divided ﬁrrther into public and private activity zones, and
how material culture captures these divisions. By the same token, we can apply this
interpretive model to examine colonial industrial sites, such as sugar works, great houses.
or the general character of lived-in space. By extension, qualitative distinctions can be
posited for industrial and social space in the same context.

Each space within a place may exhibit its own suite of attributes and associated
material culture. One can also anticipate overlapping assemblages. For example, social
adjustments and adaptation to capitalist relations appear as changes within material
culture as individuals or groups become greater consumers and agents of the capitalist
system itself, perhaps forming sub-cultures within the whole as suggested by Wolf
(1971). At an expanded scale of analysis, changes reﬂected in public space, private space,
and the focus of community wealth will also be indicators of capitalist adaptations, all the
while providing insights to “developing cultural schema” as articulated by Ortner (1990).
The Model of Nevis Develogment

The hypotheses described in Chapter One are founded on my model for the processes
acting on Nevis. The model can be expressed as having two layers, one social and one
environmental. First colonization was intended for commodity production leading to a

modiﬁed environment as land was cleared. The social landscape can be characterized as

65

feudal—relations governed by rank and position as in England. However, as successes in
production measured in proﬁts encouraged new settlement, both the environmental and
social landscapes were transformed. Ever increasing expansion for plantations resulted in
vast environmental change. Arrival of new planters and increased investment from
abroad led to changes in social structure, labor relations, and land ownership patterns.
The exchanges between Nevis in the periphery, and the core state, both helped shape and
were fueled by, changes in ﬁnance and economic practices. Government encouragement
of entrepreneurs facilitated new economic arrangements which lead incrementally toward
market capitalism. On Nevis, environmental change increasingly was tied to plantation
expansion. In this model, settlement spread was strategic, moving outward along the
coastal ﬂat lands from nodes determined by shipping, before moving into higher, sloping
ground. Road networks served plantations, not homesteads. Thus, it can be stated that
from this perspective, the landscape was shaped by capitalism rather than traditional
aspects of colonial settlement. Evidence for social and economic transformation is
expected to be found in landscape features and among various classes of artifacts.
Historical archaeologists, according to Orser (1996:234) "must approach the study of
artifacts in a way that stresses relations over attributes." Within the context of capitalism,
artifacts can be viewed as commodities and thus the potential for relational analysis is
strong. For example, dyadic relationships such as buyer-seller, producer-consumer, or
colonist-merchant may be explored from the perspective of relational networks. Because
commodities played a major role in the development of the world-system this analytical
posture is reasonable (Orser 1996). In terms of ceramics, the status of individuals within

pre-capitalist and capitalist contexts was anticipated to be expressed in different manners,

66

including variety and quality as well as quantity. During the earliest stages of
colonization, it is possible little variation of material goods would be evident to
distinguish rank. This is suggested from a number of studies related to frontier societies.
It is entirely likely that rank was understood by voluntary contractural accord, such as
greater percentages of proﬁts to higher ranking individuals, privileged access to foods or
less demanding workloads, land ownership, or in personal apparel. Few of these markers
would be accessible in the archaeological record and unknowable without documents.
However, analogs may well be evident.

For the industrial and architectural landscape, analysis proceeded from the scale of
infrastructure and the systemic requirements of operation in a frontier—what was
necessary to achieve the goals of agro-industrial production and how this developed. At a
medial scale, analysis was aimed at positing spheres in which different sectors of the
colony interacted. This was achieved by integrating site-types with spatial mapping to
assess landscape structure in testing Hypothesis 1. This assumed that site-types could be
identiﬁed categorically through a general typology and is based on the assumption that
different site types held different and generally discreet functions within the colony. This
moves us away from the concept of plantations as autonomous entities and places them in
a socio-industrial network. Space is being interpreted from the perspective that it is as
much an element of architecture as the selection of materials. If space is as Lefebvre
(1993:26) asserted, " a tool of thought and action. . .and hence a means of control, of
domination and power. .." then it must be applied in such a manner that the intended
recipient of such control understands the message. “Relationships” exist in the

theoretical, not physical world, their meanings displayed for those with the key for

67

 

decoding the messages in contemporary time (Wobst 1977:321; Hodder 1984:53). The
landscape preserves elements of the display. This “deep structure” of meaning is carried
in non—verbal communication (Hodder 1989). While it is assumed that meanings in space
are in part actualizations of cultural constructs from the cognitive domain, and indeed this
thinking structures several aspects of the present study, not all meanings are hidden to us
or accidental products of the subconscious, many are blatant and intentional attributes of
colonial behavior ﬁnding expression at various points of nexus with society (Hodder
1984; Weissner 1989; Leone 1994, Mugerauer 1995; Murphy and Johnson 2000).

Was such manipulation of space an active part of the agro-industrial landscape on
Nevis? Certainly in the context of slavery, control was a vital feature for the plantocracy,
but what does it look like in landscape terms? What alternative explanations for spatial
conﬁgurations are there? Here my analysis must be more qualitative and subjective than
elsewhere due to the elusive nature of the concept. One approach was by examining
where within the landscape people live, what access they had to resources, and how
industrial spaces were designed with labor in mind. But not all relationships of power are
between slaves and slaveholders. Elite planters had reason to control lesser planters and
to maintain roles or status positions in the transatlantic community.

Architectural spaces also derive their suggestive powers through place, iconography,
and other forms of built-in display (Tuan 1977). Each of these enumerated attributes were
evaluated for its expression in each site-type recorded for the study. Therefore, to link
spatial orientation of plantations, settlement, and social structure it must be demonstrated
that speciﬁc patterns of land-use coincided with relevant patterns of material culture,

which independently support models of social hierarchy and status behaviors. One should

68

 

also be able to predict particular artifact assemblages based on site-type and speciﬁc
space-land logistical arrangements as a feature of industrial/plantation evolution. This
required sampling the landscape based on tenets of locational analysis, and mapping
industrial and plantation structures against chronologies established from independent
historical sources.

In Hypothesis 2, I suggest colonists reproduced what they knew and changes came
over time due to new economic requirements. I suggested that apparent differences and
patterns should conform with land-use stemming from emerging capitalist production
systems. That being the case, one should see a shift in production from small scale to
large, with associated changes in production facilities toward greater differentiation of
space into discreet activity areas divided between production and non-production, and
socially between managers and workers. Workers can either be indentured servants or
slaves, it does not matter in this instance. These relations will be expected to appear
especially in status-associated artifacts, mobility behavior reﬂected in residential patterns,
and degrees of access to commodities, imported or native. Larger and more
technologically sophisticated facilities should also appear in relation to production.

Field reconnaissance served strategically to assess settlement distribution over the
landscape and to provide information on local ecology and the possibility of various site
type signatures: urban, rural, residential and so forth. Thus, direct comparison between
sites of similar type can be made for different periods. Local informants were queried
where appropriate, and proved helpful in locating sites. Designating sites by type allowed
me to assess the associated artifactual material. I began from the theoretical premise that

material culture acts as a sensitive barometer of economic and social change, and if

69

wedded to the capitalist construction of social hierarchy, can act as an indicators of status
and class, in addition to function. In essence, one does not anticipate tea sets at sugar
mills or porcelain in a servant's house.

Material culture, in the form of personal, domestic, and commercial artifacts and
surrounding space have been effectively used in historical archaeological studies to offer
insights into peoples daily lives (Miller 1994). Materially, this may appear in the
archaeological record in many forms: architectural styles, iconographic and symbolic
facades, higher concentrations of speciﬁc consumer goods in certain sectors, alterations
to public space, changes in the organization of space related to social and work behavior,
increased focus on commercial loci, where people live, or other subtle markers.

Artifact cluster analysis in association with spatial clues is an efﬁcacious technique for
bringing these elements to light. Individually these may result from multiple causes, and
one-to- one correspondence is not to be expected (Pailes and Whitecotton 1979). If
present together, however, they point to systemic forces, as the work of several
researchers have shown (Parsons 1972; Deetz 1998; Wiessner 1989; Fletcher 1989; King
and Miller 1991; Beaudry 1991; Delle 1994; Crowell 1997; McGlade and Van der
Leeuw 1997; Martin-Fragachan 1999; Majewski and Noble 1999; Butzer and Butzer
2000; Mangan 2000).

Artifacts represent a sub unit of analysis at the scale of site-use. Domestic and
industrial artifact assemblages on Nevis are not unique to the Caribbean. There is little
mystery to composition of assemblages as nearly all European ceramic types are well
documented in the colonial New World and examples of vessels are known from several

collections. Little is to be learned by listing the standard styles of mass-produced

70

 

ceramics. To gain meaningful insights into behavior from material culture remains it was
necessary to establish an interpretive framework in which speciﬁc hypotheses related to
class behavior could be tested. What the small ﬁnds offer is the potential for enlightening
us on aspects of behavior not evident in the artifacts themselves or obtainable through
simple measurement of nominal variables. For example, which styles are most in
evidence, and what might the owner be saying through the use of one style as opposed to
another. Do assemblages simply betray the range of choices colonists were provided by
merchants and their continental trading partners or were context, social rank, or other
socially meaningful factors at play in the dance of acceptance and rejection? By statistical
evaluation of the material in meaningful categories I anticipated isolating patterns that
would lead to assessing various possible interpretations. Of course "meaningful" is a
loaded term. What is meaningful to an archaeologist may have been only background
noise to the original possessor of an item.

Style can be used as a behavior marker, but so can incorporation of functional
elements. Wobst(1977) articulated this avenue of analysis intimately when he described

his work in the Balkans:

I have interpreted stylistic behavior as that of artifact form and structure which can be related to
processes of information exchange. Speciﬁc stylistic form is seen to emit messages which can broadcast
throughout the use life of artifacts. Depending on message content, messages visibility, and social contexts
to which artifacts are exposed, as well as on cultural matrix in which this communication takes place,
different artifacts carry different kinds of messages and stylistic form has different meanings (1977:335).

Aspects of style within colonial ceramic assemblages can be evaluated by looking at
such nominal categories as decoration, or edge design, but also, and perhaps more

informatively, by functional groupings, such as, kitchen ware, formal ware, and day ware

7l

 

to understand how artifacts were in use. But style is also a dynamic, not static, element in
production for a consumer society. From that posture it may then be possible to postulate
the intended "information exchange" of the artifact. The message is not inherent to the
artifact but in the context of the sender-receiver relationship. There is plenty of
maneuvering room in such a context. For example, status may be conjured up with
objects of not just great value, but novelty, or rarity. That which is signiﬁcant in a north
American colonies may not have the same truck in the Caribbean and vice versa.
Therefore, the small collection of items recorded for this study were subjected to
groupings intended to suggest patterns of use in addition to linking Nevis to distant
manufacturing centers through purchasing practices.

Finally, Hypothesis 3 suggests we should be able to discern increasing exploitation
of the environment to satisfy the systemic needs of production. As the colony expanded
to increase production, land became an important variable in success. Survey recorded
both the physical features of settlement infrastructure and modiﬁcation of environment.
From pilot research it was known this included terracing, wells, roads, deforestation,
species introduction, discreet areas for agricultural activity, and use of ﬁeld stones for a
variety of purposes. One obvious purpose was designating property boundaries.

Environmental data was collected in three forms, documentary, ﬁeld observation,
and sub-surface testing. Documentary evidence traces back to ﬁrst colonization and even
before. Taken as a body, it constitutes a spotty, by nonetheless, holistic chronicle of
environmental change on Nevis.

Field observations add the dimension of locating scenes of development and human

interaction within the natural environment through physical manipulation expressed in

72

 

built or modiﬁed land. Features could not always be interpreted. These have been
evaluated in tandem to provide an environmental/culture history as one plot in the
complex story of Nevis' history.

Synopsis of Pilot Study

Phase One. Documentary research.

Nevis is fortunate in having a dedicated and conscientious non-govemmental
organization focused on historic preservation and environmental conservation. The Nevis
Historic and Conservation Society (N HCS) has built a reputation of standing with
UNESCO, and carefully maintains an archive in Charlestown, at the Horatio Nelson
Museum. The NHCS has also acquired a collection of maps, papers, and related
documents of Nevisian and Caribbean history, environmental studies, and social
development, and is widely used by scholars throughout the Caribbean.

Sources such as the Calendar of States Papers (CSP), copies of Council records
obtained from England, private donations of family documents, and the occasional
surprise ﬁndl have provided a wealth of data, all of which aided in constructing the
Development Phases applied in this study. Additional documents of note were located in
microﬁlm and facsimile collections of Caribbeana in the holdings of Michigan State
University. Often these included items by pamphleteers, Acts of the Assembly for the
Leeward Islands, travelers diaries, and contemporary historical treatises. Special note was
taken where environmental issues were mentioned and the impact described. Single
sources, such as the Pinney papers, which document a single family’s estate affairs

continuously from the late seventeenth century are the exception, and have been

 

‘ A set of documents concerning the capitulation of Nevis to the French turn out to be in the Bancroﬂ
Library of the University of California, at Berkeley.

73

exhaustively examined by other researchers (Pares 1950). Problematically these papers
do not shed light on settlement patterns outside the speciﬁc estate. Their value reside in
their chronological completeness and detail of a single case.

The second part of phase one entailed reconnaissance, survey, and limited
excavations at the site of the earliest European settlement on Nevis. The excavations were
undertaken in order to produce data for comparing any similarities or differences between
early phases of settlement or uses of space to later periods (such as the eighteenth
century) from which information is more abundant. This was followed by a quasi-
community level scale of assessment.

Phase Two. Random survey: the physical landscape.

Limited surface survey of a Parish on Nevis which records suggested was an area of
early and intense development. Within this Parish are the locations of estates, slave
villages, and sites of intensive fortiﬁcation.2 In addition to walking survey, available
aerial photographs and extant historic maps were consulted to document settlement
conﬁguration. Identiﬁcation of differential landscape use and modiﬁcation (i.e. domestic.
agro/industrial, military, religious) consistent with types identiﬁed elsewhere in the
Caribbean was conducted so that valid island comparisons could be made.

Archaeological investigation of settlements of the ﬁrst quarter of the seventeenth
century is extremely limited (Hume 1982; Leech 2002). This phase of the project
revealed much and will likely lead to modiﬁcation of current understanding of settlement
patterns of the period. In order to make statements of signiﬁcance regarding diachronic

transformation it was necessary to have early examples. The site of Jamestown, dating to

 

7 . . . . . .
‘ C harlestown Parish (geographically a narrow strip between the two mentioned above) IS today. as in the past. the area
of greatest development and will be examined primarily through documents and visible architectural survey.

74

 

the seventeenth century, afforded that opportunity. Systematic surface collection was
used in phase three.

Phase Three. Material culture. Data sets from this category include portable goods
and permanent architecture, as well as artifacts consumable, practical, industrial,
symbolic, and spatial. During the pilot project artifact types and their associations with
spatial and architectural features were recorded.

As no solitary data type can adequately address the issues at the core of this study
multiple data sets were generated during ﬁeldwork. Change in environment and land use,
including town development/expansion, community growth, and location on the physical
landscape of plantations, dwellings, and mercantile enterprises provide solid evidence of
settlement patterning (Barka 2001). Alternatively, it can be conjectured that patterns may
emerge suggesting different underlying causes than capitalism, or some combination of
factors in which capitalism itself is embedded.

During the 2002 ﬁeld season narrow transects were followed within the Parish of St
John (see ﬁgure 3-1.) These transects ran north to south and covered several
environmental zones from elevations up to 1500 feet (457 meters) above sea level.
Transects were begun from randomly selected points on a map and a few were
speciﬁcally targeted. The principle instruments were a 1984 Ordnance Survey Map
(OSM), compass, and Garmin GPS. GPS units were accurate to three meters. This level
of accuracy exceeded requirements as its principal purpose was to locate quadrat corners
or to record site locations. The 1984 OSM is the most current available, although grossly
outdated. The map is topographic and indicated historic ruins, terraces, and old roads. But

much of the map leﬁ vast tracts of land without indication of any historic occupation.

75

 

Rurns were not identiﬁed on the OSM other than the occasional indication of a tower

(referring to windmills) or the word "ruin." Several new roads and housing developments

are not shown, nor is the expansive luxury hotel complex that now blankets much of the
former Pinney plantation. One objective of the 2002 season was to learn what could be
found through transect sampling and at what interval ﬁeld crew should be spaced

Transects were variously conducted at 10 meter to 50 meter intervals

 

St John Parish

Nevis Peak
.Pilot sun ey tract

". 3231 It
Elevation zones /

/
Major drainagcs

W 2000
/ Principal roads W 1500
_ ~ k """ ‘/\l§(‘

l

l

l

I

I

1" l

’ ‘ l
l

 
  
 

 

F0” C ltat'l estown 1000
Charles.
(ruin) _ Main
Road
t
l
l
l ‘, 1
v“ ‘ Sciddik
‘ t lllll
' ‘ ' . * ’ t A
. _ ' l l 1250
Grid North : 500

Magnetic
\orth

Miles 0 1:"4 112 3:4 1
KM O 1

 

 

 

 

F rgure 3 1 Schematic of St. John Parish showing areas covered during pilot assessment

Three envrronmental zones were tested. GPS coordinates in Interim Report (Meniketti 7003)
on ﬁle with NCHS. Horatio Nelson Museum, Charlestown

76

Lessons learned during the pilot study were incorporated as reﬁnements in techniques
and data acquisition in the research design for the 2003 season.

A second overarching objective of the pilot project was to assess the scale and types of
built environment sampling would capture, and whether it would be possible to interpret
spheres of interaction, as well as reﬁning methods for recording data in the ﬁeld. Walking
at ﬁve to ten meter intervals, the crew located 22 sites ﬁtting within several
classiﬁcations, ranging from stone cisterns to mills. One unidentiﬁed mill-complex and
associated house foundations were found during one transect. The impressive two-story
structure and mill platform were completely obscured from view, both from a higher
vantage point and from only 30 meters away. Other ﬁnds included undocumented house
platforms, cisterns, abandoned villages, three sugar works lacking obvious residences in
association (although likely), isolated domestic artifact scatters, a "great house," old
roads, and stone walls. The term great house is functionally overused in plantation
contexts. Few can truly be classiﬁed as "great." Most feature a stone foundation and
perhaps a stone ﬁrst ﬂoor. But scale must be incorporated into the deﬁnition.

Results from the 2002 season provided every reason to believe the Nevisian landscape
retained critical elements of the pre-emancipation character of Nevis, but also that
random quadrat survey would be a feasible and productive strategy, although difﬁcult in
the overgrowth.

Results Relevant to the Model

To answer the questions of which variables, and in what combinations, inﬂuenced

development trajectory or how variable load affected development over time, I

determined to survey areas of the island that came under colonization ﬁrst. Based on

77

documentary searches and literature reviews I concluded that the Parishes of St. John and
St. Thomas represented the two areas of earliest and most intensive settlement (see Figure
3-2). St. Thomas faces neighboring St. Kitts on the lee side of Nevis. St. John comprises
the southern quarter of the island and experiences the full force of the trade winds that

blow in from the southeast.

 

     

Jamestown (,1
I .'.

 

 

 

 

Figure 3-2. Map of Nevis. The shaded regions represent the sample universe within which

a stratiﬁed random sample was drawn for the 2003 season. The boundaries of St Thomas and
St. John parishes conﬁne the sample. The approximate site of Jamestown is indicated as it

is signiﬁcant as possibly the oldest colonial site on the island.

78

First settlement traditionally is at the Jamestown site, but it may not have been given that
name at founding.3 The site's importance for this study stems chieﬂy from its early date
and its potential for revealing signiﬁcant details of early colonial settlement practices,
construction techniques and artifact assemblage. Survey and test excavations were
conducted at Jamestown and are discussed in Chapter Four and Appendix 1.

The essential question of unit size, type and what scale is appropriate for measuring
degrees of organization has perplexed archaeologists on several fronts (Hodder 1977;
Kolwalewski, Blanton, Feinman and Finsten 1983; Carr 1987; Alcock 1993; Wandsnider
1998). In a cogent outline of measurement in archaeology, Ramenoffsky and Steffan
(1998) point to two critical aspects of unit structuring: scale and content. Both aspects are
shown to have subtle qualities inﬂuencing data acquisition, and ultimately, interpretation.
Two notions of scale are deﬁned. In the ﬁrst meaning scale encompasses inclusiveness
and resolution. Interpretation must operate on a sliding scale, that is, some meanings are
found in artifacts, others several orders of size larger in spatial patterns. The second
meaning for scale, is that of measurement content. Within this meaning are empirical and
conceptual categories. While we might measure a physical structure by standardized
methods, "plantation community" or "capitalism" are not measurable in the same sense.
These are classiﬁed by Ramenoffsky and Steffan, following Dunnell, as extensional
deﬁnitions based on abstractions. The lack of empirical referents for abstractions "places
great weight on the selection criteria and means of measurement" (Ramenoffsky and
Steffan 19985). A multi-scaler and multi-temporal strategy was adopted principally to

compensate for what Crumley and Marquardt (1990:75) refer to as the shortcomings of a

 

3 Vince Hubbard, personal communication, and based in part on research by Roger Leech, from
Southampton University. It is likely the site was named Morton's Bay. The town was ﬁrst founded in 1627

79

regional approach, to "better recognize the dynamics of a region, such as changing
boundaries and connectivity." In other words, regions are systems not conﬁned to
political or administrative control. This adds a degree of measure for cognitive elements,
of which, indeed, the ideology of capitalism is foremost. There exists a dynamic tension
between infrastructure (material production) and superstructure (ideology). Accordingly,
"landscape is a manifestation of this totality" (Crumley and Marquardt 1990273).

The broad landscape sample was effectively applied to the countryside of Greece in a
macro regional survey by Alcock (1993). With the organizing principles that landscape is
a social product and historically sensitive, Alcock drew on broad survey data to reveal
relationships of power and inﬂuence during the period in which Greece was integrated
into the Roman Empire. Following a Wallersteinian core-periphery framework, her work
is especially applicable here in the context of Hypothesis 3. Of note were the techniques
deployed to access human activity across the landscape in a diachronic perspective and
the development of a schema for classifying landscapes such as civil; provincial; rural
and urban; as well as scared.

Critical questions were raised concerning diagnostic sensitivity of various material
categories, and the abstract character of these "landscapes." Site dating was through
ceramics, which also raises issues relevant to the current project, ranging from
distribution time—lags, visibility, ceramic identiﬁcation and trade networks. All of these
facets of measurement bring us back to the empirical/extensional deﬁnitions discussed by
Ramenoffsky and Steffan. Sites in Alcock's study were identiﬁed through ceramic

collections and classiﬁcations, themselves subject to a combination of empirical and

 

and does not honor King James.

80

conceptual variables. These pitfalls were borne in mind when determining which
attributes of material culture would be sensitive to ideological aspects of capitalism.

Material culture provides access to the minds of those possessing objects but meaning
is not embedded in the object (Deetz 1998:220). Artifacts from this project ﬁt into the
general colonial assemblages found throughout the Euro-colonial world and are not
suitable for tight chronological control. They do, however, offer avenues of interpretation
into social structure, consumption patterns, and cultural values. Nevis does not remotely
approach the total area covered by the Alcock study, but compresses and constricts
various landscape types into a bounded space at a scale where survey was both
practicable and likely to be quantiﬁable.

Plantation communities are large spaces having numerous specialized activity areas
as well as places of more subtle interaction. Survey units needed to be sufﬁciently large
to allow detection of various site types, and minimally at the scale of units of spatial
patterning being sought (Kintigh 1990), yet not so large that households or important
small scale settlement features would be missed in an effort to meet time and coverage
constraints. The construction of these units for the 2003 season was purposeful. First, the
scale was inclusive. Second, they embraced a representative sample of environment. And
third, they were practical. Because the objective was to capture information about land
use and probable interaction between specialized areas, units were deﬁned based on
deﬁnitions of data types being sought.

The deﬁnition of plantation used here follows closely that derived by Orser
(1990:115) as: having a landholding deemed large within its region, social relations of

power between labor and management, specialized agricultural production geared toward

81

off-plantation sale [or export], a settlement pattern that reﬂects centralized control, and a
relatively large input of cultivating power. This operational deﬁnition was devised to
assist in the study of slavery, but has useful features in a landscape deﬁnition of
plantations. This is a normative deﬁnition that can, however, cause serious difﬁculties in
application. Ruins of sugar estates on Nevis do not always exhibit every attribute, but
were functionally plantations. The term estate is used here as speciﬁcally a sugar
plantation and its unique economic position linked to individuals. This distinction is
important. In the seventeenth century a plantation refereed to any settlement construction.
Plantations operate as an industrial system within a speciﬁc economic system, while
estates may be more idiosyncratic in operational details. Furthermore, "a settlement
pattern reﬂecting centralized control" may need greater clarity. How shall we categorize
estates where landholdings are scattered, owners absent abroad, and off-plantation sale
strictly controlled for restricted markets by distant core states? Does the presence of a
great house signify a central authority while its absence means a sugar complex fails to
fulﬁll the meaning of plantation, despite meeting other criteria? And what is a "relatively
large" input of cultivating power? Twenty slaves? One hundred?

General categories for artifact classiﬁcation and analysis here follow a modiﬁed
version of South's Carolina Artifact Pattern, classifying by use rather than material. The
reasoning here is that if artifacts can be grouped in accordance to use-location and
function, so too can loci of activity. Usage can be linked with activities having socialized
context. Specialized activities are assumed to take place in speciﬁed locations. Thus
artifacts may help sites be classiﬁed as military, religious, secular, domestic or industrial,

rural or urban on the basis of assemblages. These closely parallel Alcock's (1993)

82

classiﬁcations but with facets of capitalism in mind. Particular artifact assemblages can
be expected to aggregate within these categories of site types, even if artifact types
overlap. But we may also hypothesize that environmental features and specialized
landscape modiﬁcations also constitute signatures of site type. Built environmental
features exhibited evidence of transportation, production loci, and interaction between
rural and urban centers, between estates, and between villages and estates.

Each ﬁnd was documented and GPS coordinates were recorded. Artifacts in
association with sites gave an indication of probable assemblages but were not collected
in the ﬁeld during survey. Ground cover often obscured all but the largest industrial
artifacts. This did allow in—ﬁeld identiﬁcation of a few structures that were at ﬁrst
thought to be domestic structures, but in fact were agro-industrial.

2003 Field Season

Returning in summer of 2003, we discovered the drought of the previous year had
persisted and worsened. There was, nevertheless, a beneﬁt—survey conditions were
excellent. Ground cover was reduced in many places and withered vines and leaves
offered much better visibility in otherwise normally dense jungle regions. The large
unidentiﬁed sugar works encountered the previous season were fully visible from 300
meters away and from a vantage point above on nearby Saddle Hill (1250 feet/ 455
meters) where it had been invisible the year before.

Drought was a frequent problem for planters on Nevis throughout its history
thoroughly documented in letters and ofﬁcial commentaries. Every estate built cisterns
and water catchment systems designed to hold intermittent runoff water from the frequent

rains. Villages had small cisterns for community use, and isolated cisterns are found

83

throughout the landscape, with houses associated. Even today cisterns are a must on
Nevis and many poorer homes make use of sugar boiling cauldrons wrested from sugar
estates for this purpose. Historically, wells were principally constructed close to the
shoreline and are not found in association with estates or on plantations anywhere inland.
Rainfall percolates through the volcanic terrain from Nevis Peak, reaches the sea, and
surfaces in the wells ﬂoating above a layer of denser seawater, which also enters the
wells. Many are in active use. Most wells are adjacent to the old round island road, now
largely eroded away into the sea.
Transects: Procedure and Results

Both the Parish of St John and St Thomas were surveyed with the unit of observation
being one kilometer long swaths across the landscape. Using the 1984 Ordnance Survey
Map (OSM) at a scale of 1:25,000, the Parishes were divided into quadrats as described
above. The Parishes were also stratiﬁed along elevation lines to generate segregated
environmental zones for separate sampling. Environmental stratiﬁcation was set at
intervals of 500 foot elevation: Zone D from sea level to 500 feet, Zone C from 500 to
1000 feet, Zone B from 1000 t01500 feet, and Zone A at 1500 to 2000 feet. Two
considerations suggested not continuing above 2000 feet. The ﬁrst was that sugar does
not grow well above 2000 feet in the islands and the sharp increase in slope above 2000
feet on Nevis Peak would have made survey both excessively dangerous and difficult.
Planters would have experienced this fact of topography themselves. Historic
documentation does not indicate plantations above 2000 feet due to climatic conditions.
The 1871 map does not illustrate any estates above what can be surmised to be the 2000

foot elevation, nor do earlier maps.

84

 

The environment of Nevis exhibits signiﬁcant variation. Ranging from scrub desert
conditions to dense jungle, there are seven distinct biomes and elevation has marked
effects on air temperature, moisture content in the air, rainfall, and wind. These variables
were evidently factors in estate planning and technology implementation as use of a
windmill or animal mill was possibly often dictated more by location of estates than by
economics.

The square quadrats were numbered within each stratiﬁed environmental zone and
designated A through D. Numbering restarted for each zone. Total area within each zone
was calculated and the number of quadrats required for a 20% sample of total area within
each determined. Quadrat numbers for the sample were produced from a table of random
numbers. Each number drawn was then used to anchor a consecutive series of four
quadrat, running north to south in St John Parish, and east to west in St Thomas, thereby
essentially running with slope rather than across it. The only caveats here were that when
a selected quadrat could not be connected to three additional quadrats in the designated
direction, quads would be added in the opposite direction, appended to the anchor quad,
and that quadrats transecting heavily populated towns or villages would not be accepted
for survey. Adjacent transects would be substituted. In this manner rectangular quadrats
measuring 250 meters by 1000 meters in length were generated across the two parishes
representing the sample universe (see Figures 3-3 and 3-4). Caveats inﬂuencing the
sampling were added during ﬁeldwork to accommodate actual conditions. Property lines
and developments not shown on the 1984 OSM oﬁen forced rerouting of transects, as did
deep ghuts. One objective of the surveys was to produce maps that correlate to time

frames-- synchronic slices of landscape that can be compared chronologically and

85

 

assessed diachronically. These maps have been an essential tool for interpreting the
spread of settlement by Phases in testing the proposed model. To succeed at this a large
number of transects were required containing datable archaeological remains. Forty
quads were designated: 19 in St. John and 21 in St. Thomas. We achieved thirty-one in
all. In addition, area speciﬁc surveys were carried out at three locations of interest. Every
quadrat produced evidence of built or modiﬁed environment.

Natural drainage ravines cut into the volcanic rock on the mountainside, some 200 feet
deep and frightfully sheer. It is difﬁcult to appreciate this fact from a line on a map until
confronted with the deep gulf. Planters who purchased land sight-unseen, on arrival
to Nevis would have likely experienced the same emotions we did. We accepted the
expedient of using adjacent transects, or on occasion, checkerboard quadrats to
accommodate ﬁeld conditions. Total sample area was thereby maintained. Frequently,
fences were encountered, but permission to cross was easily obtained from residents or
caretakers. Few ever objected to our work. More serious obstacles to full coverage survey
was the nature of the vegetation, comprised mainly of thick vines, and dense forest.
Nearly every plant sported some form of spine, thorn, or barb, which seriously distracted
ones attention from the task at hand and slowed forward progress. We were fortunate
Nevis has no snakes. Each quadrat was located on the map by latitude and longitude
coordinates. In St John Parish the latitude coordinates for NW comers of quads were
calculated along with terminal coordinates in the SW. For St. Thomas, longitude
coordinates of the NE comer were calculated along with terminal points to the west. GPS
accuracy was tested often by locating known points or by using the GPS to return to

given ﬁnd-sites for further recording. Nearly all had to be reached by foot. Few modem

86

roads penetrate lower St John Parish, and many of the quadrats in St. Thomas were more
easily accessed from foot trails than by road. Recent completion of the Upper Round
Road trail, as a nature walk, by the NHCS facilitated this effort. The trail closely follows
the historic road built in the seventeenth century to serve estates at higher elevations. The
trail offered quick access to latitude lines from which the survey teams could then enter
the forested slopes, and guided by GPS, obtain designated quadrat corners. One
unexpected result was the discovery of a network of roads that ran toward the sea linked
to the Upper Round Road. Transportation would have been facilitated for plantations at
higher elevations by ﬁrst circling the mountain on the high road and then descending
toward Charlestown. To follow the main road to Charlestown from St. John would have
taken much longer. Such a transportation network would have inﬂuenced markedly the
ﬂow of goods and people, and helps account for the location of some now abandoned
villages. In addition, several large unidentiﬁed estate houses were found to border the
road.

Procedurally, each quadrat was identiﬁed by parish initials with quad number, and
each ﬁnd labeled by the surveyors initials, the date, and the ﬁnd number for that day by
that individual. Thus, my second ﬁnd made on May 22 , in St John quad 4 would appear
in notes as SJ4MM5/22-2. Better than 80% of survey transects were conducted at 25
meter intervals established by running out tapes. Crew members followed compass
bearings for the length of the quadrat then returned on new lines. Survey was generally
conducted by a team of seven persons, ﬂagging periodically as they went. At higher
elevations, 10 meter intervals were the rule due to dense brush, low light, and steep slope.

Parish quadrat maps are shown below in Figures 3-3 and 3-4.

87

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88

These quads offered cool conditions by contrast to lower elevations. In open terrain,
particularly on the lower plains of St John, 50 meter intervals were easily managed, with
surveyors visible to one another. Temperatures in these regions approached 100 degrees.
Standardized survey forms were used for documenting landscape features, both man
made and natural. Particular attention was paid to environmental modiﬁcations, such as
terracing, roads, or presence of domestic fruit trees and other useful plants.

It was not uncommon to locate domestic artifact scatters adjacent to aloe plants (Aloe
barbadensis) or beneath tamarind trees (Tamarindus indica), both valued imports. Aloe
has medicinal value, while Tamarind is popular for ﬂavoring food. The aloe is perfectly
at home in the drier soil conditions found in lower St. John. Mango trees
(Mangifera indica) were found to frequently boarder old roads, particularly in St. Thomas
parish, perhaps planted to provide shade.

Survey teams transferred individually collected data to "quadrat compilation sheets" at
a greater scale so that information from each transect line appeared aggregated for
analysis as a single map. Individual sheets were collected in a binder for cross reference
and page numbers in ﬁeld books corresponding to details collected during transects were
indexed. Crew discussed ﬁndings and made reﬁnements to the compilation sheets every
three days. A complete 20% sample for St John Parish was obtained. This represents a
20 % sample within each stratiﬁed zone. However, for St. Thomas, only a 10% sample
was achieved owing to recent housing developments, fencing, and other obstacles.

Not every quad could be followed as planned. Furthermore, the 10% sample is
weighted toward the southern portion and higher elevations of St. Thomas, reﬂecting the

areas not yet receiving the brunt of new construction. St. Thomas Parish faces St. Kitts

89

and commands spectacular views. Land owners are developing former plantations
through sub-division into luxury lots. This is the opposite of practice in St. John, where
conditions are much harsher, windier, and dry. In fact, ﬁndings suggest contraction and
population shifts in St. John with people becoming concentrated closer to villages along
the main road. Luxury homes are beginning to inﬁltrate the highlands, oriented toward
cooling winds and ﬁne views.

In addition to the stratiﬁed random sample, surveys were carried out in select areas to
provide data on speciﬁc site types. During the 2002 season, a brief survey was conducted
at the request of the NCHS in the suspected location of a post-emancipation village
endangered by road construction. The Harpies Village site lay in the direct path of a new
Charlestown bypass road serving the island's new deep water port. Results are reported
in the context of Phase III of Nevis development.

Drought conditions facilitated modest survey of two additional villages. One shown
without name on the 1871 map is situated adjacent to Morgan's estate at 1000 feet, and
Vaughan's Village, also depicted on the 1871 map, is in the proximity of several large
estates near Charlestown. Vaughan's is located in dense forest and its scale is impossible
to assess visually. In each case, limited surveys of comparable scale were conducted and
sampled to collect data on house platform density, space, and patterns of land use. The
Harpies Village site (see Chapter Seven) has now been cut by a wide road linking
Charlestown to the new deepwater pier at Long Point.

One problematic circumstance became apparent during the progress of surveys. The
1984 OSM is set, not at magnetic north, but 11 degrees canted from grid north. Therefore

all survey transects actually run at an 11 degree angle. This complicated mapping but

90

does not reduce the sample. Quads needed to be tilted to match the discrepancy. GPS
points enable accurate placement of ﬁnds on maps and realignment of ending points. A
further problem was the initial inconsistencies in recording landscape features by various
crew members, which required reconciling. These problems were addressed in the ﬁeld
and discussion among crew enabled errors to be corrected or minimized as maps were
complied. The forty-one survey quadrats plotted allowed close inspection of multiple
environmental zones and the capture of abundant information on past land modiﬁcation
and environmental alteration.

Project headquarters, strategically located in the upper reaches of the St John Parish, at
Cole Hill for the 2002 season, and Pond Hill, for the 2003 season, allowed us immediate
access to several quadrats. The network of old cobble roads in this parish also constituted
a unit of study as they were instrumental in the historic settlement strategy of the
plantation system, and many of these roads terminate in, or intersect with, the villages of
Cole Hill and Pond Hill while reaching out to old plantation grounds. Other roads link
estates to the main road. Modern development in St John Parish has been steady but
concentrated mainly in elevations above 1000 feet, for luxury homes owned by British,
Canadian, and American citizens. Most are being built on former plantation grounds and
a few incorporate plantation structures into the landscaping in a gesture of romanticism.
Development of more modest scale homes is nonetheless occurring rapidly in the valley
below Pond Hill and on Pond Hill itself. Terraced slopes are giving way to concrete and
cinder block houses. Elsewhere, plantation works have been converted into guest-houses,
reﬁned hotels, and exclusive clubs for the well-heeled. Many current owners of these

properties are direct descendants from original planter families, and still derive income

91

 

from the estates. Montpelier Estate lies within St John. Although none of the quadrats
intersected Montpelier proper, old roads extending from the property did fall within
quadrats selected for random sample, linking it to other plantation works in lower St
John, and one quadrat was on Montpelier Estate property. Also on the property stand the
remains of the Nesbit House, where Horatio Nelson was married. The property has been
recently purchased and is undergoing renovations, yet the vicinity has never been
archaeologically tested. The grounds keepers kindly allowed us the opportunity to
examine the area. With the exception of the new house much of the property still contains
late eighteenth century architecture and ruins and was a useful source of construction
data. A brick and marble two seat privy stands on the site in excellent condition.
Documentation Protocols

Structures discovered in the ﬁeld during survey were measured using inch/foot tapes
as they were historically built in the inches/foot tradition, and in anticipation of producing
measured drawings for publication. Slope was described and where feasible, elevations
taken. Compass bearings were always taken to record axis of alignment. Crew was free to
range from the sites to locate any access roads or structural ambiguities in the general
vicinity. Recording teams were assigned to individual structures and site plans were
roughly produced on a weekly basis. Measured drawings were then produced on return
from the ﬁeld. Qualitative data were also recorded consisting mainly of observations
concerning views, terrain, and architectural aesthetics. Interior and exterior measures
were recorded. For buildings being intensively studied, select wall elevations were made,

stone by stone, as well as section elevations.

92

Field Results

Better than 50% of quadrats contained industrial debitage. Archaeological remains
were constituted by mill platforms, stone boiling and curing houses, iron sugar mill
equipment, cobble service roads, stone out buildings, and terracing to level off the
industrial zone, and miscellaneous foundation traces (see Appendix). Early eighteenth
century sugar works were found in three quadrats and can be added to those found during
the 2002 season. These were documented in addition to sugar complexes of later vintage
to generate a set of comparable mill-complex footprints. All ﬁndings are detailed in the
next section relative to Phases.

Several known mill-complexes fell within a few quadrats, many of known nineteenth
century production. However, as several were originally built prior to emancipation these
were documented as components of the pre-emancipation landscape. Plantation estates
generally have industrial centers where mill towers, sugar works and associated structures
constructed from stone receive most attention from scholars. Large house foundations
can occasionally be identiﬁed. For a truly impressive great house one must look to the
Montravers Estate.4

Merchant housing is not well documented but there is some documentary and
archaeological evidence merchants resided in town or in mixed-use structures as
shop/residence. Slave housing or dwellings belonging to the common laborer class, were
often built of wood set on a few stones, were easily transportable—common even today
among Nevisians—and are easily missed. Evidence of these humble dwellings most

frequently was associated with trees primarily used for domestic purposes (tamarind,

93

ginnip, mango for example), by artifact scatters, and proximity to road sides. Stone
patterns and a cistern are commonly all that remain of entire villages that once served
plantations, and interpretation is problematic. In part because these structures were small,
many activities occurred in the spaces around and between structures. One example in the
modern landscape are traditional stone bread ovens built adjacent to wooden homes, most
often constructed from dressed stone borrowed from former plantation structures. These
ovens have a tradition predating emancipation. It is quite difﬁcult to distinguish between
those built ﬁfty years ago and those of much greater age. One informant, now 70 years of
age, gave us precise dating of a stone oven because he remembered it being constructed
when he was a child. But we might have imagined it older based on the stonework.
However, mortar ﬁnishes between stone courses distinctly set it apart from earlier
masonry ﬁnishes. The stone oven and the gentleman's house were at the end of a transect
(quad S103). Frequently the dressed stone in these ovens is borrowed from historic
structures and, indeed, we located foundations nearby.

A second example is the frequency with which homes today are propped up in the
same fashion as common in the past. These homes are small, one room affairs, with
secondary structures appended, with small hipped West Indian style roofs spanning the

join of the buildings. Such stone arrangements were found at historic village sites.

 

4 Montravers fell outside survey quadrats and is in a corridor being intensively studied by scholars from
Southampton University, and so was not included in our survey. The estate belongs to the Pinney family
about which Richard Pares has written a unique biographical history.

94

 

 

Figure 3-5. Home in Nevis propped up on stones following the contours of slope. Multiple buildings are
joined to conﬁgure a multi-room dwelling. Note the use of outdoor space around the dwelling for storage
and household activities. Inset is close-up view of structures to the left. Stones are held in place by their
own weight and a prayer. Such spatial use may have been the standard practice in villages around the
island in the past as similar stone piles and arrangements are found in village sites examined.

The scatter of domestic materials parallels practices common during the colonial
plantation era. An informant commented that his father worked on plantations in the
19305. Homes, he said, could be taken down and rebuilt elsewhere as needed, perhaps on
other estate grounds. Materials were expensive and it is likely this simple expedient
saved considerable money. There is little documentary evidence to support this, but since
transportation on Nevis was until quite recently limited to foot, animal drawn wagon, or
donkey, it is possible moving ones house to a location where one was working for an
extended period was deemed an acceptable and practical solution.

Folk production of lime using eighteenth century kilns continues clandestinely to be a

source of construction mortar for those who cannot afford concrete. Complicating efforts

9S

to evaluate the landscape is the continual "reconstruction of past landscapes" and stone
works by modern landscape gardeners and developers.5
Archaeological Testing

Two industrial sites were archaeologically tested. Investigation involved shovel
testing for environmental data and site depth, and limited, selective excavation of
structures to acquire data of their construction for comparison to other industrial sites.
Dating of sugar complexes is problematic and little has been written concerning
construction techniques for mills of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Much is
descriptive and usually attributed to Cornish engineers. Changes in boiling cauldron style
is poorly documented as well, although information may well be available in French
treatises.6 Even relative dating is unsatisfactory and idiosyncratic. The procedure
generally followed on Nevis has been to compare structures of known date having well
established histories, such as churches, to other structures. At other times, "common
sense" approaches to dating masonry styles is utilized. On Nevis, this has produced some
curious results. Site histories are often uncertain and estates frequently reused
construction materials from failed or abandoned plantations. Even churches with known
site histories offer misleading construction clues, many having been rebuilt a number of
times. At best the approach is inconsistent and unreliable. At worse, it creates faulty
chronologies that become the basis for misdating buildings. To avoid the pitfall and to
generate a database of site footprints and construction methods, we carefully documented

every mill-complex encountered. We also have initiated comparative construction

 

5 The landscape designers at Absolutely Bushed gave me a tour of the Nesbit property dating to the ﬁrst

quarter of the eighteenth century where they have carefully "recreated" the landscape using architectural
elements scoured from around the island. Many items had been artiﬁcially "aged" to please the aesthetic
sense of the new owner.

96

analyses. Construction methods have been documented at Indian Castle Estate (Meniketti
1998), at Jamestown (Meniketti 2003) and with two sites during the 2003 season for this
study. We selected two sites for intensive study which offered markedly different
conﬁgurations, differing spatial patterning, and were situated in disparate environmental
zones. One dominated a ridge and commanded terraced slopes, the other was located in
lowland territory of gentle, nearly ﬂat terrain. By examining these two works, built for
the same purpose, in such contrasting zones, it was possible to assess how variables may
have inﬂuenced construction. Bearing in mind that the two sites may have been separated
in time by as much as a century, they may also reveal changes in application of
technology and land use. Systematic surface collection and shovel testing along grid
lines were carried out before any test excavations were undertaken. These were extended
into adjacent areas exhibiting evidence of domestic occupation. Only a 10 % random
sample was executed.
Site Fooﬁtprints

In addition to the landscape features discussed above, we investigated several other
sites bearing on the historical development of the Nevisian landscape. These were
classiﬁed according to principal function. Descriptions and plans are taken up in Chapters
Four through Six with site speciﬁcs in Appendix 1.
Procedures for Analysis: Matching Evidence to the Model

Ultimately all theory must turn on the evidence. There must be a set of criteria by
which data is applied and evaluated. The methods employed here for gathering data were

driven by the questions I sought to answer and the analytical techniques must be no less

 

6 An excellent source on sugar technology is found in Encyclopedie Recuel De Planchessur Les Sciences
1751. Illustrations of technology and architecture are informative. See Appendix for relevant technologies.

97

carefully deﬁned. Having described the interpretive framework for analysis above, I turn
the discussion here to some speciﬁc techniques and issues.

Archaeological data consisted of survey information, collections of small artifacts,
industrial refuse, architecture, and networks of roads, but also measured spatial
relationships and symbolic attributes of built environment. Each was analyzed separately
while being subsumed under the overarching conceptual framework of capitalist
development in an emerging global economy. For elements of the industrial sector this is
straightforward enough but less obvious for household artifact or the landscape. The
analysis is predominately qualitative in scope but makes use of quantitative data where
relevant.

The important question raised in Chapter One concerning which aspects of settlement
or segments of society most reﬂect the integration of capitalism and adaptation to social
change can in part be addressed through artifacts. The artifacts recovered in this project
represent the breadth and scope of colonial material culture found throughout the British
sphere. Types and vessel forms found in the surface collection at Jamestown can be
compared easily to collections from North America, as well as elsewhere in the
Caribbean. Using Hmne as a guide (Hume 1974, 1985) and other sources (Mayesl 972;
Hughes and Hughes 1968; Sempill 1944, and others) ceramics were categorically divided
for both vessel type and form. Types in this case are archaeological conventions and not
necessarily the names given by manufacturers. Most describe slip and paste, decoration,
or quality. Many are distinctive to narrow manufacturing windows, or producers, others
were produced for a considerable period of time. Pipes were also assessed using Hume

and Harrington (1978). Dating of smoking materials was largely based on bowl forms

98

and stem bore diameters, however in a few cases characteristic monograms and
decoration were also present, which aided dating as well.

Glass, in particular bottle forms, was evaluated in accordance to Hume (1985), but
interpretations were modiﬁed based on the principal investigator’s knowledge of bottles
from other Caribbean and North American colonial sources, which differs slightly from
Hume's classic chronology, mostly providing earlier manufacture dates on some types
with corresponding changes in mean dates.

As will be shown in the chapters of Section II, organized around Phases, evidence
exists at the micro-level supporting the contention that individual lives were inﬂuenced
by capitalism, but in subtlety different ways in each phase. Ceramics served the table, but
also acted as markers of identity beyond their display for status. Because they were used
within the household, their display and usage was for a narrow sector of colonial society,
yet helped the individual form an idea of self and place within the social system. A
planter did not require ﬁne tableware to distinguish himself from slaves or tradesmen.
Property and laws accomplished that. Material culture frequently carried more subtle
messages of distinction apparent to the beholder.

The abundance of shipping and networks of merchants linked Nevis to the Atlantic
economy, and then served to maintain the linkage by providing elements of material
culture popular in the core state. The link proﬁted the merchants, but also permitted
planters to imagine themselves a part of the core rather than as Creoles—a story they told
themselves to secure their status within the hierarchical relations evolving on their
frontier. The use of material goods in frontier contexts has been suggested as a means of

indicating rank and status (especially among the military), as a signal of ethnicity, and as

99

 

a tool to psychologically soften the frontier (Lewisl 984; Adams and Boling 1991; Smart-
Martin 1994; Majewski and Noble1999). But this understanding of European ceramics
and behavior cannot be immediately transferred to slave society, members of which
likely had vastly different constellations of meanings and status associations. We cannot
assume that interpretations of hierarchical relations among slaves in plantation society as
presented by the plantocracy are accurate (Orser 1991). As no slave households or
villages on Nevis have yet been systematically studied or excavated it would be
inappropriate to speculate on this point. What the assemblage does reﬂect, however, is
the desire among colonists to have what those in the core had, and from the steady stream
of consumer goods arriving in Nevis, as revealed by shipping manifests and
archaeological remains, we can infer there was a ready market among Nevisian colonists.

The above discussion provides the framework for analysis of artifacts from the various
sites investigated during this study. In Chapter Seven, I consider ceramics in terms of
capitalist penetration as indicators of change in material culture and show this transition
to correspond with periods of change in the physical landscape.

In the next section survey transects are described with particular reference site-type
and associated environment encountered. The chapters have been choreographed around
historic phases. Maps of site-types are used to characterize the landscape and to evaluate
temporal dynamics. Historic maps provide an additional information source which can be
added to ﬁnds from the ﬁeld surveys. The objective is to peel back the layers of the
palimpsest landscape laid down by colonists during the periods in which they negotiated

their economic position in the rising tide of global exchange.

100

Chapter Four

Settlement Character of Nevis, Phase I, 1625-1655

And in their voyage from ye Downes landed att ye Barbadoes which they did
not like. nor of Antegoa nor Mount Serratt. They came downe to Nevis ye 22‘h
of July 1628, which Island they thought ﬁttest for their settlement being next to
Christophers, from whence they might be better supplied.

---John Hilton, Storekeeper
and First Gunner of Nevis. 1675

As the island colonies became signiﬁcant sources for economically important
resources, more capital was invested in the expansion of resource exploitation by ever
more adventurers. Success attracted merchants, opportunists, and joint venture groups.
This expansion is broadly visible in the archaeological landscape. Three phases of
development, identiﬁed through historical interpretation, provides an analytical
framework for this study. Archaeological landscapes do not strictly conform to the
abstraction of these phases, and considerable overlap is apparent, but the structure
articulates coherently with regional developments.

Historical Prelude to Phase I

Famously (or infamously, depending on one's political perspective) European
awareness of the Caribbean begins with the ﬁrst voyage of Christopher Columbus in
1492. Encounters with the Lucayan Taino of the Bahamas, and crude mapping of
Hispafiola introduced both a New World and a New People to the Old. During his four
voyages Columbus charted most of the islands, touched on Central and South America,
and established the route to the West Indies that would be followed by privateers,

colonists, slavers and nearly every vessel until invention of the steamship (Morrison

1942,1974; Smith 2000).

101

Following currents and wind patterns picked up south of the Azores, the route enters
the Caribbean by way of Dominica, where ships then enter the Caribbean to sail on the
lee side of the islands. Constant northerly winds--"the trades"--steadily push vessels
northward along the Lesser Antilles. Francis Drake followed this route on entering the
region to harass Spanish shipping. A few sketchy documents suggest Drake visited Nevis.
Drake certainly provides one of the earliest descriptions of the "ﬁerce Carib" on
Dominica, contributing to the notion of indigenous "warlike tribes" in European
consciousness (Honeychurch 1997). We might instead view Caribs as resisting European
invasion. Two documented attempts to colonize islands failed at St Lucia in 1605, and
Grenada in 1609, directly due to Carib resistance.

Owing to a geographic peculiarity of prevailing winds and current patterns, the
Caribbean has only three principle entries and exits passable by sailing ships. These
environmentally dictated gateways played an important role in settlement and economic
interactions. Settlement of the Caribbean was not haphazard, however, with Spain's initial
base of operations on Hispaﬁola a sophisticated strategic choice near three of the
principal maritime routes in and out of the region, the Mona Passage, the Windward
passage, and Straits of Florida. The trade winds and current patterns were perhaps the
most important factor in networks of transportation, communication, trade, strategies of

seabome conﬂict until invention of the steam engine and steam powered ships.

102

 

 

"\ (29% Q P____800 km
Straits of Florida 813 R @099 r29? 9'29 0 500 mi
5 a b 6‘6 (099 Q’bg
' .9 Q o
6
m 3‘96 °°® "b /
9» .
u a Q) ‘2??? 1‘ News Favored route
U Cb / ‘/ ‘(p from Europe
0
Jamaica ‘1 D From
_ ' Africa
Caribbean , \
Sea Atlantic
Ocean
yana 3H
m I) PM

   

 

 

Figure 4-1. Principal sailing routes into and out ofthe Caribbean. These routes were widely known and
used. Privateers worked these channels to the despair of merchant shipping, and Naval engagements were
greatly inﬂuenced by the currents and winds through these passages and straits.

Provincial development by Spanish colonists was buoyed by creation of the
encomienda system, a form of tribute labor, or grant of Indians by the Crown to
individual colonists to work on plantations (Ferry 1997). In theory. Indians labored only
part time, but in practice the system amounted to slavery. Encomiendas were common
throughout Spanish America. One drastic result was the decline in native populations
through forced resettlement, and overwork, but principally through disease (Kiple and
Omelas 1996; Diamond 1997; Desowitz 1997). Indeed, disease may have been the single
greatest factor in Ameridian population decline, both during the early Spanish phase and
the later northern European incursion. Also it has been conjectured with some support
that an additional vector for pathogens was from Africa during the increased intensity of
the slave trade in the late seventeenth century (Kiple and Omelas 1996). Inﬂuenza, small
pox, measles, and possibly yellow fever all contributed to the crippling decline in native
populations, as well as European deaths. One consequence for Non-Iberian colonists was

the islands of the Lesser Antilles were depopulated to such an extent that settlement was

l03

possible without signiﬁcant resistance from indigenous peoples except on Dominica and
St. Vincent.

The traditional story behind the naming of the island—the version preferred by tourist
brochures—ﬁnds Columbus observing the cloud cover shrouding the peak, and inspired
to name the island after a miraculous summer snowstorm that occurred in Spain, during
the ﬁfteenth century, hence Nievesl (snows). This story is cited by Hilton (1675) as
"common knowledge," repeated in M011 (1708) and offered again by Iles (1871). Results
from my research, however, suggests the story is more apocryphal than true, with each of
the above authors parroting some earlier source. There is in fact no evidence to support
the story at all. On the contrary, there is much to refute it. Columbus's own physician, Dr.
Chanca, accompanying the Admiral on his second voyage, writes that after leaving the
island named Mont Serrat (Montserrat), they encountered a smallish rock island, then
christened Nuestra de Retonda (today Redonda), and the next morning, St Martin's day,
they arrived at an island with a high peak The island was given the name San Martin
(Hubbard 1931). Each of these islands are visible, one from the other. It was a common
pattern for Columbus to name islands for the Virgin Mary, his patron Saints, or for the
namesake of the Saint's day on which discovery was made (Morrison 1974). Adding to
the mystery, no early Spanish map designates the island as Nieves including the La Cosa
map. This appellation appears ﬁrst on a French map and on a few early English maps.
Wills from Nevis between 1630 and 1640 frequently refer to the island as Dulcina and
Dulcinea, or Meavis. Nevertheless, Nevis was in use at the time of English settlement in
1628, and can be found on documents in concert with other names, such as a will dated

1630: ". . .this island Dulcina als Neves. . ."(Caribbeana 2 1919:5).

104

The brief encounter between Carib and the Spaniards is the ﬁrst documentation of the
indigenous people of Nevis. Chanca comments brieﬂy about the native population being
hostile and so they did not go ashore. They proceeded to the next larger island, which
Columbus named for his patron Saint, San Cristobal (but possibly Antigua—another
scholarly debate). Because the Lesser Antilles are poor in minerals, and perhaps because
of local resistance, these islands did not garner the same attention from Spain as the more
richly endowed islands of the Greater Antilles.

Bhas_6_l

The rather brief but volatile period between ﬁrst English settlement on Nevis in 1625
and the year 1655, when Jamaica was captured from Spain by the English-~an occasion
that set off a signiﬁcant migration by planters from Nevis—represents a time of rapid
colonization, agricultural experimentation, and abrubt environmental modiﬁcation. We
can infer from various documentary sources that tobacco was the principal commodity
with indigo, sugar, ginger, and cotton also under cultivation. The ﬁrst two large town
settlements of Jamestown and Charlestown were founded and served as centers of
shipping and commerce (Hilton 1675). Yields of tobacco and other commodities returned
handsome proﬁts to investors and tobacco plantations were the principal estates for at
least twenty years (Batie 1976). By 1655, however, sugar had become so important it
virtually replaced all other agricultural production. Despite sugar monoculture and the
seemingly endless proﬁts to be reaped, Galloway (1989 ) and Batie (1976) have
demonstrated that at no time were proﬁts ever as signiﬁcant as the early years of tobacco
production. Whereas tobacco could be grown by small holders with a minimum of labor.

and overhead, sugar estates were labor intensive and costly. Tobacco did not require the

 

' Short for Santa Maria de las Nieves.

105

steep investment in years or capital outlay that sugar plantations needed to establish a
viable crop, nor the specialized technology and expertise. It was possible for a small
holder to accrue substantial proﬁt. But sugar held the greater promise in Europe as tea
and coffee were also being introduced, and the by-products were equally marketable. The
expectation then for this Phase is that it will be distinguished from the next in terms of
scale of investment, scale of settlement, and nature of the productive capacities and
practices of the colony. Although one might also point to differences in population
composition it has not been possible in this study to archaeologically make distinctions of
craft specialization or occupation.

Despite Hilton's comments in the quotation opening this chapter, Nevis seems an
unlikely location for a successful colony. The island has no well formed harbors or bays.
It lacks year-round water; its few artesian springs are as unreliable as they are dependent
on unpredictable rainfalls. Cyclical weather patterns mean that in many years the springs
are dry. Captain John Smith described the island in 1608, as"...all woody, but by the
seaside southward there are sands like downs, where a thousand men may quarter
themselves conveniently. But in most cases the wood groweth close to the water side.."
(Churchill 1653). It would be interesting to know what became of those sandy downs.
There is very little ﬂat land to be found, which our survey found necessitated extensive
terracing as plantations were built. Deep ravines, called ghuts, have eroded into the
volcanic surface matrix of the principal peak of Nevis. Our survey encountered several
during transects. These ghuts serve to channel much of the rainfall into intermittent
streams. Dry most years, these streams can on occasion form impressive torrents,

carrying away vast amounts of soil. A few ghut stream beds are more than 60 feet deep.

106

In the high mountain, these ghuts create impassable ravines. Signiﬁcant for early
colonization, the English appear to have arrived during a wet period for the region.
Rainfall was plentiful for several years and streams were steady enough to be given
names. Many plantations were located adjacent to ravines in the next developmental
phase but evidence for the practice during Phase I is lacking.

With a warrant from the King, Captain Thomas Warner (1575-1649) arrived on St
Christopher (hereafter St Kitts) in 1624 to establish a colony for growing tobacco. Along
with twenty " gentlemen adventurers" he founded the ﬁrst permanent English settlement
in the Caribbean. Within two years a splinter group arrived on the shores of the
neighboring island of Nevis. Hilton (1675) informs us that disaffection between Warner
and a few planters led to the division of colonists, just the ﬁrst of many intra-colony rifts.
The ﬁrst settlement must have been small, indeed, as there were only twenty in the
original group, followed two years later by 80.2 From such population data we can
conjecture that early settlement was focused more on production than on infrastruture and
dwellings would have been constructed of readily available timber.

Thermal vents are located in several places around the island, the most notable being
the hot, sulphery water outlet on Charlestown's south side, that runs to the sea in Gallows
Bay. The site was noted by Sir Henry Holt in 1631, recording that"...nott far from ye foot
of this hill there is a hott bath." This hot spring was developed into a spa during the mid
to late eighteenth century, and was a popular tourist attraction, noted by diarists, during

the nineteenth century3 (Andrews 1921 [1774]; Merrill 1958).

 

2 Documents provide the names of these eighty persons as receiving land. We might assume that servants
or slaves were not enumerated, thus the actual number of colonists was likely higher.

3 In keeping with current trends in "archaeo-tourism" the famous Bath Hotel on the site of the hot spring is
being refurbished by developers. The original structure has suffered numerous reconstructions and

107

Our landscape survey suggests that two factors enabled Nevis to rise above its
shortcomings, 1) extensive fortiﬁcations in defense of settlement and 2) superior soils.
Both advantages would eventually be eroded for primarily the same reason: neglect.

Shortly after English adventurers came ashore on Nevis they parceled the island into
wedge shaped Parishes, radiating from Nevis Peak like bent spokes of a wheel, the ﬁrst
of many landscape schemas imposed by settlement. As a result of this sectioning each
Parish came to encompass multiple environmental zones and rising elevation stretching
from sea level to steep mountainside. But this did not mean that each Parish was equally
endowed with terrain suited for agriculture or settlement, nor was each parish similarly
suited for occupation. While some Parishes are disproportionately comprised of
mountainous slopes and deep ravines, others were home to vast tracts of fertile, yet rocky
ﬂats. The eastern side is marked by shoreline cliffs while the western side is marshy.

Geography also played an intimate role in shaping local weather patterns. The general
climate on Nevis is consistent with Caribbean norms, but localized weather varies
broadly. The east and southern sides receive the full force of the trade winds and are ﬁrst
to be buffeted by the force of hurricanes, yet this is the dry side of Nevis. Moisture laden
clouds continuously embrace Nevis Peak, where the air is cooled, condenses, and rains
down to a greater degree on the western and northern slopes. Wind, however, is
dramatically diminished in these regions. Many of these variables played subtle, yet
important roles, certainly in agricultural productivity, but also in the dynamics of

settlement, differentially affecting colonists over time. Survey results conﬁrmed the

 

additions since ﬁrst being built in the 17705 or 805. During the late 19905 it served as Police Headquarters
for Charlestown. The hotel is on a promontory that overlooks the village of Bath to the south and
Charlestown to the north. Numerous foundations are exposed on the grounds.

108

..._k “.7‘ h... ..h' -t-

‘_*‘m‘u_‘ _

tam

. 1
56111:

011

dl'f.

variation in settlement as partly owing to subtle environmental differences. The ﬁrst
settlements were on the lee side of the island which also facilitated maritime priorities.
The weather patterns found by the early colonists also allowed year round growing
and the capacity to produce crops of sugar in rotation two or three times annually.
However, these same weather patterns carried the seeds of vast destruction in the form of
hurricanes, periodic droughts, and torrential rains. Additional environmental factors
played a critical role in settlement history on Nevis; lack of a reliable year-round supply
of fresh water, volcanic soil, rocky uneven terrain, and multiple biotic zones. Periodic
drought which ruined crop yields caused planters to fall in to greater debt, colonists to
suffer, and slaves to die of starvation. Provision grounds tended by slaves provided
substantial portions of their sustenance. Losses of even a small degree of this important
source of nutrition could be disastrous. Wells and cisterns were a vital component of
plantations for drinking and cooking. It seems strange then that ordinances had to be
passed prohibiting bathing in cisterns, ponds, slabbs and ghuts (CSP [1675] 1964:236).
This discussion is not intended to lay the groundwork for arguments supporting
environmental determinism, but rather, to highlight the degree to which culture and
environment are interdependent, and to illustrate how this is magniﬁed in an island
ecosystem, where even small perturbations due to settlement practices may have dramatic

affects.

109

Research Context for Phase I

When we ask how the colonial landscape evolved after initial settlement it is essential
to understand what the landscape consisted of at initial colonization and what variable
load pioneer colonists were confronted with.

It is difﬁcult to precisely calculate plantation sizes during the ﬁrst 50 years of
settlement. Land is frequently described in "paces," "yardlands," and "manland." These
measures were not consistently applied in the English speaking Caribbean and varied
from island to island. On Antigua, for instance, a yardland was described as from 15-40
acres. A patent from 1658 describes an estate at 240 paces wide by 1 '/2 miles equaling
400 acres (Caribbeana V., 1919:5). There is no mention of a standardized pace being
practiced. Such an estate would have been a little more than twice the length of our
survey units. Lack of precision, however, does not present a problem for analysis, as it is
relative scale we are investigating. After 1700, estates, and indeed, most everything else
in the Atlantic economy, begins to be accounted for in consistent measures as crown
revenues were more systematically accounted. Thus, statistics for slave imports, rum
exports, sugar prices, freight rates, and much more can be assembled from ofﬁcial
records. However, as previously noted, records for Nevis are piecemeal and rare owing to
loss during war or accidental conﬂagration. What we can determine is that the earliest
plantations on Nevis were small enough to be operated by a planter with a few indentured
servants, and were tremendously proﬁtable. Early success set the stage for the rapid
expansion and plantation development that followed.

While documents relevant to Phase I provide interesting information, they do not

enlighten us with regards to settlement locations or directions of expansion to any

110

signiﬁcant degree, hence the need for systematic archaeological surveys sensitive to
landscape modiﬁcation. Based on the model presented in the previous chapters, the
expectation was that settlement in this phase would be characterized by small scale but
numerous farms in close association to the principal (and only) shipping center.
Additionally, material culture was expected to be little differentiated among social
sectors.

SurveLQuadrats

St. John had far greater variation in environment across zones than did St Thomas, a
product of wind and rain shadow. By contrast, St Thomas exhibited marked uniformity
across elevations, at least within our survey tracts. Within St John one could sense
elevation gain as much from vegetation change as from temperature and slope of terrain,
a feature much less obvious in St Thomas.

Within each of the environmental zones surveyed, the landscape was inscribed with
the signature of agricultural development and exploitation, marked primarily by terracing.
Hardly any area escaped reconﬁguration in service of plantation interests or convenience
to estates. However, very little evidence of Phase I settlement remains on the surface,
having largely been supplanted by subsequent settlement expansion. This observation has
direct bearing on the questions of change and variable load raised in Chapter One. In St
John Parish, in addition to the areas covered during the pilot, a total of 19 quadrats were
surveyed with evidence of environmental modiﬁcation in each one. However, deﬁnable
Phase I modiﬁcation can not be adequately assessed. Archaeological remains identiﬁed
with certainty as Phase I were evident in only four quadrats total, all at lower elevations.

In St. Thomas Parish, identiﬁable Phase I landscape features were present in only two of

111

eleven completed quadrats. Quadrats are described here by environmental zone. Site
details appear in Appendix 1. Refer to maps (Figure 4-2 and 4-3) for quad locations, and
table 4-1 and 4-2 for quantiﬁed quadrat data.
St. John Parish

_S_.1Q§ in the western lowlands of Zone D crossed a wide ﬂat plain south of
Charlestown. The area is referred to on modern maps as Bath Plain as the village of Bath
boarders the area. The area boarders Charlestown at the Bath Hotel, where one could
indeed partake of a mineral bath. Sloping slightly, the exposed former terracing is
broadly spaced and the land virtually barren of any but the hardiest drought resistant
foliage. Abundant artifact scatters and clusters of artifacts associated with soil mounds
and depressions were noted. Artifacts included domestic wares along with clay pipe
bowls and stems common to the middle of the seventeenth century. Artifact material
from later periods was also abundant indicating likely continuous occupation. No
systematic collection was undertaken. Bellarrnine stoneware and slip-glazed
earthenwares strongly suggest an early seventeenth century component. Pipe bowls with
spurs, identiﬁed using Hume (1969) as dating to the early seventeenth century, were
noted in three locations. The lack of variation in artifact types in this and other quadrats
suggests little in the way of signiﬁcant differentiation in material culture so far as
ceramics are concerned. Concerning the question of which segments of society most
reﬂect the integration of capitalism, it can only be said that our fragmentary data does not
reﬂect sharp distinctions. Social sectors were most likely deﬁned in other ways during
Phase I, such as by dress, work load, and access to various food stuffs. This issue simply

cannot be adequately addressed with the data at hand.

112

The transects were forced to cross a deep Ghut and we recorded terraces and artifacts
out to its very edge, suggesting the ravine has grown with time due to erosion and cut
through terracing. The closer we came to Charlestown on the north end of the quadrat the
more the artifact scatters acquired an eighteenth century character.

Sng also exhibited early as well as late seventeenth century artifact clusters along
with architectural features associated with sugar production facilities. Also in Zone D, the
elevation of this quadrat was slightly higher than the average of SJQ8, at 150 feet
compared to 60 feet. Dry conditions and broadly spaced terracing were the general rule.

M in the extreme south of St John, also in Zone D, ranged from 200 to over 300
feet in elevation. As parched and rocky as the other quadrats in this sector, it was
nevertheless covered to a greater extent in vegetation. Acacia trees, agave, and dense
thickets and patches of cactus hampered survey progress. Isolated artifacts of eighteenth
century manufacture were recorded, and ruins of a small sugar reﬁning complex of early
type was encountered (SJ 14MM5/1 6-2, see Appendix 1:276). The complex had been
altered during its lifetime from a Spanish train to a Jamaica train suggesting use prior to
the 16803. No artifacts were in immediate association, however, artifact clusters and
stone house platforms were found a little over 100 meters away to the east bordering a
ghut. Seventeenth and eighteenth century domestic wares were present. Based on the
architectural design and scale of the mill complex, I assigned it to the Phase 1 of island
settlement. S_JQA No other quadrats surveyed in St John produced unequivocal Phase I
material, although early artifacts were found in m, Zone B at 1500 feet. None of these
artifacts, however, were of types exclusive to Phase I, and a more conservative

assessment of belonging in Phase 11 seems appropriate in the absence of any identiﬁable

113

 

St John Parish __4 Nevis
Quadrats containing Phase ‘I L_J ' Peak
A3232

     
  
 
  
  

 

Miles0 " ’* “1
Km

0 l 2 1

 

4 .

/’~‘

Fort -
Charles
(ruin) ‘ '

Key

Zones I I _
[El Ghuts
El Roads

[El Elevation Benchmark i

E Parish Boundary
, 5 All quadrats by number

 
 

Sea

 

 

 

Figure 4-2. Map of St John Parish depicting quadrats relative to stratiﬁed environmental zones.
Shaded quadrats correspond to those described in the text containing identiﬁable Phase I components.
Numbers represent anchors of all quads from sample. Quadrats run north-south.

 

 

 

 

Table 4-1.
St. John Parish. Survey quadrats containing Phase I components.
Quad Zone Site types Site # Artifacts Landscape components
SJQ8 D Domestic artifact SJ8KD5/22-l Pipes, glass broad terraces,
clusters SJ8MM5/22-l ceramics earth mounds, depressions
SJQI4 D Sugar works, SJ 14MM5/ 16-2 None Flat, scrub, acacia thickets
animal mill associated
SJQI4 D Artifact scatter, SJ4BB6/30-l Ceramics, 100 meters from
stone clusters pipes SJ 14MM5/ l6-l at edge of ghut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phase 1 features. We can infer from documents that Phase I settlement extended at least
into Zone C, where several quadrats were surveyed. The place referred to as Fig Tree in

the following document is at 400 feet elevation and the base of Saddle Hill at 1000 feet:

114

 

 

Order of the Assembly of Nevis on Capt. Digby's claim touching the bounds
of his plantation. Whereas in the time of the late Governor Capt. James lake (1643) the
Assembly adjudged that there must be "an extent line" from Fig-tree to Saddle Hill, the
present Governor has caused the surveyor to "draw a Platform" of all those plantations
that must cross one another. . .it plainly appears the said Act was necessary...

1653 Calendar of States Papers,
Colonial Series, America and the West Indies
[1964 reprint]

Previous pilot transects along with survey quads $152610, 12, and 13 all fell within the
areas described in the above account. Yet transects only recovered data that can reliably
be assigned to Phase 11. Because of the aggressive expansion that ensued after 1655 this
is not surprising, terracing and new construction has erased surface traces of Phase I or
more likely incorporated them into new development.

St. Thomas Parish

Only two of the eleven completed quadrats in St Thomas contained unequivocal Phase
I evidence. SIQQ ranged from 500 feet to 400 feet in Zone D. Stone clusters with
associated early seventeenth century artifacts were noted by each member of the survey
team in multiple locations indicating a once extensively populated area. Vegetation is
extremely thick and tall trees form an overarching canopy in this plentifully watered side
of the island with the exception of this quadrat. Terraced ﬁelds within the quadrat
exhibited clear signs of continuous use into the modern era, including architectural
features and domestic artifacts identiﬁable to the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The
area covered by the quadrat was one of the few in northern St Thomas parish not fully

subdivided for new construction. The soil is rocky and bare.

115

 

Grid North

 
   
   

St Thomas Parish

7‘ ""‘1

Magnetic Truc Quadrats containing Phase 1 __j

 

North \ North
. \. Mlles (PEI-E,
Cades -. \ -’ 1 2
Bay .3, \ D
Jamestown
Site

  

Charlestown

 
  

  
  
  
  
  
 
    
 
   

 
 
  

’

300

 

 

, ’1’500
, . ’1000

I

. A
000 Nevis
Peak

 

 

Figures 4-3. Map of St Thomas Parish depicting quadrats relative to stratiﬁed environmental zones.
Shaded quadrats correspond to those described in the text containing identiﬁable Phase 1 components.

Numbers correspond to anchors for all quadrat of sample. Quadrats run east-west.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 4-2.

St. Thomas Parish. Survey quadrats containing Phase 1 components.

Quad Zone Site types Site # Artifacts Landscape components

STQ4 D house platforms, ST4MM5/29-1 Ceramics, Terracing, steep slope
artifact scatters pipes, glass

STQ4 D artifact scatters ST4SSS/29-l Ceramics, Slope, broad terraces

pipes, glass

STQ4 D house platforms, ST4KD5/29-l Stone Open broad terraces
artifact scatters platforms

STQSa D Artifact scatter STSaMM7/ 1 1-1 ceramics Flat, thickets

Pilot D Foundations, JT[7-02] Ceramics, Flat, swamp, coconut palm

Jt[02] stone pile clusters, Jamestown site glass, pipes. grove. Thick brush cover.
cut stone, artifacts metal, misc. Exposed structures.

 

116

 

STQStalt) and the Jamestown site are the other areas assigned to Phase 1. Again, the
basis of this designation comes from analysis of artifact assemblages in surface scatters
and built features. Historic documents identify Jamestown as established in this phase.
yet do not pinpoint the location. However, based on our limited archaeological testing,
the traditional site may well be correct.

Until 1996 one of the earliest stone defensive redoubts of the British Caribbean stood
in Newcastle4 and assigned by researchers on the basis of construction to this early
colonization phase (Morris 1999). The implication is that settlement in the ﬁrst 30 years
proceeded along the coast equally as far to the north as it did southward.

In addition to quadrats, roads were sought out as landscape features possibly associated
with early settlement. Following the road system was rarely easy but often rewarding as
structures were recorded adjacent to the roads which are not indicated on current maps.
From Montpelier in St. John, one could easily see three other estates, the most notable
being the Bush Hill complex. From Bush Hill, Montpelier and other mill-complexes were
within sight, suggestive of a interconnected visual web of plantation organization.
Keeping this in mind, survey teams always sought visual lines to other estates whenever
we encountered any sugar works. This area being predominately ﬂat, although sloped, it
is more likely an accident of natural topography than intent that the visual web of mill
complexes emerges.

Remnants of the old Lower Round Road, which, according to maps, once encircled the
island, were discernible in a number of places. Much of the road has, however, been
eroded into the sea. Wells and cisterns commonly were built near shore and close to the

roads. Two were found to contain fresh water and were in use for watering sheep and

117

goats. One in the general vicinity of Whitehall Estate has been being carefully maintained
and had modern cement repairs, while most are in ruins. Located at the lowest points of
ghuts and sloping hills, wells were designed to capture fresh ground water, which ﬂoated
on a lens of denser seawater. At least two of these wells appear to have been built during
Phase I based on construction details, and maintained over the centuries.
Discussion: Environment and Settlement

On Nevis, to plow would have been a waste of labor and stock. The stony
composition of soil made it impractical. The modern practice on small plots is to pile up
rocks in the center of the property. Across the historic landscape, isolated stone piles
among the terraced ﬁelds were common. The landscape that evolved on Nevis was
patterned by the needs of agro—industrialism supported by laws of private property. Dogs
and other animals displaced many of the native animal species. Among these introduced
fauna were the rat, mongoose, game turkey, and monkey. All are part of the modern
landscape and the monkey has become a critical vector for seed distribution of various
non-native plants.

The rapid pace of environmental change and habitat loss on Nevis can be traced from
the writings of early travelers and settlers. Captain John Smith wrote in 1608: “all woody,
but by the seaside southward. . .but in most cases the wood groweth close to the water
side, at high-water mark, and in some places so thick of a soft sponge wood like a wild
ﬁg tree, you cannot get through it, but by making your way with hatchets.” (Churchill
1653). Sir Henry Holt reported in 1631 that the islands (St Kitts and Nevis) were;

“. . .covered over in palmettos, cottontrees, lignum vitae, and divers others sorts but none

like any in Christendom.” Sloane voyaged to Nevis in 1685 and engaged in species

 

 

4 . .
The masonry redoubt was removed for expanswn of the Newcastle Airport.

118

collecting. He remarks that the mountain on Nevis had been cleared nearly to the top:

“. . .where yet remains some wood and where runaway negroes harbor themselves. .
(Sloane 1707242). In essence, within sixty years of ﬁrst settlement, the tropical climax
rainforest had been nearly deforested both for plantation clearing and export.5 Sloane
does not specify if clearing was complete, only that it approached the highest elevations.
We can only speculate how much clearing occurred in Phase 1.

Any remnant stands of timber were either too difﬁcult to access or too small to be
worth the trouble. As the colony grew, houses, shops, and warehouses were constructed.
But much of the lignum vitae (known as ironwood) was exported for manufacturing of
axles, ship tackle, and gears. By 1680, Nevis was importing timber from Virginia along
with tar and other construction materials. Timber was used for two chief purposes,
construction and fuel. Boiling sugar requires prodigious amounts of fuel. Distillation of
rum, production of lime mortar in kilns, and ﬁres for cooking all demanded fuel.Slag
found in archaeological context suggests at least local smithing operations associated
with estates (Meniketti 1998).

M011 (1708) reports the island had grown rather hotter since ﬁrst settlement and this is
likely due to deforestation. The problem of heat increase was widely recognized in the
eighteenth century. It is also a possibility that the Caribbean was suffering from a
localized El Niﬁo effect. Interestingly, while Sloane reports the island as having no rivers
or springs, Alexander Burke Iles, writing in 1871, states there are “several mountain
springs yielding fresh and pure water" Such is the nature of using historic documents.

The truth falls somewhere between these extremes. Nevis' springs depend on rainfall,

 

 

5 Lignum vitae, also known as iron wood, was an important timber in shipping and other industries used for
making block and tackle, gear wheels, and pulleys.

119

 

 

which percolates through the volcanic matrix, and surface in only a few places. In times
of drought, as during the droughts of the late 16005, Nevis found it necessary to purchase
water from neighboring Montseratt, carried by ships in barrels between the islands. In

describing the soil of Nevis, Moll (1708:196) voices an intriguing point:

The soil is fertile especially in the valleys. The rising ground is stony, and
plantations grow worse and worse the higher the planters settl’d the mountain. The
land being cheaper there than in the vale, being courser and not so easily cultivated.
Tis the same with us in England and for the same reasons. [Emphasis mine].

Characterizing Urban Settlement
Jamestown, by tradition the earliest settlements on Nevis, sits across the narrows from

St Kitts where the islands are separated by a mere two miles. Now covered by a remnant
coconut plantation, survey and shovel testing during the 2002 season yielded substantive
environmental data and numerous artifacts of seventeenth century origin. Most were pipe
bowls and stems, but also onion bottle fragments and late seventeenth century ceramics.
In the vicinity of Jamestown, the so-called Fort Ashby stands behind a marsh and sand
berm, well back from the sea, yet historic documents of fortiﬁcation inspections in 1704,
by Major Johnson, Lt. Governor of Nevis, clearly indicate the battery stood on a point
extending into the sea (Mackling 2001). Test excavations and shovel testing in
Jamestown provide evidence that the town may have had a shoreline character, perhaps
built on the beach, now masked by land accrual westward.

Permission to work on the site was obtained from the property owner Mr. Frederick
Stevens. The area was ﬁrst examined in 2000, at the invitation of the NCHS. At the time,
several stone structures were noted in the swampy, overgrown former coconut plantation

that now strangles the site. Plans were made then to return for more detailed survey. After

120

establishing a base line tied to a bridge over a drainage creek on the north end of the site
locale, a series of survey intervals were marked off. Transects were walked at tight
parallel intervals (10 feet) west from the baseline. Each member of the team examined
the surface to their right and left ﬁve feet and noted every artifact in different categories:
glass, ceramics, metals, smoking, and so forth. Surface survey led to direct recovery of
seventeenth and eighteenth century artifacts and several stone foundations, structural
rubble, and isolated construction materials. Slightly less than one hectare was surveyed
for this micro-scale sample. The value of this work comes from increasing the probability
of accurately dating isolated structures elsewhere in the sampling universe by adding an
additional point for comparison as other structures are encountered on the mostly
undocumented historic landscape of Nevis.

We also conducted systematic shovel testing at Jamestown. These were dispersed over
a grid pattern covering the entire survey area and generated additional data about
shoreline evolution and site development. Results were surprising. Less than 10 feet west
of these foundations shovel tests brought up rich sandy loam at 40 cm depth. Water
seeped back into out test holes at 60-70 cm depth. Test holes of a meter in depth were
dug close to the modern road without encountering water, but sandy loam was reached at
50 cm depth. Each 10 cm level was screened for artifacts. Artifacts were recovered at
each level. In one case, an entire mattock was unearthed, along with another edged iron
tool (See Appendix). Such mattocks, or cane hoes, are common even at present among
local farmers. Finding them abandoned among surface deposits was not uncommon (we
recorded ﬁve). A farmer living near our project quarters uses one identical to the ﬁnd. Its

age is uncertain. Levels sterile of cultural material were never achieved due to

121

groundwater seepage. Environmental data from Jamestown are highly suggestive of
beachfront construction, perhaps directly on the historic beach itself. A warehouse
district, is a distinct possibility (see Appendix 1:293).

Whereas St Kitts remained divided between French and English colonists, Nevis was
singularly English.6 The ﬁrst settlement is situated near fresh water and reasonably ﬂat
volcanic terraces making a suitable location for establishing tobacco farms. Another
small hamlet is shown on a few maps just south of Jamestown, occasionally referred to
as Little Borough. From the ﬁrst settlement the colony expanded northward beyond
Hurricane Hill to Newcastle and southward toward Charlestown.

Oddly, there is little documentation of Jamestown. Early descriptions of Charlestown
strongly suggest that most buildings were of timber and substantially built (CSP [1676]
1964) and we can infer this was the case for Jamestown. However, the towns were a ﬁre
hazard, with open ovens, cane juice boiling, and cooking ﬁres in earthen stoves or open
on the grounds. Compounds were enclosed by fences, roofs of thatch, and everyone
smoked. The ﬁrst of a series of prohibitions against thatched houses was passed in 1675
(CSP [1675] 1964), repeated in 1705.

No houses or villages datable with certainty to the seventeenth century have been
located on Nevis? Jamestown remains the most viable candidate. Two of the mills
located during survey are of probable seventeenth century construction. Treatment of
stone-facing, masonry technique and wall dimensions have parallels with the Jamestown
features. Charlestown, named for founder Sir Charles Wheeler, had been settled before

1650, and excavations in the center of the waterfront by Southampton University

¥

6 St Kitts was settled simultaneously by English adventurers and the survivors of a French shipwreck. They
divided the island: English in the middle, the French at either end.

122

revealed masonry foundations constructed against a seawall (Morrison et all 2000). The
construction has signiﬁcant similarities to Jamestown structures. The Charlestown
waterfront, however, has been completely altered by expansion and modern construction
over the past several years. Waterfront businesses today are erected above historic
structures, although a few are visible in underdeveloped districts. Historic structures
throughout Charlestown principally date to the eighteenth century. Only Fort Charles and
the St. Thomas Anglican Church offer details of seventeenth century construction
techniques employed on Nevis, and even these have undergone extensive modiﬁcation.
The Jamestown site was the only urban site recorded during the project and is
somewhat enigmatic. Legends surrounding its demise are inconsistent and poorly
documented. According to most accounts, the town was completely destroyed by a
natural disaster, possibly a tidal wave or earthquake in 1680, and submerged beneath the
sea. More probably the town was badly ruined by an major earthquake, such as the well
documented tremor that destroyed a great deal of Charlestown in 1690, sinking ships in
the harbor as well. Jamestown is mentioned in various Acts of the Nevis Council into the
eighteenth century, so its destruction was likely not total and may simply have not been
rebuilt to its former scale. An act dated October 22, 1700, for suppressing the use of
thatched rooﬁng, and requiring stone or brick chimneys in urban centers speciﬁcally cites
Charlestown, Newcastle, and Jamestown (Acts of Nevis 1706). Furthermore, so little

documentation of the event can be found that one suspects the importance of the town

 

7 One possible exception is the great house at Montravers.

123

relative to Charlestown has been somewhat exaggerated.8 While Charlestown would have
a fort protecting its harbor, Jamestown seems to have been protected by a shore battery.

Parallels between the destruction of Jamestown, and Jamaica’s Port Royal, are telling,
right down to the "church bells ringing under water on moonless nights." Port Royal
disappeared beneath the waves in 1692, and was exceptionally well documented by
contemporaries. Some conﬂation of the two episodes seems likely. However, the early
date of the town makes it especially attractive for archaeological investigation into
settlement patterns and seventeenth century construction techniques. Providentially, the
Chimney and Thatch Act provides substantive information concerning the appearance of
these early urban settlements and warrants further discussion.

The dangers of particular building traditions were recognized and described within
the Act. Section II in the Act states “...no cook-room, kitchen or place of ﬁre in any of
the Towns. . .shall be built without brick or stone." A penalty of 1000 pounds of sugar
was to be enforced against those who failed to comply. Thatched roofs are “. . .not to be
allowed within two hundred yards of the main road. . [in Charlestown], and shingles
alone were to be permitted, with equally stiff ﬁnes instituted. Section IV of the Act,
deﬁning the boarders of Charlestown for purposes of enforcement, provides landscape
details absent from other sources, and was based on known properties and landmarks
rather than strict boundary demarcation. Combining archaeological evidence with
documentary we can visualize towns of closely built houses and shops, with stone and
mortar ground ﬂoors, wooden second stories, thatched roofs and detached cooking pits

and ovens. In some cases, earthen chimneys, attached or within the structures, is

 

8 It is also noteworthy that every island tourist board seeks some extra allure through promotion of lost
cities or haunted mansions. Nevis lays claim to both: Jamestown and the Eden Brown Estate.

124

suggested. Open ﬁres for boiling sugar and other sources of smoke likely clogged the
skies. Moreover, these dwelling places are within the town center coterminous with
commercial establishments. Many warehouses were entirely built of native or imported
woods. Fire was always a hazard in Charlestown and one can infer from the Act of 1700
that it was a problem for the other towns as well.

Surface clearing at Jamestown revealed a sturdy stone foundation with a width of 24
inches. This structure was designated Feature A. Site depth, subsurface integrity, and
construction details along one foundation wall were ascertained from a single test unit
(see Appendix 1). The exterior of the building fronted a cobble footing or street. Initially
we thought a single large building had been exposed, but its orientation and details of
construction suggested instead two adjacent structures sharing a central wall. Although
additional features were mapped, no further subsurface testing was carried out. It was not
our desire to additionally disturb the site nor was it a primary goal of the project.
Jamestown Artifacts

Considering that the Jamestown (refer to Appendix 1 and 3) survey area has been
subjected to several years of undocumented collecting by locals9 and has been disturbed
by a coconut plantation, recent dumping, road expansion, equestrian activity and land
crab burrowing, it is remarkable we found any artifacts at all. Yet many artifacts are
brought to the surface regularly by burrowing land crabs, which both mixes the
assemblage and even reverses its order in places. Artifacts were left in situ for mapping.

Many artifacts were found adhering to root balls of fallen coconut trees.

 

9 One individual who I shall not name, has been collecting pipe bowls and diagnostic ceramic pieces for
over a decade. He dropped by while we worked to show some of the ﬁner pieces from his collection. We
appreciated seeing some of the earlier spurred bowl forms. some decorated with roulettes and cartouches.
One was deﬁnitely a Brosely bowl, c. 1675.

125

Artifacts from Jamestown surface collection were consistent with most assemblages
on Nevis,l0 ranging in type and manufacture date from the early seventeenth century
ceramics and smoking pipes to nineteenth century glass and trash. We recovered few
ceramics exclusively manufactured in the mid to late seventeenth century.ll

In contrast to the ceramic artifacts, most of the pipes and glass were deﬁnitively
datable to seventeenth century manufacture. One pipe in particular can be conﬁdently
assigned a date of 1675. The relative high proportion of colonoware, stonewares, and
coarse earthenwares to more reﬁned English ceramics is noteworthy. Although popular.
inexpensive consumer ceramics were present the nature of the collection suggests limited
means and access to imported wares.

Also identiﬁed were three fragments of indigenous Carib pottery. Early descriptions of
the colonization of Nevis cite the presence of Carib near the ﬁrst settlement (Hilton 1675)
and Jamestown is a few hundred yards from one of the island's few freshwater springs.
The choice of this location for a settlement would also have been enhanced by the
relatively ﬂat land stretching inland behind it. The small cove of Kades Bay (C ades Bay)
offers slight protection and shallow anchorage, but no harbor on Nevis is truly
satisfactory. More importantly, shellﬁsh—a Carib staple—would be harvested from the
cove. A promontory overlooking Cades Bay would have answered the need for a lookout
or defensive site, and served this role in the eighteenth century as part of the defensive

works that extended between Charlestown and Newcastle in the north. Cades Bay was

 

'0 Material from Meniketti 1997; published by Southampton 2000, 2001, 2002; and Time Team.

” Many seventeenth century ceramic types remained popular into the early eighteenth century. This is not
to say they are not to be found in deeper deposits. But the lack of speciﬁcally seventeenth century types at
the surface and the predominance of eighteenth century material goods recommends assigning a
conservative eighteenth century Phase 11 date to the assemblage and a post 1700 surface deposit (see
appendix for discussion of median manufacture dates).

126

systematically surveyed by divers but no construction or artifacts were found on the
sandy featureless bottom.

No artifacts of industrial technology were identiﬁed in the context of Jamestown (refer
to Appendix 1:303). The location did not have milling equipment, or mill-complex
architecture. However, at a distance of half a mile inland a mill complex was encountered
during survey that could be assigned to Phase 11 through Phase III based on speciﬁc
construction features.

How then to organize such an assemblage? Mean ceramic ages provide conﬁrmation
of a late seventeenth century date and continued accumulation of refuse into the
eighteenth century, but this does not appreciably add to our knowledge base. It merely
conﬁrms what was known. First, we can see that a limited range of colonial wares are
present, with few ﬁner ceramics or luxury wares. Porcelain is almost entirely absent.
Inexpensive wares of English manufacture, particularly transfer-printed styles and plain
whiteware of either English or American import form the majority of tableware. Sherds
from plates, bowls and cups comprise the bulk of the collection along with jar forms.
Pewter and wooden vessels, both certainly present historically from all accounts were not
found. The perishable nature of wood and the durability or resale value of pewter means
it would rarely ﬁnd its way into refuse.

The assemblage from the Jamestown site lacked any identiﬁable industrial component
or related artifacts on the surface and was comprised entirely of material common to
domestic contexts although measurably limited in scope. If the area was a warehouse
district as suggested by the architectural remains and spatial arrangement, it may well be

that the site served both functions for a period, with individuals living in attached

127

residences in or around the urban structures, or more likely in second level residences.
This was the case in Port Royal, Jamaica, prior to its destruction in 1692, where
structures had street level shops and living quarters, either on a second story or in back
rooms (Hamilton 1991). The ﬁnds of undecorated pearlware, creamware, and transfer
printed white ware styles, as well as cups suggest that even here products of the emerging
capitalist consumerism of the eighteenth century had penetrated and were in popular use.
Another implication from this assemblage is that the site was used both before and after
its traditional date of destruction and abandonment, eventually being buried by sand
accretion and a coconut plantation. The artifact types and dates suggest a tapering off of
site usage after the mid eighteenth century.

There is yet another possibility. Ceramics occasionally wash up on west facing
beaches and are buried at various locations near Charlestown and Pinney beach. Exposed
one year, they be entirely absent from the shore the next, only to be re-exposed some
years later. If these same processes are operating at the Jamestown site, and indeed, the
action of land crabs strongly indicate subsurface deposits that have been ﬁxed on the site
by land accretion, then the artifacts may have been deposited historically by wave action
and currents as beach refuse and are not directly associated with Jamestown at all.

Environmental data are highly suggestive of beachfront construction, perhaps directly
on the historic beach itself. We can conclude the structures were distinctly not organized
spatially in the manner of industrial sugar works and did not have any associated
industrial structures. The afﬁliation of these buildings with subsequent coconut
plantations, if any, is unclear, but their arrangement and construction are highly

suggestive of urban settlement; a warehouse district, is a distinct possibility, acting as

128

central place for plantations scattered across the lowlands of St Thomas parish and
beyond. Alignment of the structures, paralleling visible foundations fronting the modern
Equestrian Center across the main road, further suggest the constellation of structures
formed part of a warehouse district, such as recorded on St Eustatius (Barka 1996, 2001).
This might prove a superﬁcial similarity as not enough artifactual or construction
evidence was produced during the short ﬁeld season to conﬁrm the idea. Several small
piles of architectural rubble should be excavated in the future. But taken as a group, the
structures appear to be organized in rows along straight line avenues at right angle to the
main road.

We noted that structures do not uniformly align to cardinal compass points and
possibly were oriented with the historic beachfront. A tendency toward alignment on a
north to south axis was common in construction during the late Georgian period in the
British Caribbean. Such alignment was frequently associated with elements of symmetry
in facades and spatial organization. Such symmetry and careful alignment to cardinal
points was largely absent from the many sites recorded during surveys and suggests most
were constructed prior to Georgian architectural inﬂuence or that environmental
constraints played a greater role than previously imagined by architectural historians.
Notably, the mill complex less than half a mile away exhibited at least three construction
phases, the earliest of which is congruent with the alignment of structures at Jamestown.
Additional structures at the complex align with compass points (See appendix 1:298).
Industrial Sites

Agricultural production at a scale suitable for proﬁtable export had demands that

urban settings could not satisfy. Paramount among these were the vast tracts of land

necessary, and supervisory control over movement of enslaved labor. However, during
Phase 1, production was primarily tobacco, most labor were indentured persons along
with the land owners themselves. Housing was on the plantation and documentation
suggests early residences were of wood. Some earthfast construction for plantation
houses seems likely (Leech 2000). The character of settlement in this phase would be
separate rural agricultural units, rather than demonstrably industrial, linked to the urban
sites by roads cleared through the jungle. No large processing facilities would be
warranted.

Residential Architecture

 

No archaeological evidence of detached housing from Phase I has been identiﬁed
from survey. However, small ﬁnds from Jamestown hint at a portion of the population
living in or around the masonry warehouse structures. Perhaps, as in the Jamaican town
of Port Royal, colonists dwelled in rooms in second stories above the commercial
warehouses venturing out to nearby ﬁelds as required. Timber construction in this period
is suggested by Pulsipher's work on neighboring Montserrat, but the nature of housing in
the early colony likely precludes survival.

Religious Landscape

Documentary sources inform us that churches were absent for the most part until the
end of Phase I. No structure that can be identiﬁed as serving ecclesiastic functions for
Phase I was noted from our survey. Such structures may well have been in urban settings
and may yet be identiﬁed. The large stone churches that continue in use today were not

built before the 16705.

130

Summary of Evidence

Phase I may be the most exciting period but the least documented of Nevis' history.
Archaeological evidence from this time is scarce and needs considerably more attention.
In terms of the hypotheses presented in Chapter One, data from Phase I has only partial
applicability. Hypothesis 1 suggests capitalism was not acting to structure early
settlement and that landscape features would exhibit small productive capacity, organized
by familiar patterns at the core. This appears to be the case to the extent the limited
database can be quantiﬁed. Between initial settlement in 1625 and mid century, the
colony was comprised of small, interdependent, plantations owned by companies of
gentlemen adventurers, tradesmen and servants. This much is clear from documents.
What archaeological evidence suggests is that there was little in material culture that
distinguished these social groups one from another, at least in the form of non-perishable
artifacts. We can conjecture that even if master and indentured servant dressed similarly
or ate from similar wares, what they ate and with whom, would have provided
unequivocal distinctions in rank. Future research focusing on foodways might yield data
relevant to this question.

It is interesting to contemplate the shift from tobacco to sugar production despite
evidence that tobacco could be highly proﬁtable and required little overhead and less
construction or expertise. The probable warehouses at Jamestown could serve as easily
for tobacco processing facilities as sugar storage. They may also have residential
functions for laborers as well as those of higher rank. Ceramic assemblages are of
domestic character and seemingly out of place in a specialized production zone unless a

residential component is considered.

131

Signiﬁcantly, sugar plantations could more easily support traditional hierarchical
relations than other forms of agricultural enterprise. Top down management, and the
range of occupations available from those demanding specialized skills to the unskilled
manual laborer, accommodated familiar patterns of the European divisions of labor, and
could reinforce status distinctions. As capitalism developed, these existing distinctions
may have been upheld allowing the elite from feudal relations to eventually emerge as the
elite in capitalist relations.

Labor problems on Nevis were chronic. Initially, indentured Europeans were brought
to the island. Those who survived, and this was never a given, often became small land
holders and tried to enter the sugar economy. Most, according to written accounts, failed
and came to ﬁll various slots within traditional feudal character of society. But with
acquisition of land plots by these former laborers (the key lure of indentures), feudal
obligations would be tenuous at best. Perhaps feudal relations were rendered more
tenuous by being in the periphery, outside traditional jurisdictions of control.

Hypothesis 2 suggests that changes in landscape and settlement were due to shift
toward capitalism and the systemic needs of the new economic system emerging. This is
a diachronic issue and Phase I data alone can not be used to explicate change. My model
for development cannot be supported at this point either, data is simply too scarce.
However, Phase I does provide a baseline for comparisons of material culture and
landscape that will be possible after subsequent phases are described. Land use during
Phase I, based on survey, can be characterized as small scale agriculture in isolated units,
relatively near one another, but stretching along the coastal ﬂats. Mill structures were

open structures, small, and part timber, part masonry as found in the lower environmental

132

zones of St John (see Appendix 1 for site plans). Commodity production varied, but most
were not as labor intensive nor as land exhaustive as required by the sugar industry and
the plantocracy to come.

Hypothesis 3 suggests that environmental changes and exploitation can be explained in
terms of capitalist development. Documentary sources and Phase I data allow this issue to
be addressed in a limited way through analysis of plantation spread, road construction,
and deforestation. Development advanced only as fast as the jungle was cleared, and this
enterprise was arduous and depended on available labor. Thus, clearing was likely
exponential as new settlers arrived. The variable load ﬁrst colonizers experienced were
largely those faced by colonists throughout the Lesser Antilles, namely, issues of soil
fertility, cleared space, the need for water, and a want of labor. Additionally, colonists
had to provide their own defense and shipping, all the while uncertain of markets in the
mother country.

At this stage the colony consisted of no more than two towns, which acted as nominal
central-places. These places were not founded because of their centrality to plantations
but on the basis of safe anchorage; therefore, environment dictated where shipping could
be located. To some degree then Phase I settlement was more concentrated and
inﬂuenced by geography than in subsequent phases as more colonists arrived. Thus we
may conjecture that while established for economic purposes, central-places may have
also had political, defensive, or social signiﬁcance by default as populations were in
closer quarters, and estates yet to gain semi-autonomous status.

Each company cleared its own land and had its own trades-people according to historic

sources. While all were drawing from the same pool in the core, the success of these

133

companies appears to have depended in large part on the talents of the skilled craftsmen
within the groups, hard work, and luck. More often than not luck was a weather related
phenomena. Initial investments were intended to sustain colonists and plantation
development long enough for realization of proﬁts through sale of the assorted luxury
products they grew. Governance was through crown appointment but the colony was
largely left to its own devices, semi-autonomous if not self-sufﬁcient.

By 1650, numerous individuals and collectives were experimenting with larger scale
production. Sugar was introduced among the colonies but the lack of expertise in both its
cultivation and reﬁnement, and the long period required for cane to mature, meant it
would not be as important as other cultigens until production problems could be resolved.
Small sugar works, of the type found during survey were possibly the norm and
documentary sources suggest the same for other islands. Of course, such production
problems that attended sugar had long been mastered by the Spanish and Portuguese.
When the expertise and skills of sugar plantation management reached Nevis and other
lesser Antilles islands in early Phase II, there comes a marked increase in the scale of
production and a ﬂood of sugar into home markets bringing about signiﬁcant price
declines, which in turned made the commodity affordable to economic classes previously
excluded from consumption. This may well have spurred demand. Charlestown was
established as an alternate port at Gallows Bay by the dawn of Phase II and eclipsed
Jamestown as the chief urban center, probably because the bay was more defensible. The
Nevis Council would eventually establish Charlestown as the principal shipping place

with completion of Ft. Charles.

134

As the road system was essentially completed before the major inﬂux of African
slaves, who ultimately would be used to maintain the system, the road network
represents a planned system of expedience, enabling companies access to coastal sites
and the interior. Our survey results point to the road network as a deﬁning variable for
subsequent generations of planters; however, its inﬂuence in Phase I is uncertain. A coast
road between Newcastle in the north to Bath Plain south of Charlestown would have
served as an artery of some importance. Once in place, the network ordered the
movement of people and goods, and would have patterned future settlement. New
plantations, churches, and markets likely closely adhered to the system of roads in the
dramatic agro-industriial growth that marks Phase II.

Based on survey evidence, in terms of my model, I suggest settlement proceeded
around the island’s shore north and south, penetrating the forest to at least 1000 feet by
1655, that plantations spread with the clearing of land along the coast and the penetration
of roads into the interior. The scale of plantations and the use of rectangular tracts
appears to have been an effort by colonists to impose a familiar order on the environment.
Experimentation with commodity production and increasing scales of production, labor
relations, and patterns of residence following initial settlement suggest a colony based on
models of basic mercantilism. No evidence can be provided that suggests integration of
capitalism by any particular sector of society in this phase, although historic data hints at
increasing consumer demands in the core state. Nor can boundary indicators be identiﬁed
for this period.

During these ﬁrst years some 50-60 ships called annually to take off produce of the

colony (Hilton 1675; M011 1708). Settlement expansion was not immediately based on

135

 

St.John Parish Phase I

M: mill complex 1. SJ14MM5/16-2

T: windmill tower 2 SJ8KD5/22-l

V: village ruins '

As: artifact scatter 3' SJ8MM5/22'1

W: well

C: cistern

F: masonry foundations 4 Nevis peak
31 bridge ,1" I, 3232 11

0: house platform + 170900" ,f' 985 m

Vp: possible village 623600" I"

n].
x" . -" 2000
Pansh boundary . .‘VL
Road (modern) _ muting!”
Drainage ghuts Ham1lton .1". i Zone B
7 - estate I"
Rums .-. -

«. _17°08'00

{I ’ E'- Main
7.. ' As 2 " \ng i road

  
    
   

1 Zone C
‘1
1
l
' . ’ 1" ‘1 Saddle Hill
Caribbean \\ r l A 125011
I
_ Sea '
Grid North
{Iagnetic'
Iorth

Miles :*-::—I
KM GEE-“a:

2

 

 

 

Figure 4-4. Map of St John Parish showing locations of Phase 1 sites relative to environmental features
For reference, Charlestown, Hamilton estate and modern roads are included. These early settlements
are in the coastal ﬂat lands and near large drainage ghuts. Although we did not identify Phase 1 sites in
the broad expanse between those shown here, the model suggests there should be a few. Many Phase 11
sites are in the expanse and may have been built over existing Phase I components.

136

 

St. Thomas Parish Phase I

l. Jamestown

M: mill complex W3 W0“ 03 house platform 2_ ST4MM5/29-1
T: windmill tower C: cistern VP? possible village 3, sr4sss/29-1
v; village ruins B: bridge 4. ST4KD5/29-1
As: artifact scatter F: masonry foundation 5_ STSaMM7/ 11-1

  
  

Caribbean
Sea
~ [one D
OQX , Road Z Parish boundary
A53 1 4 Q“. E Road
gk‘, E Drainage ghuts
. i‘. - ‘ U Ruins
H. \ lone (
'1 ‘ W Elevation zone

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'\.
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2000 .1) \m Is

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Grid north

Magnetic 4

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Charlestown Miles 0 1
m

0 1 2

 

 

 

Figure 4-5. Map of St Thomas Parish showing Phase I sites relative to environmental features. As with
St John, settlement appears to be in the relatively ﬂat coastal areas along drainages. Modern road and
Charlestown shown for reference. Jamestown was settled on the coast near freshwater springs.

137

market demands but appears opportunistic in scope. In general, artifacts and built features
clearly associated with the initial development phase on Nevis are few and can only
support a generalized characterization of settlement. Sites identiﬁed by survey as Phase I
all have extensive Phase II components. In Phase

II rapid expansion is discemable. There appears a diversiﬁcation of material culture, site
type, and signiﬁcant changes in the variable load with increased productivity.

Of the many sites recorded only one can be construed as urban in character—a
population center with commercial, religious, and civic components—not principally
focused on agricultural production. The landscape of Nevis historically, as today, has few
areas meeting the criteria for an urban designation. Plantation settlements and villages
were disconnected from mercantile centers and in many cases at considerable distance
from them, although none were actually at great distance. Indeed the entire industrial
aspect of the colony appears to have been rural as opposed to urban. As nearly every
element of the plantation operation was imported, to suggest they were autonomous
would be specious. Furthermore, plantations did not ﬁt into any cookie-cutter pattern.
Idealized plantation models prevalent in the eighteenth century were likely unknown
during Phase I.

As Phase I merged with Phase II, colonists faced uncertain futures. England was
engaged in civil war, islands lacked adequate defenses, and small islands seemed
crowded. Turmoil among the individual colonies provides a useful historical segue into

the next chapter.

138

Chapter Five

Nevis Phase II 1655-1785

Nevis contains 320,000 acres. . .2000 acres patented, the whole island
settled, except the top of the mountain. ..In Nevis, ﬁve places for trade,
but two considerable; Charles Town. where are good dwellings and
storehouses, built with the country timber, not exceeding 60 feet long
and 20 broad, story and a half, the "Hurri-Canes" having taught

the people to build low.

Calendar of States Papers
Colonial Series 1676 [reprinted 1964]

The importance of sugar as a trade commodity can not be overemphasized. Between
1655 and 1700, the demand for sugar increased many fold. The landscape of Nevis
appears to have changed dramatically during this time as plantation operations expanded
widely to encompass the entire island. Small mill operations were established and new
investors arrived with servants and slaves to establish sugar estates. Our survey revealed
a built landscape still rich in remnants of Phase II industrial development. Nevis was
foremost a sugar colony and sugar complexes were not merely dominant, but dominating
features of landscape. Nearly every quadrat included identiﬁably industrial structures or
evidence of built landscape designed to support industrial scale production. Expert
engineering and masonry was employed to make the sugar-complexes permanent and
impressive. The key element to the new landscape is scale, both in terms of size and
number of estates. Data allowed the questions of both the character of settlement change
and spatial organization to be addressed.

Historical Context for Phase II

In 1655, conditions on Nevis were far from secure. With the rise of Oliver Cromwell

many Royalists ﬂed England to resettle on Caribbean colonies. Barbados in particular

experienced a rush of aristocrats and an inﬂux of capital. By 1648 Barbadians had the

139

reigns on sufﬁcient political power to proclaim Charles II as King of England and they
attempted to sway all the island colonies away from their positions of neutrality. The year
1650 was climacteric. The passage of an Act by the Commonwealth of England forbid
trade with Barbados, Antigua, Virginia, and Sommers Island because of rebellion. Once
again the Caribbean became the scene of political and economic upheaval. Barbados was
the chief economic rival of Nevis and Nevisian planters, regardless of political
sentiments, must have brieﬂy enjoyed a windfall. By 1652 Barbados was forced into
surrender.

The capture of Jamaica, in 1655, part of Cromwell's Western Design-~a consolation for
failure to capture San Domingo—-opened up a vast new territory for planters. English
forces met almost no resistance from the small Spanish gan’ison stationed there. Puerto de
Caguaga, the sand spit that extended from the land, was renamed Port Royal. Bringing
their slaves with them, many planters from Nevis sought new opportunity and resettled in
Jamaica which offered considerably better prospects for plantation expansion than did
Nevis. A minimum of 1500 persons migrated from Nevis. Additional ships from England
arrived at Nevis, we are told in a complaint, "to. . .induce people to transplant themselves,
and to St. Christophers to draw what people he can from thence" (CSP 19642114). Nevis
underwent a period of brief decline. Thus begins Phase II on Nevis.

As will be made evident in the discussion to follow, landscape changes and
development appear to keep pace with historic and economic indicators for change rather
than lagging behind. This suggests Nevis was not isolated or on the margins despite
being a peripheral outpost. Communication between the colony and the core probably

conditioned responsive changes, maintained through constant maritime activity.

140

Determining which environmental changes can be attributed to expansion under
capitalism and which simply to general ecological ignorance has been fundamental for
addressing Hypothesis 3. The historical and archaeological evidence for modiﬁcation of
the environment is presented here in terms of roads, settlements, and introduced plants.

Mills employing animals used horses, mules or donkeys. Cattle were infrequently
used. Most of the mill complexes we surveyed had animal mills, even if windmills were
also present. Eventually the mule became the most important animal for such work in the
leeward islands (Merrill 1955). Horses were brought from London, but also from Rhode
island and New England. John Pinney, owner of Montravers Estate, imported camels for
his mills in 1778 in a brief but unsuccessful experiment (Pares 1950). In truth, there
appears to have never have been enough cattle on the island to afford adequate manuring
of any plantation. Ash from boiling houses was more commonly used as fertilizer. Even a
large estate on Nevis of over two hundred acres in 1775, had only 4 bulls, 9 steers, 12
cows, 4 heifers, and 6 calves, along with 28 mules (Pares 1950). And complicating the
archaeological record, kiln waste was apparently shipped over as ballast to use as
fertilizer as well.1 The historic record does not provide much evidence for the use of
plows. With slave labor available in large supply after 1730, it is likely all turning of soil
was by hoe and backbreaking labor.

Around 1650, experimentation yielded to market forces as planters narrowed
production to one or two principal crops. By 1675, nearly the entire network of roads on
Nevis, which would serve into the twentieth century, had been completed. These roads

can be traced on the few historic maps dating to 1704, and remain on the landscape,

‘

' I have not found documentary evidence corroborating this claim, but the assertion is frequently made on
Nevis that broken pottery was dug into the cane pieces to add lime to the soil.

141

albeit, obscured and difﬁcult to follow. The landscape itself had been transformed as we

can interpret from the journal of Hans Sloane in 1675:

Nieves, sometimes Mevis or Meves, was inhabited in 1628. It consists of one mountain of about four
miles to the top wence it is an easy descent to all parts of the island, but steepest toward the town
where there is a road. They have neither springs nor rivers but have what water they make use of from
cisterns receiving the rainwater...l went to the top to gather plants and though it had nor did not rain
at bottom; yet I was taken there in so great showers that l was wet unto the skin...

Some 320,000 acres were then considered “manurable”2 by the regional
administration, of which 2000 acres were patented (CSP [1675] 1964:499). By
comparison, Antigua, more than twice the size of Nevis was judged to have only 100,000
acres manurable, yet 70,000 had been patented. Despite the obvious difference in the
number of colonists, and the fact that the English navy had established a major port on
Antigua, Nevis was still reported to have the best built towns and roads of all the
colonies. Other islands in the immediate vicinity, Staia, Saba, and Anquilla, were deemed
only ﬁt for raising stock animals.3 Those who settled during the last quarter of the
seventeenth century with an eye toward becoming “West India Planters” followed a
different strategy from their predecessors in part because prime land was unavailable, and
because investment capital was available in new forms. But most notably because a great
deal of investment capital was required. Larger estates and acquisition of existing
plantations provided the easiest avenue, if not the only practical way, for entrepreneurs to
insert themselves into the proﬁtable sugar market. Such an approach was not practiced
before the late seventeenth century and suggests that important changes were occurring in

ﬁnancing and investment practices in the core.

 

2 “Manurable” was a common phrase implying cultivatable land. or land available for plantations.
3 Anguilla was brieﬂy used as a slave breeding island.

142

———-——

 

A few Nevisian estate maps from the eighteenth century illustrate sugar works
concentrated into a tight block with slave housing at some distance, and planters' home
isolated further (see Figures 5-2 and 5-3). Such arrangements contrast signiﬁcantly with
contemporary literature for models touting the virtues of efﬁcient plantation design that
were coming into vogue.

Archaeological evidence from surveyed sites conﬁrms to a degree the departure from
idealized estates and supports in generalizable terms a layout that isolated labor from the
constant view of the overseer, agent, or owner/planter. Why this arrangement should
arise is likely social construction rather than industrial need. In part this spatial
arrangement may have been necessitated by the linear nature of the estates of which we
have information, yet there was still sufﬁcient space on plantations to have followed
planning models. In practical terms, planters were only permitting housing in marginal
lands, while maintaining social distance through physical separation. The presence of
glass sherds embedded in the plastered tops of high walls is revealing of unspoken fears
and realities of being one of the oppressor class.4

Signiﬁcantly, our survey always found evidence of plantations but little evidence of
the slaves who had labored on them. One transect in St. Thomas near Tower Estate
crossed a cluster of stone piles that may have been slave housing but a lack of surface
artifacts and other indicators prevent certainty (see Appendix 1). We recorded the
location by GPS for future investigation.

For the would-be planter during the eighteenth century, a number of treatises on
estates and plantation operations were available. Most are of French origin and depict

idealized plantations designed by le methode scientique, intended to yield maximum

143

harvests through efﬁcient layout and labor management (see Figure 5-1). These idealized
layouts were possible in areas of ﬂat land with contiguous rectangular estates. The
efﬁcient plans optimized space and kept slaves and servants under constant surveillance
through careful space planning. Great house and overseers' houses were situated relative
to slave quavers such that all comings and goings passed by the plantation authorities.
However, based on our sample, this idealized plan does not appear to have been realized
with any regularity on Nevis. Seventeenth century plantations had already sectioned the
island and the best land and much of the island was under cultivation. The few extant
estate maps reveal a very different pattern of plantation planning, a different model of
efﬁciency, and signiﬁcantly, a greater accommodation to natural environmental
constraints than the idealized plans would allow. Many of the sugar-works documented
(see Appendix 1 site plans) support my interpretation that land contours were carefully
integrated into construction design. The layout of milling, boiling and curing facilities
appears to achieve standardization in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, but
not its placement within the estate. Rather, proximity to roads and needs of transportation
can be interpreted as variables of most importance to estates. The road system of the past
was more extensive than it is today.5

A plantation required at least four different land components; ﬁelds for cane (cane
pieces), pasture for stock, provision grounds for slaves, and forest reserves for fuel. On
Nevis, forest land had been depleted quite early in colonization. Planters were forced into

importing ﬁiel or using the baggasse (dried crushed cane). Stone walls were used to

 

4 The embedded bottle bases and body sherds help date the structures to the mid 17005.
5 It may be more accurate to say that fewer roads are maintained or remain passable by vehicle today, so
many are overgrown. Still some limited foot trafﬁc is possible.

144

e

‘-

 

Figure 5-1. Idealized plantation from French treatise on estate management. Fixed boundaries for cane
pieces are designated by Roman numerals. Various industrial works are ordered to one side of the Great
House and slave dwellings are ordered in rows to the side. Source: Avelle, Tableau comparatiﬂ Paris 1799.

 

 

Figures 5-2 and 5-3. Enlargements from Clarke Estate map depicting sugar works (leﬂ) and slave quaners
(right). Late eighteenth century. Note the works immediately adjacent to road. Slave quarters between two
ravines. Original image rendered in bright watercolors. Estate house shown in another section of the map.
Horatio Nelson Museum Archives, Charlestown, Nevis. Courtesy NHCS.

145

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

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Figure 54. Estate map from Nevis. Not the rectangularity of the estate lands and incorporation
of differing environments ﬁom seashore to highlands. Source: Caribbeana Vol. VI, 2000. The
estate also exists in detached parcels signifying labor had to move across the landscape.

delimit boundaries. Provision grounds were adjacent to slaves houses. As for pasture,
very little exists on the island, and planters used all reasonable pasture land for cane.
Natural topography also meant that it would be unusual for any two plantations to have
identical layouts even when coterminous or of similar size.

Writing of Nevis in 1772, Thomas Jeffers describes the hogs as feeding on Indian
corn, Spanish potatoes and sugar cane (essentially the same diet as slaves). Fowl and
turkey, both imported, were fed much the same. Grazing animals devastated the under-
story and stripped shrubs of bark. All these beasts are present on Nevis today. Native
plants stood little chance against the voracious habits of non-native animals. But native
plants were also not a suitable fodder and colonial stock grew smaller over time, and
were always underfed. The butter was said to be "bad and the cheese worse" (Jeffers

17722524). Producing cheese in the tropics is hard to imagine but colonists attempted to

146

replicate their familiar diet in every way. According to Labat (1742) the Green Vervet
monkey was ﬁrst introduced to the Caribbean as a pet, some escaped, and now troops
have permanent residence. The story may be true, however, there is little supporting
evidence. What matters is that the environment has been altered by their presence and
they continue to plague Nevisians, stealing ripe mangos and other fruit. Mongoose were
also introduced as a means of controlling another stowaway; rats. Lizard, frog, and bird
populations have suffered most. But the untenable practices of human colonists were of
equal or greater impact. Nevis was famous for the variety and size of lizard species, noted
by the ﬁrst settlers as an important food for native Carib. One variety grew to ﬁve feet in
length (head to tail extremity) and about one foot in girth. Called Ouaymaca, these
behemoths were soon eradicated from Nevis through hunting. M011 (1708) relates that the
ﬁrst settlers were shown by natives how to eat them. They were apparently hard to kill.
Three shots from a gun was said to fail in dispatching the animal. Carib natives showed
that a stick thrust up the nose was all it took. By 1700 there were none left on Nevis: “. ..
the creatures having been eliminated by the industry of the colonists” (M011 1708). In all,
biologists believe some 87 species have become extinct in the Caribbean in historic times
(Barlow 1993). These accounts and the changes in environment recorded by survey all
are indicators of a landscape evolving during settlement.
Survey Results by Environmental Zone
St. John Parish Quadrats
Zone D Elevations (from sea level to 500 feet)

The lower elevations of St. John are sun baked and parched, characterized by scrub,

acacia (Acacia nilotica), century plant (Agave caribaeicola) or aloe (Aloe barbadensis),

147

various cactus including prickly pear (Opauntia dilleni), Turk's caps (Melocactus
intortus), organ pipes (Cephalocereus royenii), and other plant varieties adapted to poor
soils needing little annual rainfall. The ground is rocky and barren of grasses. Except
around residential areas, trees were limited to isolated stands of Logwood
(Haemataxylum campechianum). As one can tell from its scientiﬁc name, this tree
species is an import to the island, as indeed were nearly all those mentioned. Aloe was
most extensive in areas of abandoned domestic structures from which it seems to have
spread. Aloe thrived on the slopes of deep ravines, or ghuts, that jaggedly scar the
landscape. In the gentle sloping terrain terracing was common but widely spaced. We
were fortunate to locate aerial photos of one stretch of lower St. John dated to the 19405.
The extensive use of terracing clearly stands out of the otherwise muddy image.
Computer enhancement helped clarify the landscape through high contrast imaging" The
vast ﬁelds are relatively level, and today are either covered in acacia or lie barren.
S_JQ1_8 and M. Standing on stone boundary walls that demarcate one property from
another, one can easily see windmill towers in several directions. At a time when these
ﬁelds were in cane it would have been possible to view the operations of at least two
other mills from any of the mill-complexes. Two stone animal pens measuring 25 feet by
40 feet, were also noted.

Found within the quadrats of lower elevations were several sugar works, and in
M, stone house platform groupings. M followed a ghut from 500 feet south to
sea level. We terminated at a well that appeared carefully maintained for modern use. Its
construction was like all other coastal wells dating from the late seventeenth century but

had a recent cement upgrade around its perimeter. Artifact scatters in multiple locations

 

6 The image is not sufﬁciently clear for reproduction in this work.

148

ranged in composition from early eighteenth century materials to twentieth century items.
These locations were not subjected to testing, so site depth is indeterminate.

One massive rock outcropping on the coast in the vicinity of Whitehall Estate, mg,
was littered with late seventeenth and eighteenth century pipe stem and bowl fragments.
Ranges for these dates is based on bore diameter and designs. No systematic collection
was performed. The terrain in this parched and rocky district is void of arable soil and
wind drives the dust. M was completed in reverse going north. Numerous sugar-
works were encountered with windmill towers in poor condition. Two of these are
identiﬁed on the 1984 OSM as Brown estate and Pembroke estate (not to be confused
with Pembroke ﬁirther north in the same quad. We could not identify the other works and
their poor condition and lack of artifacts made it difﬁcult to assign a reliable date.

SJQ8, SJ O9, SJOI 1.These quadrats were previously discussed in terms of Phase I
development. Phase II features and artifacts were also recorded indicating the continuous
occupation and use of these lands just south of Charlestown. New government housing
and road work created minor problems for us in maintaining straight line transects.
Artifacts scatters on the surface of broad terraces were distinctly late eighteenth century
in composition. As Sm passes through the village of Bath, we were often restricted to
dirt paths and empty lots where eighteenth century trash heaps were evident.

Not in any of our random quadrats, but within St. John Parish just west of SJQ8,
stands Fort Charles. We investigated the site principally to record building details
because the fort has a known construction date. We even found clay pipe stems
embedded in the mortar. Measuring bore diameter added credibility to pipe stem dates we

were obtaining elsewhere.

149

 

St John Parish g Nevis

Quadrats containing Phase II L__i Peak
A3232

 
 
 
  
    
   
  
  
 
 
   
  

Miles0 v- - v- 1
KmO

 

 

' 2 1000 A

B

   
   

C

esto wn
7 C

F0]? Main Road
Charles
(ruin) ‘, .
Saddle
Hill
A
Key 1250

Zones

[El Ghuts
El Roads

1:] Elevation Benchmark .

E Parish Boundary
5 :All quadrats by number

D

Sea

 

 

 

Figure 5-5. Map of St John Parish. Quadrats with identiﬁed Phase II features. Numbers are
anchors for all quadrats. Quads run north-south.

Table 5-1.
St. John Parish. Survey quadrats containing Phase 11 components.
N/A refers to sites not assigned a number. Estate names given when known.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quad Zone Site types Site # Artifacts Landscape components
SJQ8 D Artifact SJ 8MM5/22-1 Pipes, Bath village, ﬂat plain, terracing
clusters SJ8MM5/22-2 ceramics mostly obscured. Split by ghut
SJ 8KD5/22-1 boarded by old road

SJQ8 D Stone wall None None Flat plain. Wall separates mill

towers.

SJQ9 D Sugar works SJ9KR5/22-1 Ceramics, "Long Point Road site." Animal
glass, pipes, pen, boundary walls, terracing
industrial broadly spaced, old service road.

SJQ19 D Stone wall N/A None Flat plain. Acacia thickets.

SJQI9 D Animal pen SJl9BBS/22-l Ceramics Flat plain. Acacia. Wide terracing

SJQl7 D House N/A Mostly Flat, rocky open scrub. Gentle

Whitehall estate modern slope west. Acacia and agave.

SJQ17 D Well SJ 1 7MM7/ l-l None Coastal, rocky termination of ghut

SJQIS D Sugar works SJ 1 5MM5/2l-l Ceramics Mill tower, eroded gentle slope

Pembroke
SJQI4 D Sugar works Brown estate None Mill tower, boiling facility

 

 

 

 

150

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SJQI4 D Sugar works SJ 14 KD5/19-2 none Boiling train
SJQI4 D Sugar works, SJ 14(RD)5/ 19-1 Ceramics, Steam mill. Clarifying tank,
cisterns, great Richmond- glass. pipes, industrial materials, boiler, coppers
house Lodge industrial
Pilot D Mill complex Dogwood estate Ceramics Mill tower, boiling house, cistern,
Quad 3 glass, pipes residence foundations. dense
industrial acacia forest. ﬂat land
Pilot D Mill complex Coxheath estate Ceramics, Animal mill, mill tower, sugar
Quad 3 industrial works, cisterns, coppers,
residential structure. animaljen
SJQ6 D Church N/A Industrial Anglican Church on main road,
copper in yard, cemetery,
unidentiﬁed ruins on grounds.
SJQI4 D Artifact SJ 14KD5/ 19-1 Ceramics Ravines, gullies, acacia and agave
scatter thickets. Towers visible.
WstQ8 D Fort structure Fort Charles Not assessed Stands on eroding cliff
SJQIO C Terraces N/A None Scrub forest.
SJQIO C Artifact SJ10MM5/19-l Ceramics, Situated on ridge adjacent to ghut
clusters [PW7-3 1/02-1] glass, pipes, cliff, terraced slopes, cobble road
kettles. slate
SJQ 1 O C Mill complex Bush Hill Ceramics, Acacia forest. Ghut and eroded
# not assigned glass, ravines. Steam engine, boiler,
industrial tower and smoke stack
SJQ12 C C istem SJ12KD5/16-1 None Thick forest.
SJQ13 C Artifact None Ceramics On ridge line in thick agave and
scatter acacia. Terraces
SJQIZ C Mill complex SJ12MM5/l6-2 Glass Prenlis estate? Animal mill, boiling
house, modiﬁed walls. Adjacent
road: below Saddle Hill.
SJQ12 C Foundation, SJ12SS6/6-l Ceramics Kitchen building for ridge house.
chimney
SJQ12 C Foundations PW7-30/02-1,2,3 None Rectangular stone rubble structures
adjacent road
SJQ12 C Foundations PW7-30/02-4 None Possible small boiling house
and ovens
SJ Q1 2 C House SJ 12KD5/ 16-2 Ceramics, "Ridge house" on ridge, boarded
foundations glass, pipes by stacked stone wall. View to St
Kitts
SJQ7 C foundations N/A None Base of Cole Hill
SJQ3 B foundations None Ceramics Sloped, forested, on cobble road.
Terracing.
SJQ4 B Terracing none Ceramics Steep, dense canopy. Tight terraces
Not in B Mill complex SJ MM8/2-9[02] None Below Cole Hill, along road to
quad Montpelier estate.
SJQl A Artifact SJ 1 DR5/ 13-1 Pipes, Artifacts in new road cut and
cluster ceramics grading for housing
SJQ2 A Terraces none Cut stone Tight terraces on steep slope
SJQ2 A Animal pen SJ2MM5/ 13-1 Pipe stems Stacked stone, dense overgrowth,
trees growing from pen.
SJQl A Terraces None Ceramic Dense forest canopy, steep, angled
sherd along ghut.

 

 

 

 

151

 

 

 

Zone C Elevations (500 feet to 1000 feet)

The slope of St. John continues upward gradually from the sea, but is characterized
by narrow valleys and hills as one approaches 1000 feet in elevation. Terracing is more
distinct, especially in hilly areas, and stacked stone walls used to create steps of ﬂat land
were measured between two feet and four feet in height, depending on slope, and as great
as 15 feet broad. Terraces were found in SJQIO, SJ 012, and Sm.

Adjacent to the Bush Hill complex, in 5&9, extensive artifact scatters were found
in otherwise barren stretches of scrub. Whitewares of several types (see Appendix 3:302
for type descriptions), bottle glass, and iron kettle fragments suggest a nineteenth century
village, possibly associated with the sugar mill following emancipation. Two abandoned
cobble roads were traced, one leading from Bush Hill to Brown Hill and the cluster of
mills there, and the other leading from the artifact scatter to Cole Hill. These roads are
shown on some pre-nineteenth century maps. Bush Hill estate dates from the late
eighteenth century and continued into the nineteenth century with a steam mill (still in
situ). The complex is on a rise bordering a road and stone bridge crossing a shallow ghut.

The road linking the village of Cox with Coxheath Estate parallels the Grandee Ghut, a
major drainage. Coxheath dates from Phase II and has an imposing windmill tower.
Many of the wooded components of the mill superstructure rested against the interior
walls. At several locations along the ghut we recorded artifact scatters of domestic
character, stone house platforms, small plastered cisterns, and features of nineteenth
century construction. A community cistern was located adjacent to the road, and another

was serendipitously found in dense brush while setting corner points for quadrat 51912.

 

 

Figure 5-6. Coast round island road in lower St. John parish, Between White Hall and Dogwood
estates SJQI9. Torrents have gushed through the ghut this bridge spans and have undermined its
foundation. Continuing easterly around the island the road vanishes altogether.

These are of cut stone, mortar and plastered interiors, Some are rectangular, others
rounded at the interior comers. Depending on where in St. John one is, this elevation
zone has the greatest variation in topography and vegetation. Rainfall appears to be the
principle determinant of conditions. Stone clusters and artifact scatters are all that remain
of house groupings. Several clusters of house platforms were documented in the rocky
ﬂats near the sea cliffs.
Zone B Elevations (1000 feet to 1500 feet)

Cooling breezes help make this zone a preferred place to live for current Nevisians and
judging from the number of house platforms and estates facing the cooling breezes of the
trades, it would seem to have been equally popular in the past. A number of estate

complexes located in this zone host windmills although there are exceptions.

153

 

 

Figure 5-7. Boundary wall of stacked stone. Although in collapsed condition the wall stands three feet
and eight feet wide. In a few places the original condition was observed with a height of 5 feet. Lower
St. John near Coxheath estate, between SJQl9 and SJQIS. Boundary may date from late eighteenth to
early nineteenth century. Surveyed during 2002 season.

 

 

Figure 5-8. South lower St. John (Zone D) is characterized by rocky uneven ground with little soil.
Stone piles formerly for house platforms are grouped in clusters of three to ﬁve. Tape in foreground
measures lmeter across. Artifacts (bottles, plate and cup fragments)suggest nineteenth century.

154

One unidentiﬁed mill-complex in a hollow beneath Cole Hill had an animal mill and
small boiling train (SJ MM8/2-9[02] (see Appendix 1). The property owner allowed me a
brief reconnaissance. This complex did not fall within the random sample but deserved
attention as it is not shown on current maps. I have very tentatively identiﬁed this
complex as Beaumont estate based on the Iles 1871 map.

Quadrats in this zone SJQ and S_JQﬂ, intermittently traversed from dense vegetation
into clearings for past and present villages. Terracing was again found to shape the land
in every location in every quadrat. In many places the stone walls used to create terrace
levels were distinct, at other times only the cascading stair-step of earth was visible. In
several areas adjacent to old roads, the terracing for past cane pieces now serves as level
ground for homes. A few modern dwellings have incorporated historic foundations as
their own, even when the wooden structures do not fully span the foundations, leaving
them precariously perched.

Most of the population of St. John is concentrated in villages along the entire length of
the main road. But survey evidence strongly indicates a more diffuse population in the
past, with numerous now abandoned house clusters close to sugar—mills. Problematically,
we could not accurately determine the site histories of house clusters from surface
scatters. Flat irons were found frequently among the stones suggesting a nineteenth to
early twentieth century occupation episode.

The highest sugar works noted in St. John was the Morgan's Estate, at 1000 feet
elevation. We did not have permission to investigate the property but could examine it
from the road that runs adjacent. The ruins boarder an open cattle grazing ﬁelds and cut

by a dirt and cobble road that links with upper round road. It has a windmill and attached

155

vaulted storage structures are of mid eighteenth century construction. Artifacts scattered
and emerging from the road bed are late eighteenth to nineteenth century types. The mill
stands like sentinel above the village that descends the slope beginning from the opposite,
west side of the road. The road cuts through the grounds and foundations are exposed in
the road bed. With the sample documentation of Morgan's village we completed data
collection on three villages at comparable scale. These villages have deﬁnite post-
emancipation occupation and are discussed at greater length in Chapter Six within the
context of Nevis’ changing landscape after 1800.

Zone A Elevations (1500 feet to 2000 feet)

This upper zone within St. John has very little modern habitation. A few extravagant
luxury homes have been built, carved into the hillsides. Historic sugar-complexes and
great houses were built even within this increasingly steep terrain. In two locations,
within S_JQ2, seventeenth century ceramics were brought to the surface by modern house
construction, and deposits of seventeenth and eighteenth century material were exposed
in a road cut leading to new clearings for future development. Artifacts suggest that even
before 1700, clearing of the slopes was widespread and that upper elevations were
exploited for agricultural production and residences. Terracing was found in all quadrats
of this zone and substantively supports assertions by Sloane in 1685 regarding the
deforesting of Nevis. Many terraces were as close as eight feet across and ran narrowly
parallel between intersecting ghuts like rungs of a ladder. Quadrats surveyed in this area
required careful negotiation of property boundaries and cautious hiking. Narrow trails in
Sill alongside the terraces may have been recent, but easily suggest the toil necessary to

work in these steep environs.

156

Ravines dropped off precipitously into well watered narrow valleys. These ravines are
popular with banana farmers. Stone walls, rock shelters, and animal pens were also
recorded in $in and SELL but not possible to date. Animal pens were comprised of
stacked stone forming an enclosure of up to twenty feet diameter with a single opening
six to ten feet across. Some were round and others rectangular, and one was built to take
advantage of a house sized boulder as one side. Within this zone, temperatures were
cooler and rain more common. The resulting vegetation is more in line with what one
expects from a tropical rainforest, however, this is due more to secondary growth from
the modern era than remnant stands of native ﬂora. Vegetation density was a factor in
deciding to conduct transects at ten meter intervals throughout this zone. From the
vantage point of this zone, windmills were occasionally visible across the landscape.

St. Thomas Parish Quadrats
Zone D Elevations (sea level to 500 feet)

While St. John's seashore was rocky, active, and marked by short precipitous cliffs,
St. Thomas in contrast, hosts most of the island's beaches and marshes. Due to the wedge
shape of the parish, much of this zone extends northward from Charlestown, ending at
Hurricane Hill. Historic French maps made in preparation of invasions depict defensive
works and shore batteries running the entire length of the coast in St. Thomas. Early
English maps also indicate defensive walls, as well as small forts. Between Fort Charles,
built in 1675, and Newcastle to the north, Nevis was a fortress (Hubbard 1996).

The coastline is shaped by two important forces. The ﬁrst is the prevailing wind and
near shore current, which run northward toward the strait called The Narrows, separating

Nevis from St. Kitts. The other is hurricanes. The coast is regularly scoured by the these

157

natural sculptors, one acting patiently and the other dramatically. The beach on the north
side of Charlestown was stripped away by hurricane driven waves in 1999 and
redeposited far to the north at Cades Bay and Qualie Beach. Eighteenth century shore
fortiﬁcations and cannon were exposed in eight feet of water some one hundred yards off
shore as a result (Mackling 2000). I inspected seven in 2000. Coastal erosion and land
loss exposed a burial in 2003 in an area once several hundred feet inland. A former
cemetery is suggested but none are shown on any map in that particular area. (See
Appendix 4 for details of burial excavation).

Three survey quadrats extended from the sea eastward. S_TQ_§ crossed the grounds of
St. Thomas Anglican Church and directly through its adjacent cemetery, where intricately
carved mausoleums marked the graves of island elite dating from the middle to the late
seventeenth century. The Church sits on the highest coastal ground between Charlestown
and Hurricane Hill, surrounded by gentle slopes exhibiting furrows for planting. The area
today is grazed freely by cattle. Nevis continued to produce sugar into the twentieth
century so the abandoned furrows may be recent. New housing development and fencing
prevented us from completing a ﬁlll kilometer quadrat inland from the sea. Additions to
the quadrat were appended as a compromise. The same procedure was followed in S_T_Q;
(changed to SLQLaLt) extending inland from the Jamestown site. As these transects
penetrated thorny acacia ﬁelds a sugar mill-complex was found. ST4altMM5/29-1
consisted of animal mill, boiling house, fully intact cistern and foundations for several
associated structures (see Appendix 1:298). The complex suggests that the Jamestown
area continued to be a center of industrial activity, even if not a town, following the

natural disaster of 1690.

158

 

 

 

Figure 5-9. Close-up from 1704 map depicting Nevis' western shore in vicinity of Jamestown site.
Defensive works and batteries are clearly indicated at several points of vulnerability.

 

 

 

Figure 5-10. Coastal erosion has exposed and threatens fortiﬁcations that once stood inland more than
a hundred yards from the shore. These ruins stand just north of Charlestown. approximately at letter K
in Figure 5-1 1. Pinney Beach Hotel in background.

159

 

  
      

‘Mms' kind,

8 it“ (fill/6

.m

f
p

.."

.19
w 8"
3
A,
/ 6
pw'OOU~Q.-...-.. 3

u"..

 

 

 

Figure 5-11. Enlarged section from the Bellin 1758 map of Nevis. Western coastal defenses from
Charlestown northward to Jamestown area are illustrated. Charlestown is depicted at the bottom (L).
Petit Bourg shown at top (D). This town is shown as Little Borrough on the Jefferys Map. What town
this actually was is uncertain. Possibly Jamestown, but it seems to be in the vicinity of Cotton Ground.
The cartographer indicated cannon installations with capital letters. The numbers refer to depth
soundings in fathoms.

160

Table 5-2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grid North . .i St Thomas Parish
Magnetic Truc ' /// Quadrats containing Phase II E
North North JR

\ ;» 1. \ Miles E
/ I ‘\ 0 [I4 1;: 3M 1 1
Cades if”) \ 0 5 1 2
Jamestowliiay l/ V ”Nil 2 *1.)
Site g S \\%3~/ﬂ:\ Road
, X/ / n3 \\7‘“\\ 5110
\ “has \ 4/ X.
L S K \ 19am
‘3 ‘ C
l * m3; \
LL-s ‘ i / ‘6:\\
7 ‘\ x
,/ 8 \5 > '1 {11100
" 1/ .283“ K” 9L8 _
FL re” “(Q—3&1 K1521
:‘ 10 r/VWN’KYW \ l 1‘ \12 (J 1220011
” " 13 N x
l (“1 12a]; 14
“x ‘1. 15 \ 6/ )
“7;“. 17 V ’I’A
r‘1 \4- 1 ,1 ‘
18 l. 19 x’ .
[I kaw ‘ \ ‘7. 15000 News
’- e . "1500 p k
f 4 I , ea
.--—-___, - -- L , ’ 1000
i Charlestown ‘500

 

 

Figure 5-12. Map of St Thomas Parish showing Phase II quads with identiﬁed Phase 11
components. Numbers represent anchors for all quads of sample. Quads run east-west.

St. Thomas Parish. Survey quadrats containing Phase 11 components.
N/A refers to sites not assigned a number.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quad # Zone Site types Site # Artifacts Landscape components
Pilot quad D Foundations JT[7-02] Pipes, glass, Swampy coconut grove,
Jamestown ceramics along road near beach
STQ8 D Church Not assigned none Anglican church. cemetery
STQ3(4a1t) D Sugar works ST4aMM5/29-l Ceramics, Mill-complex. animal mill,
brick cistern, boiling house
STQ7 (8a1t) C Sugar works ST7aKD6/ l-l Cane hoe Tower estate, tower, boiling
mill house, extensive terracing
STQ7 (8a1t) C Mill ST7aKD6/ 1-2 Industrial On small hill above ghut
complex

 

161

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STQ7 (8a1t) Cistem ST7aKD6/ l -3 None Associated with Tower estate
STQ7(8alt) Foundations ST7aBB6/ l -1 None Dense jungle, coconut palms
in rows
STQ7(8alt) Structure ST7aBB6/ 1-2 None Rectangular building, views
to St Kitts, terracing
STQ] 5 Stone house ST15DR5/21-1 Ceramics Walls, near steep road
STQl9 Foundations, STl9DR5/21-2 Ceramics Masonry walls, 2 stories,
walls (not measured) boundary wall, close
terracing. Dense forest,
thickets
STQl9 Mill ST19KD5/26-1 Industrial, Thick forest, unique stone
complex Rosingtons? iron crushers truss, animal mill, boiling
Iron Jiick house. Two story building
STQ19 Masonry ST19MM5/26-1 None Circular structure of dressed
foundation stone, terraces at 10 m
spacing
STQ17 Building ST17MM5/28-l Ceramics Arched doorway, stairway
STQ17 Villa STI7SSS/28-l None Masonry walls, artiﬁcial
pond, terraces
STQ17 Townhouse ST17KD5/28-1 none Pariss Garden estate, garden
terraces, masonry structures
STQ20alt House Vaughans village Bottles, Extensive village, terraces,
platforms ceramics cobble road, cistern
STQ6 Road beds N/A Pigs stems Dense forest, high canopy

 

 

 

 

 

 

that ruined it and its fortiﬁcations. Additional quadrats in the northernmost region of St.

Thomas, STQl and STQZ, were not possible due to modern luxury homes and the

extreme cliffs.

Zone C Elevations (500 feet to 1000 feet)

All of the quadrats within Zone C, excepting one, were reached by hiking from Pond

Hill along the upper round road. Most of these quads were begun at the lower end and

extended upslope. A network of roads and terraces were found in the process of survey.

Many old roads have been recently improved and new housing is springing up on former

plantation ﬁelds. The Tower Estate was intersected by transects of quadrat STQ7/ 8 alt,

and examined after gaining permission from caretakers. The mill-complex commands a

spectacular view of St Kitts from its elevated position. Both a windmill and animal mill

were on the grounds, but the animal mill was too far from the sugar works to have been

162

 

of practical use. More likely the animal mill represents an earlier operation associated
with the structures immediately adjacent to the windmill contemporary with its
construction. The indication is of two periods of operation and building on the plantation.
Owners had in the past abandoned sugar in favor of coconut palm and standardized rows
of palms now dominate the evenly terraced hills surrounding the complex.

In m the survey team encountered the extremely deep and treacherous Shallow
Ghut (no doubt named with a sense of irony). Transects were begun at higher elevation
directly off the upper round road and were followed down slope to the west. Steep terrain
did not prevent the area from being used in the past and terraces, stone two-story house,
and other structures were recorded in the dense jungle. Transects brought the crew
abruptly out of jungle on to the 15th Tee of the Four Seasons Hotel golf course. The golf
course has been carved from jungle by bulldozer and is spread over a former Estate just
north of the Montravers House.

Two mill complexes were also located and one we have tentatively identiﬁed as
Rosington's (ST19KD5/26-1). The complex included a large animal mill and surprisingly
still retained all three iron vertical cane crushers. Like mill complexes elsewhere on the
island slopes, its engineers had built it to take advantage of natural topography. The
construction evidence and technology in situ suggests an early to late eighteenth century
operation.

The village of Vaughan's was intersected in m and M and is located very near
the large estates situated in lower St. Thomas, immediately north and east of
Charlestown. Stone clusters and house platforms were too numerous to count. Experience

from recording Morgan’s village in St. John parish enabled us to more quickly assess

163

pathways and terrace levels. The village was extensive and we could not accurately
determine its full dimensions in the forest cover. We were, however, able to document a
short swath through a section adjacent to an old cobble road that linked the upper round
road with Charlestown. As with Morgan’s, marginal land was used for house platforms in
tight clusters. Artifacts in surface scatters were primarily nineteenth century medicinal
bottles and printed ceramics. The area documented may not be completely representative
of the village, yet can be said to be random, in that we recorded the ﬁrst clearly evident
clustering of platforms encountered. A distance of 200 feet was arbitrarily designated for
recording. Continuation of the transect crossed numerous clusters upslope exhibiting
similar character to the area we mapped.

Zone B Elevations (1000 feet to 1500 feet)

Some of the most spectacular structures encountered during survey were found in the
zone just above 1000 feet. Quadrats were carried out through dense overgrowth and
beneath tree canopy that often interfered with GPS readings. Slope was at ten to twenty
percent grades leading to thirty percent grades and steeper in several locations.

Two villas or townhouses were intersected. One villa was set among walled formal
gardens, S_TQﬂ. Its western facade stood two stories, with arched windows, remnants of
slate ﬂooring and wide staircases of ﬁnely dressed stone. There were several associated
structures and vaulted chambers beneath the main house. This structure has been
tentatively identiﬁed by Southampton researchers as Pariss Gardens, (shown on the 1871
map) and was a country house on the scale of townhouses enjoyed by country gentlemen
in England--a planters retreat from his industrial sites-~a place to entertain and display

status (see Appendix 1). The other villa is less grand and has not been identiﬁed by name.

164

The smaller structure is nearly square and was associated with small terrace walls on
either of its sides and an artiﬁcial pond. Both villas faced seaward and would have had
expansive panoramic views.

8321] also intersected with a tree known locally as Grandfather Tree. A recent trail
has been cut from Charlestown to the tree as an encouragement to eco-tourists to visit the
"rainforest" of Nevis, bringing them to the magniﬁcent Kapok Tree (similar to Banyan)
with its roots ribboning 40 feet in various directions, one of many buttress root species on
Nevis. Such trees commonly indicate wet, shallow soil, and several were found within
Zone B.

Zone A Elevations (1500 feet to 2000 feet)

This highest zone in St. Thomas again presented terracing and difﬁcult, steep terrain.
No plantation structures were found, but we did intersect areas where old roads have been
graded for recent construction of homes, which may stand atop former plantation
features, S_TQ§- Dirt road beds were peppered with eighteenth century ceramics and the
ubiquitous clay pipe stems. Vegetation included many broadleaf plants, Bromeliads, and
ferns. Palms were also found in neat rows although no longer tended. The air was rich in
organic odors and quite humid.

Environment and Social Change

In the eighteenth century, two novel socio-economic factors appear to have inﬂuenced
landscape development. The ﬁrst was the rise of a planter aristocracy founded on the
successes of the sugar industry. The second was the near-institutional practice of the
absentee landlord. The ﬁrst led to the construction of large residences, the other to estate

neglect. The Leeward Island Legislature complained in 1744, that nearly one half of the

165

property on Nevis was owned by absentees. Yet this same period saw the construction of
the mansions and great houses on a scale never before undertaken in the colony. In 1722,
the Pinney family built Montravers, a multi-storied structure with numerous rooms and
out buildings. Historic luxury villas, complete with formal gardens supported with
dressed stone walls were discovered in two quadrats in St. Thomas Parish at elevations
above 1000 feet, and were truly unexpected (in S_TQ_1_7). The Pariss Garden Estate
townhouse,7 located during survey, was surrounded by formal walled gardens (refer to
Appendix 1:297). The Tower Estate in St. Thomas Parish, was built on a high ridge
overlooking the sea, surrounded by gardens and artiﬁcial ponds. This structure highlights
another critical aspect of the colonial landscape. Successful planters on Nevis were as
likely to engage in displays of wealth and attainment as aristocrats on other colonial
islands or in the fashion accepted in the "mother country."

The ostentation of the aristocracy in England was apparently being adopted on Nevis
during Phase II, and further underscores a fundamental social reality—Nevisian
aristocracy thought of themselves as British rather than creole or West Indian. Most who
could afford to sent their children to England for education and most aspired to return to
England. On can conjecture that this attitude is at the root of why island infrastructure
was never fully developed. Structures were built of locally quarried volcanic stone, but
imported materials were also used. The ridge house investigated in St. John Parish was
humble in scale yet boasted slate ﬂooring, just as the Pariss Garden townhouse had slate
steps. Based on a reading of maps, the road system does not seem to have been expanded
during the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. In fact, coastal erosion was causing the

round island road to be swept away by the sea.

 

7 Roger Leech, personal communication. Also see Newsletter of the NHCS, Vol. 67 Feb. 2003.

166

 

St John Parish Phase II

[Caribbean
5755a;

 

  
      
    
  
 
   

1316 11850 2-16
ﬂ}:-

M: mill complex 1. SJ 14MM55’16‘2 15. SJ12MM5I’16-1 28. SJ19BBS/22-1 34, $117MM7/1-|
T: windmill tower 2. Douglas estate 16. SJ lZKDSfl6-l 29. SJMM8/2-9[02] 35. SJ10MM5/l9-l
V: village ruins 3. Dogwood estate 17. SJ9KR5l’32-l 30. SJ12KD5/l6—2
As: artifact scatter 4. Brown estate 18. Coxheath 3|, pw7_30/03-4
W: well 5. Whitehall estste l9. Morgans estate 32. SJMM5/13-l
C: cistern 6. SJlSMMS/Zl-l 20. Hermitage 33. SJ8MM5/22- 1,2
F: masonry foundations 7. Long Point estate 21. [cilands estate [A Ne\'1s Peak
B: bridge 8. Richmond Lodge 22. Dunbar estate [I
0: house platfomi 9. Bath House 23_ Moming Star estate I," ‘1'
Vp: possible village 10. Montpellicr estate 24, Anglican Church ’1' i_
t: terracing 11. Bush llill estate 25. SJI4KD5/19-2 RN; 2006
~’ . 12. Cane Garden estate 26‘ PW7'30/02'L2-3 ."
Pal-151.1 boundary 13. Farm estate 27- 5112556/6'1 -"’ Fri $150K} lirzone A
grad e h 14. Bath Plain estate Hamilton If, ‘9 “F E Zone B
. tits .I' .
Ruiiifg 8 Charlestown ”estate: I I I m 1000 5 22
.. M‘r ‘ Church '1
\24Ground M ‘20 ‘13'
\ -T ,
1812 ‘0 "’ F ‘ l
' Cole-252 i_
6025 .Hill F t 1
(F ‘10 'C 1_ ZoneC
Cox‘-
35 VP‘HF
[ﬁll/PI l " Vp3lesJ256‘. Saddle Hill

|_ A 1250tt

'1_ ﬂZone D

 

 

Figure 5-13. St. John Parish map illustrating locations of previously known sites and sites newly discovered
during survey. All sites indicated have Phase 111 components.

167

 

St Thomas Parish Phase II

  
 
 

     
    
 
  
  

M: mill complex W: well F: foundations 1- Jamestown 10. ST7aKD6/1—l
T: windmill tower C: cistern Vp: possible village 2~ Montravers l 1- ST73KD6/l'2
V: village ruins B: bridge 0; house platform 3.Anglican Church 12. ST17KD528-1
As: artifact scatter t: tenacing Sk: burial 4. Jesup estate 13. STl7MM5/28-l
, . . . . . 5. Paradise estate 14. ST4altMM5/29-l
6. Lawrence estate 15. S'I‘l9KD5l26-l
7.Tower Hill estate 16. ST19DR5/2l-l
8. Colquhouns estate 17. STI9MM5/‘26-l
.\ 9. Carddocks 18. STI9SSS/28-l
19. ST7aKD6/1-3
20. ST7aBBO/l-l
‘-._‘Zonc D 21. ST7aBBo/l—2
AS“M Mix 22.ST15DR5/21-l
C T“\.\ Road
t t . ,
M 1:: Parish boundary
-\ 11;» Road (modem)
~ ‘.\ Zone (' % gralnage ghut
- "l um

\.
\,
\

worm B
\,
‘-
‘ l
g‘f-K-‘k-{Zone A

\

RE Elevation zone

t / .. \.
1500 '\
. 2000 L
\J f.’ NC\ I\
t 1" I. -"’ A Peak
Grid North
/ Magnetic
North \

 

 

 

Figure 5-14. Map of St. Thomas Parish with known and discovered Phase 11 sites. Although major areas
were not surveyed due to new property development the area between Charlestown and Jamestown was
historically fully under cultivation by plantations of various sizes. With the lower ﬂats and gentle slopes
claimed, settlement expansion moved into the upper elevation zones. Terraces were found on the slopes as
high as Zone A.

168

 

 

Figure 5-15. Looking NE toward Mt Nevis, viewed from atop the "Ridge house" ruins. A: Highest point
surveyed in St. John, Zone A, 2000 feet. B: Brown Pasture near Morgan's village. C: Morgan's village. D:
Zetland's estate toward Rawlins (not documented) E: Cole Hill. headquarters during 2002 season.

Industrial Landscape and Technological Artifacts

Artifacts from industrial sugar mill-complexes include large iron machinery parts as
well as material cultural remains, such as ceramics, glass, and personal objects. Sites
could be identiﬁed by architecture, and the presence of milling equipment served to
conﬁrm the assessment. Although by no means common, vertical crusher rollers, mill
center axles, boiling cauldrons (coppers)8, or fragments of these, and other equipment
associated with milling were recorded at several locations. Several sites have been looted
of these items and the architectural remains suffered from deliberate destruction to get at

the coppers. Coppers are to be found throughout the island in use as rusty cisterns, wash

 

8 The ﬁrst pots for boiling sugar were of copper and the term coppers is used to refer to all boiling
cauldrons regardless of material.

169

tubs, as troughs for watering goats, and as quaint antiques in front yards.9 Even boilers
from steam engines are used in this fashion. Many steam engines are still in situ, and

parts can be found strewn about industrial locations.

W
.3?on M
8’15““ 21
‘1
PEMBROKE
FEATUﬁE E

 

Figure 5-16. Artifact of industrial sugar production. Iron vertical center crusher and axle at Pembroke.
SJ 15MM5/21-l. The machinery rests on the animal mill platform, Feature E.
Archaeological Testing
Within S1914 was located a mill-complex meeting several criteria for testing. The
Office of Physical and Environmental Planning had expressed an interested in monitoring
and observing any archaeological testing we might engage in as a test case for their new
permit process—a process that we were the ﬁrst to experience. Site SJ 14KR5/22-1 was

situated near easy road access barely a mile outside Charlestown at an elevation of 150

 

9 For a clear understanding of the equipment employed in sugar milling there is no ﬁner source than Owen's
Dictionary of 1764. French treatise usually contain better illustrations. (see Appendix).

170

feet (Zone D). This not only facilitated observation, but excavation logistics as well.
Additionally, the site is on land slated for government housing development, making its
immediate documentation an imperative. Being on government land additionally
facilitated the permit procedure. Most importantly, the structure initially appeared to be
of early eighteenth century construction, possibly earlier, and comparable to a complex in
another, more distant and logistically hellish part of lower St. John, also of early vintage
(SJ 14MM5/16-2). Placing this complex into Phase II was later supported by a
combination of surface and subsurface artifacts, and details from the structure itself
indicating its period of most probable use.

Excavations at Long Point Road Site and Ridge Site

Two sites were archaeologically tested to learn more of their construction and
probable periods of operation. Site SJ9KR5/22-1, was a sugar complex adjacent Long
Point Rd. near Sulfur Ghut. Located along the new road to Nevis' deepwater port, these
works represent an early, small scale sugar milling operation. Three units were
excavated at strategic points of the complex among a collection of foundations
constituting the industrial site (see Appendix 1:271 ).

The road to Long Point Pier, was completed only in 2000 and its inﬂuence is already
compelling. Construction of both low cost government housing and private development
have encroached on former plantation grounds. Dredging has opened a deep channel. No
anchorage is depicted in the vicinity of Long Point on historic maps. The point in fact
offers no real protection from the trade winds. As far as I can determine the new Long
Point Road follows the traces of an historic road shown on maps from 1703, that once

allowed movement to fortiﬁcations situated at Long Point.

171

 

 

Figure 5-17. Documenting boiling train at Long Pt. Road site. SJ9KR5/22-l. The structure had
been built up in three crude masonry courses. ﬁnished in dressed stone and plastered. Pictured:
Bart Beecroﬁ, Texas A&M, and Krysta Ryzewski, Brown University.

Clearing the area of brush provided an unobstructed view of the associated structures and
their relationship. As found elsewhere, boiling table and syrup collection were at lower
elevation than the mill platform, which appears to have been artiﬁcially raised.

Of particular interest to us was the volume of domestic artifacts scattered over the site.
Their presence suggests a residential component to the complex not unlike that found at
the ridge structure discussed previously. Artifacts from Unit 1 at a comer of feature 2,
opened in the hope of locating a builder's trench, suggest an early eighteenth century
construction episode (see Appendix 1:272).

Site SJ12KD5/16-1, also in St. John, was a combination-complex with a medium scale

residential structure and associated sugar works, SJ 1 2MM5/16-1 The house and its

172

separate kitchen structure was situated on a ridge at over 1000 feet (Zone B) and
commanded impressive views of terraced slopes down to the sea in a near 300 degree
panorama. Delle's (1999) analysis of Jamaican estate "panoptic" arrangements
immediately comes to mind. Each visible mill-complex would have been visible to
minimum of two other complexes. The mill sits on a rise within 300 yards and
encompassed by the same stone boundary wall. From the vantage point the island of
Montserrat to the south and St Kitts to the northwest were clearly in sight. From the
house, several estates were visible across the landscape.

These two complexes afforded us an opportunity to examine roughly contemporary
sites operating in two separate environmental zones. This comparison provide grist for
answering some of the questions raised in Chapter One concerning variable loads and
developmental trajectory. These mills also illustrate that expansion into multiple
environmental zones during Phase 11 along the road network was common. Three smaller
unidentiﬁed complexes were recorded within a quarter mile of the Ridge complex during
the 2002 season. The mill-complex in question had undergone extensive rebuilding and
alteration over time. Some changes were quite curious from an industrial standpoint,
much of it crude, further suggesting the structure was not serving as a sugar works at the
time of abandonment. Fire boxes had been ﬁlled or covered by other walls.

The quadrat in which this site was discovered crossed the road as it curves eastward
and back toward the port. Two small farms were also encountered and survey teams had
to gain permission to cross one farm. Relics from the mill are scattered across the farm
land. Transects crossed directly over newly graded ﬁelds being prepared for government

housing. A small rise to the west of the extreme outer transect line of this quadrat sported

173

a small stone ruin that likely was yet another mill. Between them are ﬂat open ﬁelds
grazed by goats and sheep. This area is a plain and terracing would seem to be
unnecessary, yet terracing was broadly spaced at ﬁfty feet or more.

Mill complex SJ l4KR5/22-l was associated with several additional features, including
a boundary wall and terraces that extended along an east/west axis, and therefore
encountered on several transect lines by survey crew walking south to north. A large
animal pen is tied in with the boundary wall. The similarities of the complex to one found
previously in the southern lower reaches of St. John were not immediately evident due to
obscuring vegetation. After recording, however, the similarities became obvious and are
striking.

As with all sites on Nevis, sheep and donkeys have trod a number of paths across the
features. Sheep and goats oﬁen standby as silent audience to the excavations. Stone piles
and ﬁre pits to the immediate northwest of the animal mill, situated beneath an aged
tamarind tree were suggestive of historic dwellings, but probably post date the mill.
Shovel testing among the stone piles to sterile levels revealed signiﬁcant depth to
charcoal deposits, seed pods, and nineteenth and twentieth century ceramic artifacts.

Spatial arrangements of sugar works were reasonably predictable. If one element can
be found the others could be located as well. The process of sugar boiling and reﬁning is
well documented and need not be described in detail here (see Rees Dictionary 1819).
The ﬁnal product, a blackish raw sugar syrup with a considerable molasses content, was
transferred to large barrels, called hogsheads, for curing. Hogsheads were stored in
buildings designed to catch the molasses drippings and protect the barrels from weather.

Storage did not have to be adjacent to the production center, but ideally was near as

174

transport of barrels weighing in excess of ton was no simple task even if rolling or carting
it. At each of the industrial sites documented from survey a storage facility or likely
storage area was identiﬁed.

We found that in ﬁve cases structures had been modiﬁed from Spanish Trains into
Jamaica Trains, while two sites had undergone extensive additional modiﬁcation with
room additions of poorer quality (workmanship and materials) than original construction
(sites SJ 12MM5/16-1 and SJ 14MM5/16-2). A Spanish train represented an early sugar
processing technology wherein the various size cauldrons each sit above their own ﬁre.
The technological shift involved a redesign that allowed a single ﬁre at one end of the
boiling table to be provide all the heat as it was drawn by draﬁ under the cauldrons, thus
permitting greater control of heat at critical stages. This suggests use prior to 1675 but not
necessarily during Phase I. In the absence of supporting evidence from other artifact
classes I have assigned these to early Phase II.

Artifacts from the ridge-mill complex and residence indicate a continuing occupation
and utilization of the site from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century well into
the nineteenth century, although not necessarily for sugar (refer to Appendix 3:306)
Ceramics present at the site are notable in their variety both in terms of style and form.
Additionally, the presence of ﬁner wares, such as porcelain point to a certain degree of
showiness and attainment. Coarser and common wares in the same assemblage inform on
the day to day foodways. In contrast to the Jamestown collection, there was a marked
absence of sherds from storage containers and of those present, nearly all are of one type.
Owing to the fragmentary nature of the colonoware in the sample we could not always

assign a from, yet vessels identiﬁed by rims show that bowls were in use. We cannot rule

175

out other vessel types. Finer English ceramics and the range of popular wares, such as
pearlware--a ubiquitous "poor man's" porcelain--and various transfer printed styles hint at
both access and the means to acquire such goods. Even in a remote peripheral agro-
industrial outpost such that Nevis was, middling planters still attempted to display
reﬁnement and attainment.
Characterization of Site-Types
Residential Sites

Four forms of residence were documented, which help illustrate the hierarchical
structure of society on Nevis during Phase II and the increasing display of status and
wealth by the plantocracy. These can be divided further as industrial and rural. No urban
residences were investigated. As stated above, industrial residences were in association
with mill-complexes and were intended for agents, overseers, or the owner of the
plantation. Owners might be male or female, but women who ran plantations were rare.'0

The term great-house is ﬁinctionally overused. Only in two instances can it be said that
we found a residence on a scale where such a word applies. These industrial residences
had stone foundations and multiple rooms at ground level. A second story is implied by
the thickness of the walls and inset notches, which would have supported ﬂoor beams for
the second story. Thick walls also served to keep interiors cool. Each had ancillary
structures associated with them including separate kitchen buildings and walled
enclosures. Such structures could be taken to extremes as the kitchen from the
Montravers estate exempliﬁes. At Montravers the kitchen is a two—story affair larger than

many of the industrial residences we examined on other estates. Montravers great-house

 

'0 Pedro Welch and Alison Games have each documented the importance of women in colonial Barbados
from the standpoint of European estate owners and among free colored.

176

itself is a three story stone ediﬁce with vaulted cellar and extravagant grounds—a
testimony to the success experienced by a few families of the sugar trade.” In each case,
from modest to massive, the focus of the structures was on distinguishing the occupant
from everyone else. Each faced either the ﬁelds or the mill-complex allowing supervision
from the house. The Ridge house in association with a mill-complex provides an example
of a modest residence from late seventeenth to early eighteenth century.

More humble residential structures included those with narrow masonry foundations
and those with piled stone as a base. Wooden homes may have been erected above the
stone or masonry platforms. The structures found during survey always had associated
artifact clusters that included a wide assortment of domestic refuse, such as bottle glass,
both for beverages and for medicinal use, ceramics, tool fragments, colonoware, and iron
kettle fragments. Problematically, assemblages contained material from a wide range of
mean manufacturing dates, suggesting either continuous occupation straddling pre and
post emancipation or episodic occupation. Many of these isolated and clustered houses
were bordered by tamarind, ginip, and mango trees. None of the house ﬁnds resembled
the clusters shown on estate maps.

Between the late seventeenth and the middle of the eighteenth century prosperity for
some led to the construction of impressive residences. The two country estate houses
encountered during survey were as stunning as they were surprising. Although each had

walled and terraced spaces ﬂanking the structures, one was of especially grand scale.

 

” Montravers is being carefully researched by Southampton University of England under direction of Prof.
Roger Leech. See NHCS Newsletter Vol. 70, November 2003.

177

 

 

Figure 5-18. Structure associated with Pariss Garden townhouse. Building 1. ST17MM5/28-1.
The menu board reads "near Vaughans" because the structure was located soon alter intersecting
the village before its association with Pariss Garden was realized.

The juxtaposition of luxury townhouse and laborers housing in villages would have
been a stark contrast visually and psychological reifying the social order to both sectors
of society as they passed on their way to the ﬁelds or town.

Religious Landscape

When walking the roads of Nevis, one quickly realizes the signiﬁcance and dominant
place churches hold on the landscape. Imposing and carefully situated on high ground
along main roads, the Anglican churches built in Phase II are visible from considerable
distance. The principal churches, Anglican and Methodist are situated near the center of
each Parish at key intersections of plantation roads. St. Thomas Lowland Anglican
Church, built in 1675, and St. John Figtree Anglican Church, each are situated on the
main island road linking the capital to major estates and were places of worship for island

elite. As with other English colonies, anti-papist and anti-Quaker legislation had been

178

enacted early in the colony's history. In 1661, a ship's Captain knowingly landing
Quakers at Nevis could be ﬁned 5000 pounds of sugar. Anyone seen wearing a Quaker
hat could be ﬁned 500 pounds of sugar. Although laws against Quakers were repealed in
1705, no Quakers remained on Nevis, nor settled there for the next century.

Sephardic Jews, however, had been welcomed during the later half of the seventeenth
century and a synagogue brieﬂy served a small but thriving community of Jewish
merchants and sugar specialists. A Jewish cemetery in Charlestown with stones dated
between 1670 and 1758, speaks to the communities stable, although brief occupation. An
Anglican priest estimated that one-quarter of the white population in St Paul's Parish,
Charlestown, was Jewish (Hubbard 1996). Many had come from Brazil and formed the
backbone of the merchant class and sugar technologists. This period is critical in the
adoption of new technologies in sugar manufacture and overlaps the period of greatest
prosperity on Nevis. Their gradual expulsion came during the ﬁrst major sugar crises of
the eighteenth century (Terrell 1997).

Military Sites

Prior to 1800 the only facilities that rivaled the plantation complexes for scale and
labor requirements in construction were the churches and fortiﬁcations. Two elements of
the island's defenses were surveyed. One was a shore defense and the other was Fort
Charles. Both Fort Charles (Figure 19) and the coast shore batteries have been
documented at a modest level and published by archaeologists and will not be dealt with
in detail here (Machling 2000, 2002). They interest us here mainly in that they constitute

an important feature of the total landscape.

179

Between the seventeenth hand eighteenth century, over 15 forts, batteries, and gun
platforms were constructed on Nevis. Local stone was used in all cases. Construction of
Fort Charles was begun in 1671, at the site of an earlier wood and earth palisade, and
ﬁnished in 1675. The guns overlooked the harbor of Charlestown from a promontory that
is slowly degrading from wave action. The collapse of this once imposing ediﬁce along
its southern wall has already begun. Fort Charles was typical among fortiﬁcations of its
day and exhibits the latest design features of military science.

The Dutch attacked Nevis in 1673, but were repulsed. The attack was only one of a
series. When England and Holland had been at war in 1651, property of Dutch planters
on the island had been conﬁscated, including 101,000 pounds of sugar. Dutch retaliation

came in 1665 with the capture of 16 ships in Charlestown harbor (Hubbard 1996).

 

 

 

Figure 5—19. Entrance to Fort Charles viewed ﬁom east. With most guns pointed to sea, French
forces captured the fort from the landward side in 1706.

In 1703 the new Lieutenant Governor of Nevis initiated a program to fortify the
island and improve its defenses. Plans of the various forts survive. With its many cannon,

it was a formidable deterrent to invasion until 1706. The French divided their forces and

180

while maintaining an attack on the western side of Nevis, landed troops in the south who
marched overland and took the fort from the landward side (Hubbard 1996).

We may interpret the function of these defenses as less for the protection of the
populous than they were intended to protect the property and investment in the sugar
industry of the emergent plantocracy. The goal of military action in the Caribbean more
often was economic disruption, not territorial gain. Plantation islands were often held
hostage or estates destroyed just as military sites as a matter of policy. As if to immure
the island, fortiﬁcations nontheless served to remind planters of their precarious situation
in world affairs.

The second military construction encountered during survey was a wall and platform
of the old coastal defense. The location is north of Jamestown in the Cades Bay area.
Behind the structure today is an open expanse of marginal land supporting minimal
vegetation. The land was not always so. Prickly pear cactus and sparse grasses are all
that grazing cattle have as fodder. Cades Bay (shown often as Kades Bay on maps) is a
small inlet that may have served as a harbor in the earliest phases of settlement. More a
roadstead than a proper harbor, it nevertheless is well situated near a fresh water spring
and near enough to the Jamestown site to have facilitated transportation and shipment of
goods. An underwater survey of the bay carried out in 2003 found no maritime artifacts
but did note hurricane debris. Depths were adequate for the shallower draﬁ vessels of the
seventeenth century. Modern craft anchor in the protection of Cades Point.

In 1740 construction was begun on a fortress on Saddle Hill, at the boarder of St. John
and St. George parishes. At 1000 feet above sea level, this fort was to provide a safe

haven for the populace in the event of future invasions, rumors of which arrived with

181

every ship. The construction was costly despite being built by slave labor. Planters
resented vociferously having to supply slaves they preferred to have working the
plantations, despite the fact the defensive works were for their own protection. Walls
extend 1600 feet, and in places, stand thirty feet tall. Because all attacks on the island
came by ships driven by the trade winds, the fortress was built to command a view of the
south and the predictable path of invaders.

Throughout the colony's ﬁrst century, piracy was as much a problem as European
rivalries, and not infrequently, was ofﬁcially sanctioned by Governments as proxy agents
of foreign policy. But piracy continued as an expensive problem well into the eighteenth
century. Writing in 1703 William Burt of Nevis complained that, "...privateers are so
thick amongst these islands, that we can't sail from island to island but with more hazard
than between England and this place; hardly a vessel in three escapes. . .so that everything
has risen to extravagant prices. . .Here are some vessels loaded with sugar and durst not
stir for fear of privateers." (C.S.P. Col Ser. 1702-03). As reported in April of 1795, in a
dispatch to the Columbian Centinel, a Boston newspaper, privateers from Nevis also
attacked shipping from the United States.

But ofﬁcial hostilities were a greater plague. Between 1700 and 1800, there were
barely thirty years in which England was not in conﬂict. Freight rates and insurance
during this century of war maintained many planters in perpetual debt. Credit was not
only a requirement to operate estates, but a necessity to maintain a planter's lifestyle.
Payment to creditors most often took the form of sugar on arrival in English ports, and
advances were made through agents and brokers. Planters on Nevis might never see

actual currency (Lobdell 1972; Sheridan 1961). These details of economic machinery

182

meant that banking interests and houses of exchange were vested in plantation successes
or failures, an aspect of capitalism's structure of reinforcement. The value of one's
currency then ﬂuctuated with the fortunes of the market and ones' ability to get it to
market in timely manner. The major conﬂicts affecting development in the Caribbean as
rival European powers vied for economic control of the region are chronicled in
Appendix 10.
Summary and Analysis
Demographics

Populations ﬁgures for Nevis are reliable for only a limited number of years. M011
(1708) offers the ﬁgure of three to four thousand after only twenty years of settlement
and takes great pains to authenticate a population between 20,000 30,000 in the 16805,
and accounts for most as military garrisons and black slaves (1708:204). Moll's ﬁgures
do not have corroboration. J effers (1792) cites 30,000 during the mid eighteenth century.
These later numbers exceeds by three times the ﬁgures derived by other sources and is
seriously suspect. During the years 1672-1686 there were important increases in the slave
population among the Leeward Islands of Nevis, St Kitts, Montserrat, and Antigua. Dunn
(1972) has calculated an almost equal number between European and African'2
populations for 1678, with a total of 73 70 persons.

Population statistics also highlight an important feature of the time. Women were not
in short supply and children, English, Irish, and African, represented more than 20% of
the total population. This represents a tremendous burden for a society that did not

produce its own food. We can not assume these are all children of colonists. Sweeps

 

'2 Contemporary census data uses the terms white and black or non-white. occasionally free black as a
distinction to slave. All such persons will be referred to here as African

183

through London streets to collect orphan children oﬁen took place, shipping the poor
souls to the colonies. Citing a census taken by the Governor of the Leeward Islands,
Dunn's ﬁgures indicate that while slave numbers remained relatively stable, or increased
steadily over time, white population decreased markedly by 1708. Other tallies vary

in quality. Iles estimated a total population of 12,000 for 1871, but offers the ﬁgure
10,000 for the ofﬁcial census of 1861. Perhaps the single most telling demographic detail
is the sharp decline in the European population relative to African. Slaves came to make

up the majority on the colony, living on estates and laboring in ﬁelds.

Population Demographics

 
  
        
     
    

Tl
l

European
[:1 African

 

1628

 

 

2‘, “‘r\~r——7.,,_i‘ ‘

1678 1704 [TTKT“”'~=...\,LH ‘77 A/ African
1708 1720 1745 175gT“‘a—g\\ﬁz European
1775

1834
Year

Figure 5-20. Population demographics on Nevis. Data compiled from Davis 1962; Merrill 1958;
Pares 1936; Galloway 1989; Williams 1970; and Goviea 1965, and Caribbeana vol. 1—6.

184

The difference in population composition between Phase I and II also suggest changes in
social structure and colonial focus. I suggest the changes reﬂect economic shifts toward
increased control by proto-capitalists who have initiated a period of estate consolidation
that leaves no room for small holders.

Landscape data from Phase I and 11 allows comparisons to be made respecting
Hypotheses 1 and 2. Change is evident but not haphazard. Taken as a whole, landscape
features in Phase II reﬂect the needs of the plantocracy for efﬁcient operation of semi-
autonomous plantation communities and maintenance of social distinctions within a
stratiﬁed society. However, these two functions are often at odds, and there is evidence in
spatial arrangements that suggest members of the plantocracy would occasionally forgo
efﬁciency in favor of other priorities, possibly status maintenance. The industrial
landscape appears to have been built to withstand hurricane force winds and to signify
strength and permanence. The contrast between the stone ediﬁces of industry and the
homes of its captains, to the abodes of labor, served as not-so-subtle daily reminders of
the hierarchy of social relations structuring the colony during the eighteenth century.

Even as labor and various sectors of society gradually were divorced from the fruits of
production and the manufacture of surplus, they seem to become wedded to a system that
deﬁned them by their labor status or place within a labor gradient, apart from those
managing the surplus. In this respect, generally, agro-industrial outposts resemble a
mining community, often with similar absentee control.

As plantation life became the dominant economic institution it also emerged as the

principal social institution as well. Towns were few on Nevis. Only three ever grew to

185

any signiﬁcance and all three had safe anchorage: Charlestown, Jamestown, and
Newcastle. All were situated on the lee, or western side of Nevis, with the exception that
Newcastle is nearly at the northern most reach. These were centers of merchant life and
shipping. Government representatives maintained ofﬁces in the principal port of
Charlestown, which in Phase II , ostensibly controlled all shipping. Colonial development
during Phase II on Nevis clearly is distinguished by increasing prosperity for a few elite
and a marked shift in population demographics. The landscape features larger plantations,
residential structures for the plantocracy of greater scale than previously built, (Pariss
Garden or Montravers for instance) and an increase in attention to defense.

The human landscape changed signiﬁcantly in Phase II as slaves swelled to become
the majority population. Importation of labor increased partly because the new landscape
dominated by macroscale sugar producers could manage a rotating schedule of
production, harvesting and reﬁning. Even though the environment was in a process of
degrading, climate still allowed for at least three harvests annually.

Population demographics demonstrate that even as the number of planters decreased,
labor needs were constant. We can interpret from the landscape, however, that the
European population largely was rural in character, with the possible exception of
merchants. This is a reasonable surmise because the focus was the plantation and all
industrial production was rural. The exact numbers of persons ﬁlling the various needs
of the colony, such as craftsmen, merchants, and so forth is not known. From letters
between agents and owners we have the sense that few skilled craﬁspeople lived on
Nevis. It is likely many were on St. Kitts. Indentured laborers with trade skills, especially

masons, were valued in the colonies and found ready employment, if not wealth. Prior to

186

1680 one might ﬁnd indentured white Europeans working the ﬁelds alongside black
Africans. However, slavery became a racialized institution following passage of laws
forbidding European slavery except for political prisoners. Writing in 1676 of the
indentured, Christopher Jefferson claimed:

". . .Scotchmen and Welshmen we esteem the best servants; and the
Irish the worst, many of them being good for nothing but mischief...
How many broken traders, miserable debtors, penniless spendthriﬂs,
discontented persons, travelling heads and scatterbrains would joyfully
embrace (the offer of transportation to St Kitts). . . "

The variable load on planters operating during the eighteenth century was
signiﬁcantly different from their counterparts a century before. Whereas seventeenth
century estate owners were concerned with transport distances and labor, eighteenth
century agro-industrialists were more concerned with squeezing more juice from sugar
grown on depleted soils. This is evident from the size of estates and the factory scale
mill-complexes. Issues of water retention and ﬁeld management were constants.

Better control over the boiling process ensured a higher yield from the juice during
Phase II. The transition most likely occurred between 1680 and 1700 and suggests a date
for the construction of the mill-complexes in question as the technology was adopted.
The transitional technology was more efficient but required careful monitoring and was
labor intensive. Efﬁciency in this case is not a measure of labor output but of product.
Labor was for the plantations a ﬁxed cost, albeit an insecure one. For the emerging
capitalist economy on Nevis, land was treated more as the investment than was labor.
Invention of the hygrometer for determining speciﬁc gravity at various stages of boiling
was intended to replace even the sugar master (usually a slave) with unskilled,

interchangeable laborers late in this Phase.

187

Roads completed in Phase I or during Phase 11 prior to 1704 linked estates to
commercial and shipping centers via high and low avenues around the mountain at the
island's center. Roads also joined estates in a network that facilitated communication and
ease of transporting plantation products across rugged terrain to shipping locations.
Roads directly served mills and townhouses, but only incidentally the villages. Churches
presided over important intersections. These estates and road systems do not hint at a
central place but as independent nodes. All produce and commerce was required to pass
through the one or two shipping centers the island environment afforded, yet these
centers served the estates, not the reverse.

Plantations for sugar production were only autonomous in theory. In terms of spatial
organization they followed both set plans and novel conﬁgurations, yet in use of
industrial space they seem to have conformed to a number of common practices. All were
dependent on sugar markets, prices in the home market, credit, on the merchant class,
which the plantocracy viewed itself to be above socially. Cramped spaces and legally
restricted mobility ofﬁcially deﬁned the landscape for slaves and eventually the
emancipated wage laborer. Unofﬁcially, slaves created for themselves landscapes of
which planters were not cognizant. The archaeology of these landscapes, social and
physical, remains to be explored.

Following the destruction of Jamestown during a natural disaster in 1690, Charlestown
appears to have emerged as the focus of all mercantile activity. With a great fort on a
promontory overlooking the harbor, Charlestown gained distinction. The town ﬁgured
prominently on several French spy maps of the day. Based on comments in narratives by

Thomas Warner, it may have been bold bluff as cannon are described as "good for

188

nothing" (CSP l964[1676]: 367). Although at least two and possibly three sugar
complexes from our survey can be assigned a date before 1700, based on construction
techniques and technology employed, most on the landscape date rather later illustrating
the extent to which this Phase was marked by industrial expansion.

In 1706, an Act of the Nevis Council sought to encourage expansion by petitioning the
Crown for resources to open another port for transshipment of goods. The result was the
construction of a harbor complex for transshipment at Indian Castle, on the southern side
of the island. However, the location is a poor one for ships. Exactly when construction
went forward is not evident in extant documents. The new shipping port in St George
Parish presumably facilitated sugar transportation for plantations on the eastern and
southern side of Nevis (Meniketti 1998b, 1999). Fortiﬁcations were also increased on the
south coast (too late to prevent French invasion in 1706). Archaeological evidence
indicates the area was scene to plantation activity as early as 1675 (Meniketti 1998a)
although the scale of these operations is undetermined. Nonetheless, the evidence
provides additional data for characterizing settlement expansion as continuing along the
coast, a pattern established in Phase I, and has provided raw data for addressing
Hypotheses 2 and 3.

Based on archaeological survey, the number of estates located in our sample from this
period, and the documented size of plantations, spread of plantations across the landscape
would seem to have been rapid, rather than a slow progression from a central node.
Transportation was a vital element in the settlement pattern. Two limiting factors would
have affected initial expansion, the rate of forest clearing and available labor. Works

associated with indigo, ginger or tobacco production have all vanished or been absorbed

189

into sugar complexes. As the scale of production increased, so too did the number of
plantations in Phase II. In terms of my model for development, settlements appear to have
expanded outward from transportation nodes at Jamestown and Charlestown in all
directions, ﬁrst consuming ﬂat land along the island's perimeter. Distance was not
necessarily a limitation. Plantations moved up the mountain nearest the urban centers
before more distant locations were developed. Plantations under 100 acres were the
general rule until the eighteenth century, and this considered large for its day.

During Phase II consolidation of middling estates by consortiums and a minority of
wealthy planters signiﬁcantly reduced the number of estate owners. New sources of
credit allowed new planters to enter the industry by acquisition of existing estates
(Lobdell 1972). Cost structures had changed making it unproﬁtable to start-up from
scratch. This represents a different kind of colonist than had come before. The work of
clearing had been accomplished, roads were in place, and a system in operation. Scale of
production probably worked to allow fewer planters to monopolize the monopoly.

Sugar Markets and Nevis Prosperity During Phase II

Fortunate were the planters on Nevis that throughout this long century of conﬂict,
1700-1800, (or perhaps owing to it), sugar prices remained reasonably high. With English
protectionist policies in place at home, growers enjoyed a monopoly and limited
competition. Albeit, a guaranteed and secure market, but they also had limited access to
world markets. As a practice, foreign policy in the Caribbean among European powers
was aimed at disrupting sugar production and shipments. For Britain, this was less
intended to reduce market competition as it was to dismantle the economic base of its

rivals. For the French and Dutch, to damage English sugar production was to cripple the

190

English economy at one of its key sources. During war, less shipping reached ports. With
a drop in overall tonnage it can be surmised that commodities fell in supply. But more
importantly than an example of Adam Smith's simple formula of supply and demand
controlling prices was the attendant decline in all arenas of the economy that had become
yoked to the system then evolving. Sectors as diverse as textile manufacturing to
cooperage could be affected by capture or loss of ships, through reduced capacities for
remuneration.

It is noteworthy that cargoes of ships taken as prizes by privateers during war were
differentially treated by law in England, with an eye toward keeping prize sugar out of
domestic markets. Parliament pressed heavy protectionist taxes on foreign sugar. It
should be obvious that protecting the plantocracy or their debtors, and not the consumer
was the principal Parliament had in mind. Nonetheless, prize sugars could still reach the
market through neutral countries and undersell English re-exports, limited though they
were. By such means did world sugar pricing ﬁnd its own level (Pares 1936:480).

Data for sugar exports from Nevis and market prices in London during the eighteenth
century reveal a cyclical pattern of rise and fall, including several points of precipitous
declines (Figures 5-4 and 5-5).When compared to production on other British islands the
pattern is clearly not unique to Nevis. But prices and production volumes do not appear to
be united. Other factors appear to be at work, among these possibly are weather,
shipping, overproduction, and politics.

The famous "triangle trade" was far more complex than is usually depicted in history
texts. Many vessels sailed directly to the West Indies with one of the more important

commodities needed by the islands: food. Nevis imported all of its food, including ﬁsh

191

Nevis Sugar Exports

6000

 

 

5000 -

4000

 

 

3000 -

 

Hogsheads

2000 ,

1000 «w——— —— .—————

 

 

 

 

 

1769 1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775

Years

+ Hogsheads Sugar
Figure 5-21. Shipments from Nevis 1785-1795. Sources: Sheridan; Pares.

Muscavado Sugar Prices in London per CWT

60

 

50‘

 

A
O

No data for
1 701 -1 731

 

(A)
O

 

 

price in s d

1 698

 

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O

 

1687 1733
10 .L - -- -——

 

 

 

 

 

 

1674 Years 1674-1775 1775

Figure 5-22. Sugar prices in cwt for the years 1674-1775. Fluctuations were caused by numerous
factors, including: overproduction, poor production, loss during war, industry expansion, and
changes in policy toward competition. Sources: Sheridan; Duffy; Williams; Pares; Galloway.

caught off Newfoundland and Greenland, beef from Ireland, and even on occasion
imported water from Montserrat. In periods of peace, few though they were, the Atlantic
trade might involve a host of ports and cargoes. While raw materials crossed eastward
over the Atlantic, textiles, rum, and manufactured goods made their way to Africa. Slaves
were transported to the West Indies, and sugar and other commodities, including coffee,
indigo, ginger, and cotton were picked up for the return passage. Only coffee threatened
to supercede the value of sugar as a bulk trade commodity, especially in France, where
nearly 90 per cent was re-exported (Duffy 198729). But consumption of coffee and tea
only increased the demand for sugar. The Atlantic economy was a world-system under
full sail.

One well documented voyage serves as an example. In the late seventeenth century,
the chartered vessel Dorothy carried 637 quarters of wheat to Cadiz. Unable to ﬁnd a
cargo homeward bound, the master took the ship to Cape Verde Islands, loaded 180 tons
of salt and sold it across the Atlantic in Nevis. Having no cargo available at Nevis to take
off (he arrived too late), then went in ballast (empty except for ballast in the hold) to
Maryland. From Maryland he secured a freight of tobacco for London, a total voyage of
ﬁﬁeen months (Davis 1987:233).

Documents reveal that planters' agents often followed a prudent course of shipping
sugar on several vessels rather than risking all to one. While safeguarding his shipment,
the trader gambled instead that market prices would remain stable until all his sugar was
transported. All of this bulk trade served as a stimulus to seaports in Britain and for
agricultural production inland. Because final reﬁning of sugar was reserved for home

production, the sugar industry also had an impact employment directly in England.

193

Cotton production supplemented the income on several plantations and was subject to its
own freight rating.‘3 Reporting methods during the seventeenth century were often
inaccurate, frequently changed, and regulation of trade was late in development.
Therefore it is difficult to fully assess the trade from Nevis in the seventeenth century or
to compare its value during the eighteenth. Available statistics do, however, allow
general statements regarding its importance to the colony's economy. It appears that soon
after the French capture of the island in 1785, Nevis suffered a sharp social and economic
downturn exacerbated by globally declining sugar prices.

At the close of Phase 11 many mill-complexes fell into disuse. However, in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century new construction appeared on the landscape—the
smokestack—hallmark of the industrial revolution,. As will be discussed in Chapter Six,
even as Nevis lost its prominent position in sugar markets, new estates were appearing
and modest technological experiments were underway conﬁguring the landscape once

again.

 

‘3 Although light, cotton as bulk carried in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took up a great
deal of space aboard ship and was rated accordingly. A dispute over the cargo of a vessel at Nevis in 1712
offers insights into the intricacies of commodity shipping. Officially capable of ZOO-tons burthen (capacity
to hold 200 English tons of cargo) only 200 hogsheads of sugar and 80 bales of cotton were loaded for a
total of 58 tons cargo (based on conventional measures at the time). The discrepancy arises from the bulk of
the cotton which prevented further loading. The ship's master had to load carefully or risk a light ship that
would be unstable. Tobacco, too. was loosely packed and transported in light hogsheads. The measure of a
hogshead (barrel) varied considerably over time and between nationalities, even between islands. Making
direct comparisons is often not possible. We find for example on Nevis in 1785 a hogshead close to 200
pounds lighter than one from St. Kitts.

194

 

Chapter Six

Settlement Phase IIILNevis 1785-1833

I rode entirely round this island, with the exception of a mile or two

on the windward side, and found it uniformly rich and verdant, and
beautiful. The roads are tolerable, though liable, in the lowlands on

the north to be injured by ﬂoods. However, you may go whither you

please in a gig, which certainly must allow to be a great sign of civilization.

Henry Coleridge 1825

Coleridge's observation of the Nevisian landscape seems pleasant enough. His wistful
account describes pine forests, and ". . .old planters houses of superior styles and churches
peeping out in the most picturesque situations imaginable" (Coleridge 1825:179). His are
the observations of a traveler, a tourist, but he did not miss the industrial debitage that
burnishes the landscape, adding, "There are two steam engines employed in grinding
canes, a thing I had not seen anywhere else except Trinidad. Surely where water and
coals may be commanded, the certainty and rapidity of making sugar would in the long
run be worth the additional expense." These would be the two earliest engines on Nevis
and the ﬁrst indication the industrial revolution had extended to Nevis.

By emancipation there were only three or possibly four engines in place. Eventually,
nearly thirty mills would employ steam engines, yet this is far less than half the number
of estates that might have employed them and late into the nineteenth century. It is
signiﬁcant that in Governor Iles accounting of mills in 1871, nine out of thirteen estates
(70%) in St. Thomas Parish are listed as having steam mills whereas in St. John, only five
out of twenty-four (21%) are so listed. Most are wind, animal, or a combination. The new
technology was slow to be adopted. In St. George Parish, which directly fronts the trade

winds on the southeastern side, only three of thirty-three estates (9%) had steam engines.

195

Clearly environment played a role. Steam engines seemed an answer for declining labor
(the slave trade had ended) and the uncertainty of winds. But for some, it would seem the
cost was prohibitive, for in addition to the credit required to purchase engines, there was
the cost factor of constructing new facilities for housing the engine, storing ﬁiel, and
spare parts, not to mention the price of fuel itself, which often had to be imported if
baggasse was depleted. There was also the new dependency on external technocrats that
may have caused traditionalists among planters to behave conservatively. Social rather
than technophobic resistance may have been involved.

The technological transition on Nevis reﬂects the larger industrialization revolution
underway in England, both in terms of the changes in landscape it wrought and the varied
resistances it met. A new industrial landscape began to take shape as smokestacks
appeared along side windmill towers. What the steam engine allowed was new spatial
arrangements disconnected from patterns of conforming to contours of terrain as in
previous Phases. Today on Nevis iron engine parts manufactured in Glasgow, Ireland or
Derby, England, litter many estate sites, evidence of plantation changes prior to
emancipation. Ironically, in the surge of technological innovation this period was also the
beginning of major decline.

Historical Context

Between 1782-84, the French again successfully invaded and controlled Nevis. This
time the French restrained themselves from total destruction, choosing instead to levy
taxes and tributes, although they again destroyed ofﬁcial documents. Correspondence
about the negotiations and capitulation between the French military tribunal under

Admiral, Count De Grasse, and members of the Nevis Council, offer highly revealing

196

details of the economic condition of the colony. In addition to new requirements of
shipping and trade under French authority, we learn that a hogshead of sugar on Nevis no
longer had the value or quality as that of St Kitts.l

Letters to De Grass from the President of the Nevis Council deserves quoting at
length:

Sir,
Nevis, Janry 20th, 1782

1 had this morning the honor to receive your Excellency's very polite letter of the
18‘“. ..in a year or two 1 make no doubt but this island will be able to raise much more provisions
towards supporting its own slaves, but hitherto it has been our invariable custom to depend almost
entirely on America, and since the war in that quarter—on our imports from Great Britain and
Ireland alone: and trust me, Sir! I do not exaggerate when 1 most solemnly aver that to my certain
knowledge many plantations in this island are at present without a single day's provision for their
slaves and are obliged to grind their canes before they are ripe in order to feed their negroes with
molasses.

...As to the cattle we beg leave to observe that we depend almost entirely on them to work our
estates in grinding our canes and carting our property, and that 'tis therefore highly distressing to us
to part with them at this very time when they are most wanted ...... the sugars of St Christopher are
in general at least worth four or ﬁve shillings per hundred more than those of Nevis at any
market. . .the lands of St Kitts are much richer and more easily worked. . .by calculation St Kitts
averages crops of sixteen thousand hogsheads for about twenty ﬁve thousand negroes while they
allow Nevis makes only four thousand hogsheads (which are smaller) with a little above eight
thousand negroes...

Sir
Nevis, 3rd June, 1782

...If the boat which was brought down from Antigua will serve the purpose of the harbor master, 1
will endeavor to procure Sailor negores for her. ..four dollars from every Drogher. .. is a heavy tax
that must ultimately fall on every planter...

[Watts 1929]

From these letters and many others we gain a sense that Nevis was already in sharp
recession before abolition of the slave trade, much less from emancipation. Planters were

well aware of issues of soil loss and diminishing sugar yields, knowledgeable of their

 

' Bearing in mind that Nevis Council was comprised of planters directly affected by tariffs, it stands to
reason they would downplay the value of their produce to negotiate reduced levies. Yet such matters as
sugar quality were easily veriﬁed, so it is likely reported values were not far from truthful. 1000 St Kitts
hogsheads were listed as equal to 1200 Nevis hogsheads.

197

dependency on North America, and uncertain of succor from England. The French also
dismantled the military landscape leaving many on Nevis feeling vulnerable to change.

It is also important to take note that a portion of the slave population were capable
mariners, accustom to inter-island commerce. Some of these sailors may have taken part
in communications between islands a this time.

Even after the departure of the French, Nevis faced the realities of social changes
abroad. Global trends and changing world markets inﬂuenced colonial development in
surprising ways. The moral argument against slavery having moved slowly, abolitionists
followed a new tactic--economic in scope--that was more effective. Sugar manufactured in
East India was reaching London in competition with West Indian sugar. But Indian sugar
was not a product by slave labor. Attempts to have the public assuage their conscience,
while still having their sweetener, emerged from public campaigns encouraging the
purchase of non-slave sugar.

With emancipation in 18332 came sweeping changes in the plantation system and
reconﬁguration of the relations of production associated with sugar manufacture. The
literature suggests it was once fashionable to blame emancipation for the fall of
plantations and crises in sugar markets, for Nevis' decline in the sugar trade, and many
other ills that beset the colonies. One can only make these arguments, however, by
ignoring the fact that sugar markets were already in decline world-wide in the 17905, that
production throughout the world was in transition, and that sugar produced in India was
selling in English markets cheaper than Caribbean produce even though not based on

slavery per se.

198

Phase III ends as the former slaves, now free to earn modest amounts of money, till soil
for their own needs on their own schedules, and begin to sell their labor based on
economic structures imposed from the core. Restrictive laws were enacted, however, to
minimize the free will of laborers, to tie them to particular estates, while collaboration
between estate owners sought to control wages. Planters and slaves each viewed the
concept of freedom and wage labor in a very different light. Many former slaves began
immigrating to other colonies where work was more plentiful or where Crown land was
more extensive and available for settlement, initiating a pattern that continues today
(Olwig 1987). One might say mature capitalism had arrived in a form Marx would have
recognized.

Survey results

I have presented results here in a modiﬁed form from the previous two chapters
because so little of Phase III evidence was located in quadrats that could be separated
from Phase 11. Many of the mill complexes straddle the Phase boundary having operated
from the eighteenth century into the nineteenth. Zone descriptions would be redundant.
Only relevant quads and zones are discussed here in terms of new landscape components.
Industrial Landscape

Many of the agro-industrial complexes located during our survey had their ﬁrst
operation in Phase II, but continued operating into the nineteenth century, even into the

twentieth. Construction details were used to suggest dating in the absence of artifacts. An

 

2 Emancipation in 1833 was really only the initiation of the "apprenticeship" period that lasted until 183 8,
when true emancipation came. The reality was that former slaves were elevated only to wage slaves, free
but unable to engage in any labor but plantation work.

199

example of long term operation can be found at Coconut Walk,3 which was taken over by
the Huggins family in 1815 and continued until the 19503, transitioning from wind and
animal power to steam along the way. The Huggins were a new breed of planter on
Nevis, consolidating estates all around the island under one family ownership and leasing
land. Elsewhere on the island mill-complexes complemented animal or windmills with
steam engines. Bush Hill and Hamilton's are additional examples. Most of the steam
engine operations were outside our survey transects but can be documented from maps.
Nevertheless, large complexes with steam were not the rule on Nevis, as wind continued
to be favored.
St. John Parish

Survey quad SLQﬂ, the Richmond-Lodge estate is one complex straddling the
eighteenth and nineteenth century transition that fully transitioned to steam. The St. John
Parish site is 10cated in environmental zone C, at about 500 feet elevation. Shown on the
1871 Iles map, the complex exhibited a completely different attitude toward spatial
orientation and efﬁciency from mill arrangements that came before. Located at the
intersection of roads that linked it to other mills, the Richmond-Lodge Estate great house
commanded broad vistas over lower St. John (see Appendix 1). Artifacts on the grounds
were a mix of nineteenth century and modern domestic materials, mostly ceramics.
Because the complex is adjacent to a dump site we could not consider the artifact scatters
legitimate indices of site development.

Situated on the road between Brown Hill village and Bush Hill mill, the complex is

representative of a new social landscape conﬁguration in an era of mature capitalism.

 

3 Coconut walk was not in our survey parish. Its state of preservation serves for comparative dating of
construction and industrial machinery. Excavations of a post-emancipation village at the site are underway

 

St. John Parish ,__-_1

Quadrats containing Phase III L_J

Miles0 " " " I

 

 

Fort
Charles"; ‘
(ruin) '

Key ’
Zones 1 i
E Ghuts ‘ . _
El Roads 1
El Elevation Benchmark
8 Parish Boundary
5— All quadrats by number

 

2000

Km 1509 ~ | A
0 1 2 1000 3 "' >

4 ’ B

C

Nevis
Peak

A3232

   
   
     
     
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 

  

Main Road

Saddle
Hill

A
1250

‘ D

 

 

Figure 6-1. Map of St John Parish showing quadrats of known Phase 111 components

and newly found Phase 111 sites.

Table 6-1.
St. John Parish. Survey quadrats containing Phase 111 components.
N/A refers to sites not assigned a number.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quad Zone Site types Site # Artifacts Landscape components
SJQ4 C Mill-complex SJHCLPS/ 19-1 Ceramics, Adjacent to road, slight rise above
Richmond-Lodge industrial with great house. See Phase II.
SJQ] l D Mill complex N/A None Bath plain; near ghut
SJQI4 D Artifact N/A Ceramics, See Phase II Ridge top near ghut.
cluster bottles,
iron kettles
SJQIS D Mill complex SJ 15MM5/21-l Industrial, See Phase 11
Pembroke brick,
_ ceramic
Pilot D Mill complex Dogwood estate Industrial, See Phase II
quad 3 ceramics,
_§J_Ql9 pipes
Pilot D Mill complex Coxheath estate Industrial, See Phase II
quad 3 ceramics,
SJQI9

 

 

 

 

 

 

k

by Jim Chiarelli at Brandeis University (unpublished).

201

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SJQ] 8 D Sugar works Douglas estate Industrial Along road from Pembroke.
Eroded gullies, parched sloping
land; acacia and agave.

SJQ6 D Church N/A None Anglican Church, cemetery

SJQIO C Mill complex N/A Ceramics, Bush Hill complex (see Phase II)

pipes, Terracing, cobble roads
glass, tools

Pilot C House MM8/9-02-3 ceramics Wooded slope along Cole Hill,

quad l foundations view to Montpelier estate

SJQ7

SJQIZ C Mill complex SJ 12MM5/16-l Ceramics, Prenlis? See Phase 11

pipe,
bottles

SJQ12 C House SJ 12KD5/ l6-2 Ceramics, "Ridge house" See Phase II

foundation glass

SJQl3 C Artifact N/A Ceramics, On leveled ridge top; above

scatter bottles terraced slopes.

Other sites outside designated quadrats.

SJ-Vlg C Village Morgans Ceramics Steep slope below Morgan's Estate

Mrgns At 1000-900 11. Dense brush, close

(7alt) interval terracing, rocky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Labor lived in the adjacent enclave of Brown Hill and similar small villages, still tied
economically to the plantations through restrictive laws limiting employment
opportunities and attempted to maintain pre-emancipation social dimensions. The road
appears to end at Richmond-Lodge but actually continues in a deteriorated and
overgrown state toward Bush Hill estate. Between are remnants of other masonry
structures and stone entry gates for residences. Enclosure are now used by shepherds and
clandestine rum distillery.

Survey quadrats 5&1, 14, 15, 18,and 19, all in zone D contained mill complexes that
were constructed during Phase 11 (see chapter 5) and continued operation into Phase III.
Again chronology was based on a combination of construction ﬁnishes, details and
material culture residue, consistent with comparisons of other structures. Artifact scatters
in each of these quadrats are frequently associated with house features and were a mix of

late eighteenth through mid nineteenth century material culture. Ceramics were the chief

202

ﬁnd, but on a ﬂat ridge-top opposite Bush Hill mill complex in M, artifacts included
cast iron kettles, buckles, a wide range of bottles, tool fragments and ﬂatirons. The scatter
and volume suggest a village site. A plastered cistern is close by, but no deﬁnitive house
platforms or foundations were detected.

Quadrat mg was extensively surveyed from existing roads. The area is developing
and we were not welcomed on to small private lots. Transects were therefore limited in
coverage. Fig Tree Anglican Church stands at the southern end of the quad. In this
Church Horatio Nelson's marriage to Fanny Nesbit, daughter of a prominent Nevisian
family, was sanctiﬁed in 1787. The keystone over the entry to the church read AD 1638.4
Grave markers in the adjacent cemetery date to at least the early eighteenth century.5 One
of the earliest dates to 1734, for Edward Broadbelt. Salvaged industrial debitage was
sighted in most yards and a few eighteenth century masonry foundations prop up modern
wood and cinderblock houses. A large copper rests on church grounds. The area was
noted to be extensively terraced. Stacked stone walls demarcate properties and enclose
gardens. The practice is common today and cannot be used as chronological indicator.

Within environmental Zone C, in addition to Richmond-Lodge, are mills and sugar
works known from maps that were not in our random sample. SJQm ran south from near
our operational base and crossed Bush Hill. Cobble roads, terracing, and cisterns were
recorded in multiple locations. Quadrats S_JQZ, 12, and 13 discussed in Chapter Five all
exhibited industrial sites continuing operation from Phase 11 into Phase III. This
interpretation is based on analysis of ceramics, glass, pipe stem dating and the Iles Burke

map.

 

4 This date is out of synch with historical documents.
5 Many markers that may date earlier are unreadable due to wear.

203

We did not ﬁnd artifacts or industrial components on the landscape identiﬁable to
Phase 111 within quadrats transecting environmental Zones B (1000 to 1500 feet), and
Zone A (1500 to 2000 feet). We do know that mills in operation there in Phase II are
indicated on the Iles Burke map and listed as operating. But no evidence hints at
expansion into the area. Indeed, contraction away from the high country is suggested
from the lack of late artifacts and absence of smokestacks in the area. Terracing in the
area is in highly deteriorated condition and extensively overgrown in contrast to the wide
open terraced ﬁelds of the lowlands.

St. Thomas Parish

Quadrant SM, described in Chapter Five for Phase II, intersected St. Thomas
Anglican Church, in Zone D near the coast. The church, ﬁrst built in 1643, continues in
use and highlights the continuity of religious institutions on the island. It serves as a
hurricane shelter. The structure is not only a feature on the physical terrain but the
psychological landscape as well. No other religious features were found in any quadrat at
any zone in either sample parish.

SIM encountered a heavily overgrown mill complex (STMM5/29-l) that was
assigned to Phase II and III on the basis of construction and details of ﬁnish. The new
construction on the site and realignment of some features suggests an ongoing operation.
It is discussed below in the context of Jamestown.

Within environmental Zone D two quadrats intersected Phase III features that had also
stood during Phase II. SiQZ and m exhibited multiple tiers of terracing, palm
lined roads and two mill complexes. The most impressive was Tower Hill estate

(STQ7alt) described in Chapter Five. No artifacts were recorded.

204

 

St Thomas Parish

 
    
 
     
 
 
    
  
        
 

Grid North _
Magnetic True Quadrats containing Phase III i__i
N“”“ h\ Nonh

\

Miles _:_::1

\
I\ 0 m m 3“ 1

 

 

Km . ..______._,
Cadesf- 0 5 1 2
' Bay D
Jamestown
Site

\ 500 Road

\

   
 
 

  

\ Dam

‘n

   

   

I

Charlestown

 

 

soo

 

Figure 6-2. Map of St Thomas parish depicting sample quadrats with
Identiﬁed Phase 111 components. Much of the Phase II landscape remains.

Table 6-2.
St. Thomas Parish. Survey quadrats containing Phase 111 components.
N/A refers to sites not assigned a number.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quad Zone Site types Site # Artifacts Landscape components

QSTS D Church N/A None Anglican church, cemetery.

STQ4alt D Mill complex STMM5/29-l Ceramics Sugar works. See Phase 11 East

from Jamestown.

STQ7 (8a1t) D Foundations, St7aKD6/1-l none Tower estate. See Phase II
mill-complex

STQ7(8alt) D Mill complex ST7aKDt5/1-2 industrial Tower estate. See Phase II

STQl7 B Townhouse STI7KDS/28-l None Pariss Garden estate

 

 

 

 

Other sites outside ori 7inal sample quadrats.
STQZOaIt D Stone house Vaughans Bottles, Village along cobble road,
platforms Village ceramics terracing. Forested densely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some features near Tower estate encountered deﬁed practical inclusion into our
chronology as they seem to have been constructed from salvaged building materials, but
likely in Phase III or later. One was a water retention facility and the other a small
building that may have been a residence.
Military Landscape

No features of the landscape in Phase III are associated with active military
operations in either sample parish. Our survey quads did not locate any military features
away from the coast, although some do exist in other parishes. Little attention was given
to defenses in the years following the French invasion that ended Phase II. The forts and
coastal defenses by the dawning of the nineteenth century were in disrepair or eroding
into the sea. Iron cannon that can be found in several coastal locations are of mid to early
eighteenth century vintage. Many of the cannon at Fort Charles were brought there from
sites in St. George Parish by British Naval personnel.6 With the exception of Nelson's
Lookout on Saddle Hill, nearly all of the military landscape was coastal and not found in
the upper elevation zones. Archaeological evidence is consistent with documentary
sources and in accord with the changing political environment of the Caribbean of the
early nineteenth century as the United States entered the arena. Strangely, this time of

relative peace was also a time of decline, social stagnation and periods of unrest.

 

6 At the conclusion of the Falklands war, British Naval contingents toured the Caribbean. At the request of
the NHCS, helicopters were used to transport several iron cannon from the area of Indian Castle to fort
Charles. David Rollinson, personal conversation.

 

Religious Landscape

The Methodist church was to have the most impact in island affairs of any religious
order. Bishop Thomas Coke, of the newly formed Church, visited Nevis in 1787. By
1797 there were 400 in the congregation, of which 90% were black. Reception by the
plantocracy was guarded, for Methodists were believed to be against slavery, and indeed,
Wesleyans were to carry the banner of the abolitionist movement. Olwig (1992, 1995)
has carefully examined the inﬂuence of the Wesleyans on Nevis culture as they
incorporated ever more slaves into the church and attempted to institute the "cult of
respectability." While a few planters saw the effort as a "civilizing" and "calming"
measure, that kept slaves more tractable, others were suspicious of the Sunday meetings
of so many slaves, and the ideas they were spreading.7 The Anglican Church had long
neglected the African, and Methodists were not only allowing them into the church, but
openly encouraging oratory. In England, as on Nevis, the Methodist Church played a
signiﬁcant role in the debates over emancipation. The Charlestown Methodist church was
set ablaze by a pro-slavery mob in 1797, but was saved (Hubbard 1996). Standing in St.
Thomas Parish (not included in our survey sample) are the remains of Cottle Church,
built in 1824. Founded by Nevis planter Thomas Cottle, an Anglican, the church was
intended as a place of worship for all races. It fell into disuse after emancipation. Cottle
was married to the daughter of Edward Huggins another prominent planter. The
interlocking relationships of the plantocracy are well illustrated by this marriage. Not
only were the estates being consolidated by the planter class on Nevis, but the families

were as well.

 

7 The oratory encouraged by the Methodist Church unintentionally gave slaves an arena for speech that
corresponded to certain traditional west African practices. These meetings did in fact lead to a new critical

207

Villages

Three villages were investigated and will be aggregated in this discussion (see parish
map). None of these sites were part of our original random sample, but were documented
to provide data on residential patterns not associated with elites planters or Europeans.
Evidence is insufﬁcient from our investigation of these sites to infer a pre-emancipation
history although it certainly cannot be ruled out. The period of most extensive occupation
of these villages dates from post-emancipation and into the early twentieth century as
evidenced by several artifact classes.

The villages are named on the 1871 Iles map as Vaughans, Morgans, and Harpies.
Morgans may have grown from a pre-emancipation village that previously served
Morgan estate in St. John environmental zone B. The village lies immediately below the
remains of the Morgan Estate sugar works but the settlement is not identiﬁed. The
settlement straddles a cobble road that descends from the upper elevation to Charlestown.
One section has been recently bulldozed for a luxury home, cutting through the northern
section of the site and destroying one portion of the former road. House platforms of
clustered stone piles were closely grouped on terraces ranging from ten to twenty feet
across. Small plots of furrowed earth were adjacent to some of the clusters bordering
drainage ghuts. Stone clusters seemed to be organized around deﬁnite paths but this could
not be accurately understood in the ﬁeld. The pattern was quite distinct, however, once
mapped. The pattern is strikingly similar to spatial arrangements found at two additional
villages investigated in St. Thomas Parish within zone A, where the slope is considerably
less severe. The same dense clusters and terracing were found. Each cluster of housing

platforms was on rocky, unevenly terraced earth, with a preponderance of boulders.

 

self-awareness (Meniketti 1999).

208

Many boulders were larger than automobiles. Some stone piles were adjacent to the large
rocks and at the Morgan village location, stone walls abutted a massive boulder, forming
an enclosure or animal pen (see Appendix 1).

The Harpies Village site was examined in 2002. Over zealous and unauthorized
artifact collection by another archaeological group had virtually denuded the location of
surface ﬁnds. However, the land forms and house platforms were undisturbed.

Harpies village was in line of a new diversionary road that bypasses Charlestown so
trucking from the deep water port at Long Point can avoid the narrow streets of
Charlestown. The grounds of Harpies, so near to Charlestown, and to areas of extensive
cane planting, was nonetheless quite marginal. The village was located where clearing
and planting would have been most difﬁcult. Road crews working on the bypass road
were using heavy equipment to unearth and move rocks the size of houses. Stone piles
and clusters set on terraces were in close clusters and suggest a high population density.
The few artifacts that were recorded were mid to late nineteenth century domestic
ceramics and bottle glass. No signiﬁcant material culture ﬁnds were present aside from
the architectural remnants. Joining multiple buildings on slanted terrain is made possible
by varying the size of stones used as foundation. The area under homes can be used for
storage but its principle purpose is to allow air to circulate beneath the structures.

The village of Vaughan's was spread widely and difﬁcult to accurately assess. We
identiﬁed a narrow alley that had housing platforms on either side. We could not
determine the spatial area of the total site, nor could we determine where within the site
we were. By extending the radius of our survey from the area we selected to document,

we found that it was located between two cobble roads.

209

 

6- 6-4

Figure 6-3. 4. 5. Villages depicted somewhat generically in the Alexander Burke Iles map, 1871.
Harpies (6-3) is particularly well served by roads (sill extant) while Morgan's (6—4) and Vaughan's (6-
5) are situated in steep, and rocky waste lands, roads all but gone. Houses are shown in neat rows but
the spatial organization of the villages was considerably more organic and conforming to terrain. See
the complete Iles map in Appendix 7.

One of the roads was followed and discovered to link the upper Round Road to
plantation tracts down slope at Hamilton's estate. GPS coordinates allowed us to pinpoint
the area documented. Piles of stone in circular and occasionally square arrangements
indicate where houses had once been erected. The three villages examined had
similarities in spatial organization and in environmental positioning. All were on
marginal land. Comparing the spatial ordering of these platform clusters with the other
villages reveal a pattern of close quarters in a high density, rural, residential landscape.
More signiﬁcantly, these arrangements have much in common with residential and
plantation spatial ordering of earlier phases. They are organized in an organic fashion,
following contours with minimal environmental modiﬁcation. Of course, restrictive laws
of the day narrowed the living space choices of emancipated Africans, to some degree
precluding more space between dwellings. But we can not assume village spatial
organization was entirely outside the control of the residents. The villages may well have
replicated familiar patterns of residence once maintained on estates. It is an issue

requiring additional research. There is some limited artifactual evidence suggesting

210

adoption of consumer behaviors similar to colonial patterns, especially in the use of mass
produced ceramics, or ﬂatirons for pressing clothes, among this social sector. However,
there is little indication of the penetration of spatial ordering based on capitalism
suggested here for elite Europeans. There are too many alternative explanations for our
limited sample to narrow down.

In general, artifacts were not visible in the dense jungle under-story, but the few we
did ﬁnd included medicinal bottles, common colonial domestic ceramics, and smoking
pipes. The range in dates may be misleading due to the extremely small sample and
unsystematic manner in which they were noted. But the artifacts support an assessment of
early to late nineteenth century occupation. No twentieth century artifacts were evident,
which may signal the period of abandonment. At Vaughan's village, a ghut divided the
clusters of stone platforms. At Morgan's a ghut sided the village. Stone piles carried right
to the short cliffs and small garden plots were discernible bordering the ghut's very edge
between boulders. Survey data strongly suggests a reduction in settlement building and a
period of contraction, with populations becoming more concentrated into fewer
population centers. This process may have accelerated after emancipation.

Urban Landsczgae

In St. Thomas Parish, Jamestown was no longer a functioning settlement. Data from
environmental testing suggests that the site had become buried and it is not mentioned in
any period documents outside the context of legend. However, mill complexes were in
operation in close proximity. STQ4alt intersected a series of structures with two
contrasting alignments and construction phases (see STMM5/29-l, Appendix 1). Along

with late eighteenth century artifacts, imported bricks of various types, and details of

211

ﬁnish on the cistern, we determined the mill had operated into the late nineteenth century
and possibly added a distillery. The area is bountiful in coconut palms but we cannot
directly link the complex to the coconut plantation.

Residential

The Ridge house (SJ 12KDS/l 6-1) was both rural in character, and a site of industrial
production that appears on the basis of ceramic and glass artifacts to have been in use in
Phase I ,II and III. Material culture gathered from the Ridge house site nonetheless
displayed a ﬁner selection of wares than that from other urban sites investigated and this
was unexpected. Signiﬁcantly more tablewares of ﬁner quality and specialization were
present (refer to Appendix 3:306). Wares were also of ﬁner quality and more variety than
recovered at the Long Point Road site. But it should be recalled that no residential
architecture was located by survey in the vicinity of the Long Point Road site.

Coarse wares are mostly absent from the table and everyday wares represented by a
large assortment of designs and colors. The collection is beﬁtting a middling planter or
planter's agent with means to acquire the symbols of status ﬁne domestic wares were
becoming during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here at a small plantation
residence, tea was served in porcelain, meals on the latest serving wares and from
decorative bowls and platters. We can't say whether pewter or wood were in service—
they probably were if period probate records are to be trusted—but the resident or
residents of this small sugar operation were certainly displaying, even if only for
themselves, the material culture messages that psychologically conﬁrm their position in

Nevisian colonial society.

212

 

M: mill complex
T: windmill tower
V: village ruins
As: artifact sscatter

0: house platform
Vp: possible village

Parish boundary

St. John Parish Phase III

I. Coxheath estate
2. Douglas estate
3. Dogwood estate
4. Brown estate

10. Montpellier

11. Bush Hill estate
12. Cane Gardens

13. Farm estate

14. Bath Plaine estate

15. SJ12MM5/16-l
16.5.112KD5/16-l
l7. SJ9KR5/22-l

18. SJ14MM5/l6-2

W: well 5. Whitehall estate 19. Morgan's estate
C: cistern 6. Pembroke estate (2) 20. Hermitage
F: masonry foundations 7. Long Point estate 21. Zetlands estate . .,
N ., P .k
B: bridge 9. Bath House 22. Dunbar estate A u '3 c1

23. Morning Star

  
  

 

 
   

Caribbean I

 

 

1
Road (modern) l’
Drainage ghuts ”mum“. i
Ruins mate ,- i 22
Charlestown . - --;r"' ' i 000’ i'
i
£21
. I
'.
'.
‘.
1
Cox '1

   

|
0
VpFM' Saddlellill
A545 1 A 1250“

 

 

 

Figure 6-6. Map showing all Phase III sites identiﬁed across St John Parish. During Phase 111 many of the
plantations operating in Phase II began a decline, while a few new estates started up with new technologies

213

 

St. Thomas Parish Phase III

M: mill complex W: well t: terracing 2. Montravers 8. Colquhouns
T: windmill tower C: cistern 0: house platform 3. Anglican Church 9.Craddocks
V: village ruins B; bridge Vp: possible village 4- JCSSUP estate 10- ST7aKD6/ 1 '1

As: artifact scatter F: foundations S: smokestack 5. Paradise estate 11. ST7aKDé/l -2
__ ,. 6. Lawrence estate 12. ST17KDS/28-l
7. Tower Hill estate 13. ST17MM5/28-I
I4. ST4aMM5/29-l
'\. 15. ST7aKD6/l -3
‘x, 23. Vaughans Vlg.

   

Parish boundary

. - I, ERoad (modem)
Canbbean :1 [a Drainage ghuts

"ﬁ r
{3 Elevation zone

.\
’./‘ New is
A Peak
Grid North

Magnetic
No

I 1 ME

 

 

 

Figure 6—7. Map of St. Thomas Parish illustrating Phase 111 site identiﬁed during survey. Although terraces
remain on the landscape at upper elevations, it is doubtful many were under cultivation. Some great houses
were in use and steam engine technology was being incorporated on estates.

Artifact Assemblages and Capitalism

Although the assemblages dealt with here are small, and minimum vessel counts

lacking, important information concerning similarities and distinctions between site-types

214

has still been forthcoming. The two assemblages come from distinct site types—one a
household, the other a possible warehouse district—nevertheless elements of the same
material culture expression are apparent. Even without minimum vessel numbers it is
possible to draw some signiﬁcant inferences from the assemblage based on sherd counts
for types. By calculating the percentages of vessel forms from the total we can gain an
understanding of on site usage (see Appendix 3:302 for discussion). Further, by
recategorizing the assemblage in terms of place-use (i.e. kitchen, storage, serving ware,
common day-ware) we can suggest in general terms a lifestyle at the sites. As discussed
in Chapter Three, assessing lifestyle in terms of status display in household contexts can
illuminate social attitudes and behaviors while hinting at the degree to which different
sectors of island colonial society were inﬂuenced by consumer trends at the core that
fused material culture with enacted culture. Objects themselves lack messages. Only
through speciﬁc contexts do they become fused with meanings and charged with
signiﬁcance in social relations. The role of an object can be scripted in a multi-layered
play. Trends in consumer behavior are evident in our assemblages that offer relevant
information for testing the essential questions concerning penetration of capitalism to the
individual and micro-level integration of social changes associated with capitalism
covered by Hypothesis 2.

Take for example a teapot, an item with a rich documentary background. The artifact
is functionally a beverage container. But as the object comes to be used exclusively for
tea it acquires a specialized utility that is associated with a speciﬁc act—the drinking and
serving of tea. The act of tea serving carries its own suite of messages. One message

quietly announces that the user/server is among the social group for which tea is a

215

hallmark. One can inﬂuence the messages of the act through the objects used. The ﬁner
the teapot, the stronger the message conveyed about social rank and access. Access
signiﬁes privilege if not wealth. The messages are lost on those unfamiliar with the script,
automatically excluding those persons, yet even the cognoscenti must work to maintain
position. Thus the entire relational exchange serves to segregate social units while
grading those within a social unit.

The artifacts analyzed from Nevis belong to several different classes of commodities
that can serve in both functional and social venues, often simultaneously. At Jamestown,
table wares were of limited variety and no specialized serving forms were recovered. One
does not expect a warehouse district to be the scene of ﬁne dining and the assemblage
mirrors the expectation. Yet even here are examples of the ubiquitous English ceramic
exports that ﬂooded the colonies, hinting at the penetration of consumerism at various
social ranks. Colonists on Nevis were accepting and selecting according to their means
the manufactured goods from Britain, in part, we can posit, because there was limited
choice, but also because of what these wares proclaimed about the owner—they were part
of the colonial prosperity and linked to the value system of the core state. The variety and
range of qualities being produced in the metropole and in other peripheries, such as New
England were part of an emerging capitalist, factory based, pottery industry. It is
axiomatic to associate ceramic qualities with status, but we must also consider the
association with social values. Colonists could use locally produced wares or wares
brought in from the pottery factories on St Kitts, but availability of imported wares

offered a choice that also carried the subtle messages of cultural attachment.

216

The small European population on Nevis actively and materially participated in the
Atlantic trade, not simply at the level of industry or consumer of slaves as industrial
machinery (Williams 1970). At least among Europeans there appears little evidence for
resistance to the product oriented social system that was developing during the eighteenth
century. No specialized Euro-Nevisian assemblage was invented. Colonists were

Percentages of ware types from Jamestown and Ridge house

table ﬁne kitchen
18% 30%

  

    
  

kitchen
1%
”3;?" storage
8%
table dayware table ﬁne table dayware
68% 5% 56%
Ridge house. Jamestown

Figure 6-8. Percentages of assemblages comprising ware categories for the Jamestown and the
Ridge house surface collections. The greatest distinction is in the ﬁne, status laden table wares and
the volume of kitchen utility wares.

importing more than necessities. They absorbed and incorporated into their lives the
material culture produced in the core state, and by doing so they remained connected and
dependent on the commercial system then evolving. If Nevis can be taken as an example,
the sugar colonies were serving two purposes, 1) producers of raw material for extraction
by capitalists from the geographic periphery and, 2) a consumer market for home industry
at the core. In terms of my essential questions it is evident at this scale that there was no
resistance to integration of a nee-materialism among the European sectors. Matching sets
became a popular innovation setting in motion consumerism on a new scale. The rising

middle class in the eighteenth century—a product, I suggest, of the successful

217

exploitation of colonial development—acquired the new markers of status as best they
could, not so much displacing earlier measures of status as adding to the litany. Because
new manufacturing techniques made it possible for wares to be accessible to wider
classes of consumer at lower cost, social distinctions emerged from acquisition of an
increasing range of wares rather than solely from the ownership of the ware itself.

In the colonies, where the stigma of being a "colonial" could hurt ones social
attainment in the mother country, it seems the plantocracy took steps to establish
themselves in the social hierarchy through established means. "Knowing how to act was
reinforced by knowing what to buy and use" (Smart Martin 1996:76). As the eighteenth
century progressed, new objects and commodities came in to use along with new social
rules. Material goods, such as ceramics were just one aspect of their incorporation into,
and adoption of, the capitalist mercantilism stemming from the Atlantic economy in
which they aggressively participated and helped to expand. The term capitalist mode
might be a better phrase to distinguish the seventeenth and eighteenth century from the
modern consumer capitalism. The adaptations that were occurring transformed society,
but as Smart Martin (1996271) intones, "it was people, acting in a socialized context, that
do the adapting."

During Phase I, ceramics among the various sectors of society tended to be of greater
similarity than was the case during Phase II. There are several possible explanations.
Despite the fact that social distinctions were hierarchical, among the ﬁrst colonists these
distinctions appeared to have been leveled somewhat or displayed by means other than
foodways. This may in part be due to the nature of frontier living, need for basics over

luxuries, and mechanisms for maintenance of hierarchical relations unrelated to material

218

 

culture. However, as the colony became established and the population increased, social
divisions became highlighted by expressions within the material culture not uncommon
to the home nation.

One arena of this expression that can be archaeologically documented is in the
paraphernalia of food consumption. Evidence for the integration of behaviorally linked
material culture into the social repertoire is found not simply through variety of wares,
but also through extrapolation of what was actually being consumed in households. Many
ware forms were used in suites that had associated behaviors of consumption and display.
The presence of these wares in the assemblages speak to the penetration culture cues at
the micro level that subtlety reinforce realignments of social norms at the macro level.

Just as painted tin-glazed wares became fashionable status possessions in England
around 1610, slip-trailing gained popularity around 1640. This popular ware then came to
be replaced by newer fashions such as Rhenish style wares. Adoption of new
commodities was not unusual. What was new for Nevis during Phase II was the degree
of adoption of new consumer items. Spurred by expanding markets a "ceramics
revolution" was underway with potters experimenting and marketing novel types and
forms for the table (Allan 1999; Barker 1999). Several types made their way into the
archaeological record on Nevis.

Summary of Evidence: The Linking Landscape and Material Culture

The new prosperity of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, especially in Great
Britain, resulted from colonization and the concomitant rise in market support for the
sugar industry, mostly as manufacturing centers developed. New technologies and

manufacturing methods allowed producers to expand the consumption of goods once

219

only available to the wealthy. While the colonies provided one outlet, home markets also
bought in to the burgeoning repertoire of pottery manufacturers and other commodities.
The spread of speciﬁc items of material culture to colonies and frontier regions can be
viewed as tangibly linking and, among commodity users, cognitively reinforcing,
sociocultural identity (Beaudry, Cook and Mrozowski 1991). The evolving consumption
of new material culture and display behaviors did not cause the landscape of Nevis to
change nor did landscape reconﬁguration during Phases 1, II , and 111 direct the
modiﬁcation of consumer behavior. Rather, these are different, but related,
manifestations of the same phenomenon of capitalism's penetration into colonial culture
and social institutions. Revisiting the assertion by Levefbre that capitalism is a source of
unique spatial conﬁgurations, we can see how this has took form in Nevis.
Archaeological evidence from several mill sites suggests the built landscape and evolving
culture-scape underwent rapid and ﬁindamental transformation in the century that
followed initial colonial settlement, achieved an uneasy equilibrium during much of
Phase II, and would be changed again in Phase III with new technologies, although not as
signiﬁcantly. As the landscape shifted from small scale agricultural production controlled
by numerous individual land holders, to an industrial scale, conglomerated and
consolidated plantation system, subtle societal changes occurred in tandem, many of
which assimilated patterns of consumption and display externally promulgated.

In terms of my general hypotheses, archaeological data from Nevis at the beginning of
the nineteenth century appears to be deeply embedded in the global system and not
immune to the greater economic zonation of peripheral regions that had been underway

throughout the eighteenth century. Political events in Europe had important economic

220

impact on the colony. Models for production were again in ﬂux and planters on Nevis,
for a variety of reasons, were slow to respond. Colonies such as Nevis were less
economically vital to the metropole as the capitalist nations, fueled by the industrial
revolution, muscled into new territories under an expanded model of capitalist
imperialism. Hypothesis 2 stated that settlement practices shiﬁed as a result of capitalism.
What the archaeological data point to is expansion in scale rather than a shift in practices.
But in this the pattern of land-use is associated with fewer entrepreneurs with greater
capital and investment as we transition from Phase I to late Phase II and III. If capitalism
was not at the heart of settlement change, capitalists were.

Plantation society as a corporate unit was sensitive to status during Phase II and the
behavior appears to have continued into Phase 111, but on a diminished scale. One
tangible element of the change was adoption of new patterns of consumption related to
status behavior exempliﬁed in the artifact assemblages. While this process likely
involved myriad categories of material culture and behavior, the archaeological record
preserves the transition in ceramics best because of durability and the ubiquitous nature
of the artifact. The differences apparent in differing assemblages are not simply
hallmarks of differential wealth, but can be interpreted as signposts of the cognitive
reinforcement of ideologies grounded in the economics of inequality. Another tangible
was the use of space to broadcast position within society and architectural statements.
Grand houses, manicured approach roads, and architectural displays as found across the
Nevisian landscape, suggest the important role played by display behavior among the

plantocracy.

221

Hypothesis 1 and 3 can be assessed in tandem. The deliberate organization of mill-
complexes along with the practice of establishing planter or manager-in-residence on
industrial sites points to the need among capitalists to increasingly control labor, manage
industrial scale production tasks, and to structure production routines. The adoption of
new technologies and the shift away from site construction of an organic character,
wherein land contours were accommodated, to more rigidly oriented plans that modiﬁed
land in conformity to industrial construction and the abstraction of compass coordinates
illustrate changing ideologies of production and understandings of space, efﬁciency, and
control. During the period of slavery, control was assured even if troubled. As Phase III
dawned, documents make clear that control was less certain and labor resistant. We can
detect stages of landscape alteration that coincide with the eve of emancipation. These
same stages overlap expanded European global domination and may signal the
emergence on Nevis of both mature capitalism and new forms of production relations.

The utility and unique characteristic of historical archaeology is the way in which text
and artifact can be used to render a more complete picture of developments than either
can alone. We have learned that the restrictions and demands of the metropole oﬁen
conﬂicted with the desires of colonialists. Did this tension stymie or strengthen capitalist
relations? Documentary evidence suggests damaging effects. Signiﬁcantly, the core—
perihpery relationship, always strong, could occasionally be superceded by relations that
obtained among the peripheral regions as colonial development progressed. I reason that
the periphery-periphery contract allowed critical development at times when island
colonies suffered from ofﬁcial neglect. For example, Dutch freeports, unable to compete

in European sugar markets, developed smuggling operations affecting English and

222

French colonies, and Nevis directly (Crouse 1943, Schmidt and Mrozowski 1988;
Klooster 1998). From ofﬁcial documents we ﬁnd Nevisian merchants complained bitterly
of the illicit trade from St. Eustatius. Archaeological evidence suggests the extent of this
illicit trade beyond simple avoidance of tariffs on imports. Thus, status goods,
unavailable through legal British trade, could still ﬁnd their way to Nevis, and could play
a role in the material culture of hierarchical relations, and may explain why Chinese trade
porcelain ﬁnds its way into the artifact assemblages of households on Nevis (Meniketti
1998). Smuggling and other illicit avenues of trade should not be viewed as something
apart from capitalism's mainstream, but rather as an integrated parallel economy
entrenched, not despite laws designed to prevent it, but because of those restrictions.
Artifact assemblages from Phase 1, although limited, did not exhibit the variety,
spectrum, nor the exotic character of assemblages of Phase II. Variety seems qualitatively
less pronounced and restrained once again in Phase III. One explanation for the shifts
may be levels of prosperity. Another possibility is that the assemblages reﬂect differences
in composition of the population in each Phase. Or a combination of both explanations.

This is yet to be fully explicated and will require additional on-site research.

223

 

Chapter Seven
Synthesis and Conclusions

Summation of Phases I-III
And Future Challenges

 

"The commercial capitalism of the eighteenth century developed the
wealth of Europe by means of slavery and monopoly. But in so doing
it helped to create the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century,
which turned round and destroyed the power of commercial capitalism,
slavery, and all its works"

Eric Williams (1944:210)

Combining archaeological surveys with documentary data, analyses of artifacts, both
domestic and industrial, and environmental information allows a more comprehensive
understanding of development on Nevis between ﬁrst settlement and emancipation than
was ever previously possible. By extension, study of these processes, with Nevis as a
case study, broadens our understanding of the forces at work in the region as capitalism
matured into the dominant economic institution. The research presented here is the ﬁrst
systematic survey of broad landscape and settlement patterning ever attempted on Nevis.
The strength of a methodology grounded in historical archaeology is that it can
synthesize independent lines of evidence, which include historical components, to test
hypotheses. Historical sources can be used to create effective chronological controls, and
can provide contemporary accounts of events in the background, but the key is to not let
these overshadow the data generated through archaeological methodology. This issue is
especially relevant when attempting to answer questions about abstract processes that
historical participants may not have been aware were occurring, or would have thought to

describe had they been aware. In revisiting the model of development framing this study,

224

 

we see that several aspects of the model can only be addressed through archaeology,
particularly landscape analysis and general locational analysis, because the documents
are muted on critical points necessary for testing the varied hypotheses set forth on
capitalist development. Survey was essential to discover the use and extent of terracing,
the number and scale of estate structures, the spatial organization of plantations, and the
suite of consumer goods available or in use. And documents pertaining to Phase I are
almost completely silent on the particulars of settlement or technological implementation.
As an alternative data set, historical documents provide a window into behaviors and
material culture difﬁcult to fully appreciate from archaeological testing alone. Albeit, the
window has the curtains drawn close, but analysis yields relevant information for
archaeological researches. For instance, while informing on material culture and fashion,
we can surmise that not all who came to Nevis, achieved wealth or social position.
Several wills dated between 1635 and 1800 include bequeathals of estates, horses, silver
hilt swords, and thousands of pounds of sugar. A like many leave depressingly little more

than debts. Consider the two wills excerpted below:

To my sister Elizabeth Pennington's children £50 each, they having greatest

occasion thereof to be paid immediately. To my sister Meriarn Shelberrie's

children £10 each... To my god-daur Elizabeth Rolt 1,000 of muscovado sugar

a year until she be 21 or married...To my friend Col. Charles Pym, riding horse,

etc. To Charles Town Parish of this island 20 pieces of plate for service of Communion
Table. To Friends Silvanus Taylor and Henry Bolton of this island £100... for the
Customs and the Royal African Co., they also having regard to our debts. . .Col. Rowland
Williams, Capt. Samual Home, and Mr Alexander, Craﬁ‘ord to have management of our
Antegua plantation. . .to each a beaver hat...

Will of Thomas Belchamber, of island Nevis, 9 Feb. 1692
(Caribbeana Vol. V, 1919)

...of the ship "Scarbrow" now riding in Nevis, under command of Hugh Tucker
To my sister 40s. To Thomas Martin 20s Rest of wages to Thomas Teap, being a
mariner belonging to said ship.

Will of Timothy Moresby, at Nevis, 6 Aug. 1697
(Caribbeana Vol. V, 1919)

225

 

Settlement and Environmental Chggge

The three principal hypotheses of this study and the essential questions designed to test
them can now be examined in light of the archaeological analysis of the preceding
chapters. Hypothesis 1: Capitalism was not operative at the time of ﬁrst colonization on
Nevis. It was suggested that settlement would be characterized by practices embedded in
feudal relations. To answer the associated questions we sought to ﬁnd sites from Phase I,
compare them to sites determined to be Phase II and III, and to contrast spatial
organization and other information to studies of plantation settlements elsewhere for this
period. In truth our results, although promising, are meager. The Jamestown site in St.
Thomas and a few mill complexes in St. John were the only locations within our sample
that were not obliterated on the surface by subsequent Phase activity. Nonetheless,
Jamestown provided a wealth of artifactual material and construction details. And the
mills gave a clear picture of early sugar processing technology and spatial organization in
the production sector, perhaps too small or too early to be referred to as being industrial
scale.

Relevant studies for comparison of plantation models elsewhere in the British sphere
have been generated by Delle (1999) and Klingelhofer (1999). Each author has
tentatively explored this potential avenue of explication by comparing Elizabethan
colonization in Ireland with New World colonies. This approach deserves more attention.
More work is needed in this arena before substantive and valid comparisons can be made.

Hypothesis 2 as constructed visualized changes in the practices of settlement to be a
result of a shift toward capitalism. Apparent differences in land-use patterns were

suggested to be stemming from capitalist production systems. The historical data

 

 

provided spotty but signiﬁcant information about agricultural yields, shipping volume,
and prices that when combined, indicated a trend toward ever increasing production. The
archaeological sample found rapid expansion across the landscape, assimilation of
efﬁcient innovations in sugar technology once introduced, and a general increase in the
number and size of mill-complexes. These ﬁndings are consistent with the model for
development and suggest a settlement dynamic centered on industrial expansion. In other
words, the emergence of Nevis as an important node of commodity production. An
alternative hypothesis might argue that expansion of the settlement was simply a natural
outcome of increasing colonization. However, this can be refuted on both archaeological
and historical grounds. Demographic data demonstrates that fewer Europeans were
coming to Nevis while slave populations grew. Slave imports served the needs of
production. A large and disproportionate slave population was necessary for production
in the absence of any willing wage labor force. European numbers stabilized in Phase II.
In times of large European populations the numbers can be attributed to military
garrisons and troop deployments during wider Caribbean conﬂicts. Towns were not being
constructed and there is no evidence of settlement that was not estate oriented.
Hypothesis 3 suggests that exploitation of the environment increased to satisfy
systemic needs of industrial scale production under capitalism, and as this occurred land
itself became an ever more critical variable. Hypotheses 2 and 3 are closely related.
Examination of capitalism in the Caribbean must inevitably confront environmental
issues because issues of economy and ecology are so tightly bound throughout the region.
The evidence from surveys and documentary sources is overwhelming--environmental

change was rapid, industry focused and, unfortunately for later generations, irreversible.

227

 

 

 

The affect of this change on settlement patterns, had unexpected impact on economic
dependency, industry, and social behavior. Both the deforestation that stripped the
landscape for initial colonization and the spread of plantations to cover the entire island
are indicators of expanding productive capacity even as the European colonial population
reduced itself to the essential personnel of management and property owners.

Two principal ways in which cultural behavior and environment have been integrated
in archaeological research have been to either posit that cultural behavior functions as
part of a system that also includes environmental phenomena or to demonstrate that
environmental phenomena account for, or are in some way responsible for, the
development of a particular cultural behavior under study (Watson, LeBlanc, and
Redman 1984). At the outset this study was organized around the principle that humans
are functioning elements of any ecosystem and their behavior is inﬂuenced or restricted
(but not determined) by environmental constraints. Within historical archaeological
parameters, and this distinction is essential, culture is viewed as more rigid and coercive
than environment in realizing behavior. The importance of a landscape approach becomes
evident when questions of environment and behavioral dynamics associated with
settlement are brought to the foreground.

Plantations generated at least three distinct and visible environmental modiﬁcations.
The ﬁrst involved removal of native plant life and replacing it with imported agriculture.
The second was through alteration of natural and existing land forms to impose an
artiﬁcial landscape of ﬂat land suitable for planting. The third was the construction of
mill-complexes, living spaces, and roads. Surrounding these spaces were non-native

plants introduced either for food or ornamentation. Not always visible, but nonetheless

 

228 L

 

 

experienced by the colonists, were boundaries between plantations or between social
segments within the estate hierarchy determined by spatial organization. Modiﬁcation of
natural environment reached extremes for townhouses.

Alternatively, a hypothesis that no environmental change occurred can be rejected out
of hand. The environment of Nevis represents nothing if not change. A further alternative
explanation; that environmental change is unrelated to the needs of production but rather
a product of colonization, would need to explain why no land was set aside to feed
colonists, why no towns were established after Phase I, and why plantations continued to
be built even as European population decreased during Phases II and III at increasing
scale. The power of historical archaeology is the ability to combine historical
documentary source data with archaeological data. Survey data clearly demonstrate the
spread of plantations across the landscape while documentary data enables us to evaluate,
demographics and production capacity. These two lines of evidence converge on the
conclusion that changes in the environment were aspects of the processes connected to
commodity production and increasing demand by the core state spurred interest and
investment in productive capacities.

Another conclusion we can draw is that settlement in the Lesser Antilles, in general
terms, was based on environment. The islands afforded ideal conditions for certain luxury
crops not easily cultivated in Europe, and the climate allowed for multiple harvests.
Europeans had not come to the tropics for their health.1 And Africans had not come of

their own free will. Many early documents refer to Nevis as among the most "unhealthful

 

' In a twist of historical fate, Europeans now travel to the islands “for their health.” The hot baths on Nevis
became an important tourist attraction in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The baths, ﬁrst
mentioned by Sir Henry Holt in 1630 are again becoming an attraction. An entrepreneur, perhaps with
more money than sense, has been rebuilding the Bath Hotel on Nevis as a spa.

229

 

 

of places." Such was the mind-set of colonists that the island could be rendered healthier
by clearing the forests and "opening" the landscape.

If climate was a critical reason for colonizing the Caribbean, it also acted as a limiting
factor. A planter had to be cognizant of drought, hurricane, and other unsettled weather
patterns that could ruin crops. In periods of sustained drought a plantation might fail‘
altogether. However, planters were usually in such debt that it beneﬁted all to keep
operating, for as long as some capital was generated, it was cheaper to function poorly
than to shutdown and lose all. The letters excerpted below (from Gay 1929) offer three

examples of environmental factors affecting a plantation and its attendant social costs:

1725 Oct. 18

A bad crop of provisions by dry weather and a prospect for bad crop. No
provision from abroad from wence the negoes suffer; for wich reason he
writes for beans...
From Herbert, Nevis

1726 June 15‘

...A dry time and very little suggar made in the island and a bad prospect
for next year. No provision in the island for negroes. If the weather had
prov’d tolerably good he had ship’d my mother att least two hund: hoggs
besides Ldy Russells armty and the plantation expenses. As things stand he
shall not be able to shipp her above thirty. On the 16th may he was at my plant:
where he was agreeably met by a ﬁne shower of rain wich gave Mr Herbert room
to plant a ﬁne piece of canes the ground being open’d. ...he fears he will not have
enough to answer all the debts contract’d there. As for making buildings he does
not see any occasion for any, att present it being sufﬁcient to keep them in repair
that are already. My negroes look good. My mother has lost a great part of her
stock an the salt ponds...

From T. Tyrrel, Nevis

1732 My 4‘h

...and am sorry you had occasion to complain of the small quantity of sugar
you had from your plantation last year which was entirely owing to the dry
weather and not to any fault of your manager. I was often at your plantation
and see the canes he was cutting and they were short and dry. He did not make
quite six thousand pounds of sugar off a piece that usually made sixty thousand
but the weather was more severe on that side of the island than on this...

FromT. Tyrrel, Nevis

230

We can interpret from these letters that weather and management inﬂuenced growing,
but also the lives of plantation slaves. If these agents’ letters are typical, one may well
wonder how planters earned any wealth at all. Yet the market for sugar was protected and
the demand ever growing. To shut down Operations would not cause debts to evaporate as
easily as personal status.

Just as the native Carib may have sought particular resources in speciﬁc ecological
zones, so too were Europeans exploiting the ecology of the Caribbean basin for resource
extraction. But European agro-industrial practices were not suited to the tropics. Perhaps
it would be more accurate to say that the tropical rainforests were not capable of
sustaining the form and scale of agricultural practices introduced with plantation
production. The verdant nature of the islands is barrnecidal, its apparent lushness easily
misinterpreted for boundless fertility. The delicate balance in rainforest ecosystems is
easily upset. On a nominal scale, plantations were immense when measured against Carib
garden plots. Unlike the Carib, whose system of cultivation, known as conuco, was
diverse, sustainable, easily maintained and drought resistant (Watts 1999:36), plantation
scale monoculture was to prove remarkably susceptible to unsettled weather, disease, and
was highly labor intensive as well as environmentally destructive.

Traditional Carib agriculture included cassava, sweet potato, yarns, and other
carbohydrate rich root crops. But most importantly, conuco farming did not appreciably
damage the soil the way sugar production was to do. And while conuco agriculture
provided a nutritious balance of foodstuffs, industrial crops of sugar, tobacco and cotton
offered no nutrition at all. So little land was devoted to production of food in the colony

that colonists imported nearly all their food. With the introduction of hogs, cattle, sheep,

231

horses (of which Nevis became renown) and dogs, the local ecology became irreversibly
altered.

We can surmise that planters were willing to risk fortunes on even marginal land so
great was the lure of proﬁts to be made from sugar during the late seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. The terraced ﬁngers of land in the upper elevations of quadrats
S_JQ1, $92, and m; are testimony to the measures taken to transform poor conditions
into productive pieces. Terraces followed even the narrowest of ridges upward and to the
very edges of ghuts. In addition to providing a level growing area, terraces were also
intended to prevent soil loss due to erosion. Loose stone was stacked to form retaining
walls and earth ﬁlled in behind on the up-slope side to create the terrace. Maintaining
terraces was as much a demand on labor as holing and tending the cane, and was a chief
occupation of slaves not otherwise engaged in plantation duties. Only a few plantations
had large expanses of ﬂat land. Despite these measures, soil degraded rapidly and with
deforestation, topsoil blew away with the trade winds as easily as it washed away during
storms. Rich volcanic loam was gradually depleted. Fertilizing in the form of cattle dung
or lime was practiced by a few but was insufﬁcient to enhance the nutrient poor soil.

The damaging effect of untenable agricultural practices was not immediately felt. For
at least the ﬁrst half-century of colonization, estates were small and wide spread. Islands
of rainforest separated plantations. Prosperity encouraged further development and
entrepreneurs found willing investors. Not until the late seventeenth century did the
problems of soil degradation become evident. Even with problems of soil loss, nutrient
depletion, marginal land, and the irregularities of weather, there was no diminution in

desire among entrepreneurs to invest in a sugar plantation. But by the middle of Phase II

232

 

 

it is evident the rules of the game had changed, and with them, settlement patterns
changed as well.

A sugar estate was a large-scale agro-industrial enterprise that required capital and
expertise on several levels to operate successfully. Many who lacked managerial skills
failed. Indeed, I suggest the managerial acumen among the plantocracy growing out of
the sugar industry is one of the key elements in the rise of capitalism. Managerial skills
were certainly transferable to other industries and members of the new managerial class
became important ﬁgures in the ascendancy of capitalism as an economic system separate
from feudal models of patronage that were a hallmark of earlier economic models.

Again, the important contribution of historical archeology is the integration of
historical sources with the ground truthing of archaeology. Documentary sources inform
us that to establish a plantation, one had to acquire land, a labor force, and build a mill,
boiling house, curing house, accommodations for servants or slaves, acquire carts,
animals, and sundry supplies. Initial planting could take two years to reach maturity. Or,
one could purchase an existing operation, perhaps already failing from poor soils. After
careful study of the Pinney family papers, Pares (1950) found that in the eighteenth
century a small, run-down property on Nevis could be purchased for £3000, but would
need additional capital to bring up to production. This is many times the expense incurred
during the seventeenth century. But estates varied in value considerably based on
location, soil, and the number of slaves, who were categorized as stock along with cattle.
And while equipment and buildings were costly, inventories from plantations in the
Caribbean suggest that these constituted a small proportion of the total value. Slaves by

far were the chief capital investment (Galloway 1989:89) after land. However, even a

233

 

small estate of 100 to 200 acres could make a signiﬁcant impression on the environment.
What the archaeology has revealed is how these estates and social sectors were
distributed across the colonial landscape, which social arrangements emerged within the
plantation landscape, and ways in which plantation layouts deviated from norms.
Compromises with environment, logistics, variable loads, or social structures are all
indicated from the archaeology, especially at the Ridge mill-complex in St. John.

The behavior of colonists on Nevis was not determined by the environment of
Nevis, they brought their behavior with them. Culture is not an exosomatic mediator, but
acts directly on the environment. That agricultural behaviors imposed on the tropical
environment of Nevis was egregiously inappropriate was not immediately obvious, and
probably did not matter to colonists in any respect. Compromises were likely the result of
feedback from interaction within an environment. Not until the eighteenth century were
concerns voiced. During Phase 11, North American colonist Benjamin Franklin presented
a paper at a scientiﬁc conference in Paris, on the deleterious effects of deforestation and
its relationship to water loss on the islands (Grove 1997). French authorities sought
measures to enforce buffer zones around water courses on their Caribbean colonies,
taking the unusual step of prohibiting trees from being cut on either bank for a span of 50
feet as a means of reducing evaporation. A similar ordinance was in effect on Nevis, but
was weakly enforced. As the Council of Nevis was comprised chieﬂy of planters, it is not
surprising enforcement was lax. Planters were loath to compromise any part of their
arable land for the public good--even in their own best interest.

The plantation system itself had systemic requirements all its own that reconﬁgured

 

the landscape. Of these, perhaps none was as important as the roads linking estates to

234

 

points of commerce, or to one another, and joining rural regions to urban centers. Roads
are often overlooked as landscape features, but roads not only facilitate mobility, they
deﬁne social space and are an integral feature of interaction spheres between rural and
urban or civil and industrial centers. The several roads investigated within our sample
suggest far greater mobility than is possible on Nevis today. But the mobility patterns
were evidently intended to serve plantation requirements, facilitating the movement of
produce to shipping, and maintaining communication between estates. Maps do not show
roads as conduits between population centers. This was undoubtedly because the
population was distributed across the island at estates with the only area of concentration
at the port which also served as mercantile center. Survey along these roads, especially in
lower St. John, (see Chapter Five) recorded unidentiﬁed industrial works from Phase II
and 111, but no residential architecture or artifact scatters of material culture datable to the
pre-emancipation era. Taken together, these data suggest the road network was intended
for agro-industrial expansion and underscores my contention that Nevis was foremost an
outpost for resource extraction.

Boundary walls, terraces, roads and pathways, serve to carve up the landscape into
demarcated, managed, and controlled spaces. Roads join estate works to central arteries
of transportation and in some cases, one estate to another. For example, the village of
Cox in St. John, is linked directly to Coxheath works by a cobble road that is nearly four

feet lower in elevation than the surrounding terraced ﬁelds (Figure 7-2). From this road

 

are two branches leading to other plantations. Broad pathways join several estates to

villages. The increased compartmentalization of space we ﬁnd in the archaeological

235

 

landscape coincides closely with the historic development of the plantocracy as a political
and economic entity controlling the colony.
The Archaeology of Environmental Chang

The essential questions used to focus research on the hypotheses asked how the
landscape evolved, whether development indicated acceleration or resistance to change,
which sectors of society reﬂect integration of capitalism, and how the case of Nevis
informs us on regional trends. These questions, to a substantial degree, can be answered
in a way which increases our understanding of the stresses on colonial systems. Survey
results presented in the preceding chapters support the conjecture that ﬁrst settlement
proceeded according to the needs of the initial colonists, expediently along the shore. The
multiple factors of topography, management planning, market ﬂuctuation, and weather
all met in a synergistic relationship to help create a landscape of colonial agro-
industrialism.

We have to ask why the road system was allowed to deteriorate so badly around the
southern side of the island. Two probable answers come to mind based on the physical
environment. The lower areas of St. John are dry and parched. Topsoil has so degraded
that only acacia and century plant ﬂourish, with prickly pear and turks-head cactus
underfoot. Artifacts from every historic period into the early nineteenth century are co-
mingled on the surface in conﬂated deposits. Estates in the area are shown on the 1871
Iles map, yet roads to these estates are also depicted as cut by ravines, which forced new
patterns of mobility. Based on architecture and surface artifacts, abandonment of the

lowland area as unproductive at a date in the late eighteenth century appears likely

236

 

 

 

Without plantations to service, road maintenance would not have been a priority. Of
course, we could also conjecture that abandonment resulted from the combination of
failing soils and road degradation. More than two centuries of agro-industrial exploitation
had created a bleak and inhospitable terrain suited only to the roaming herds of feral

donkeys common today.

  
 
   
    

North is at the left.
Shaded area is shown enlarged below.

5'.

.1!" ...{I-yw 0.. . .
\wsﬁ. ‘ '23-

 

 

 

c, .534.

Cur-l.

Figure 7-1. Example of road system from St. John Parish. The roads developed during the ﬁrst century
of the colony, seen here in a map from 1704, served to facilitate commodity transportation as the early
web-like system enabled routes of shortest distance to shipping places while partitioning the landscape
for plantation development. Yet this map does not depict plantations, or villages.

237

 

 

 

 

Figure 7-2. Road west toward the coast from Cox village. Zone B. Note the difference in elevation
between road surface and surrounding ﬁeld. The cobble road is bordered by stacked stone retaining
walls. Surrounding ﬁelds are nearly at the level of the upper course of stone. Paul White, of Brown
University, pictured.

Geographical analysis of spatial organization of human societies has intrigued many
since von Thuenen in the early nineteenth century, as well as Vita-Finzi (1970), and
Christaller (1966) whose various modeling of distance relationships, site catchment, and
least-cost systematics, respectively, have inﬂuenced the way scholars have addressed the
functional relationships of settlement systems. The same holds true here. But rather than
focusing exclusively on spatial patterning as a process unto itself, I've taken the posture
that observable patterns are the nexus of environmental and economic relationships,
mutually contributing through social feedback exchanges to inﬂuence settlement

dynamics. While each of the factors ranging from distance relationships to cost factors

238

 

 

are operating, each has its own place and time of importance during a settlements historic
trajectory, and at no time are any of these processes acting in solo. Settlement on Nevis
does not appear to have evolved around a central place, per se, but expanded outward
from a key entry point or node. The node was restricted by environmental factors not
optimum efﬁciency. And actual colonial authority was located in another island colony
altogether. Perhaps it would be best at a future time to reconsider the region, imagining
the sea as a featureless plane with islands as settlement nodes.

As previously discussed, the pattern that emerged on Nevis was the establishment of
semi-autonomous plantation enclaves. Yet merchants and government focus was on the
nodes. Setting aside for a moment the urbanized shipping center, we can see from the
roads that systematics were operating to create a network that would enhance settlement
expansion. Roads came to distant parts of the island before settlements, so far as we can
tell at this juncture, perhaps based on land speculation. Not a classic model of settlement
based on cost minimization and efﬁciency, but related, and one which cannot be ignored.
Archeological Landscape

The archaeological record is, of course, incomplete and biased toward the substantial
as opposed to the ephemeral, and there is always the problem of allowing a particular
landscape feature to tell the whole story. The solidly built mill complexes and boundary
walls, wind-mill towers and terraces are relics of the industrial character of the colony,
but they were not places of residence, of worship, of commerce, or of defense—each a
source of environmental modiﬁcation. These are places where social structuring are most

evident in the absence of excavation of slave housing or merchant quarters.

_.———-- ——.L .— _

 

 

Documentary sources reveal that earliest mill complexes, houses, and curing facilities
were built from wood. However, no wooden structures from before the middle of the
nineteenth century remain or were found in the survey sample. This is not unexpected.
Wood simply does not last in the tropics owing to rot. Charlestown burned on more than
one occasion even without help from the French. Sugar reﬁning is inherently risky owing
to the open ﬁres under the boiling pots and ash billowing from smoke stacks. As island
timber stocks were used up for buildings and fuel, colonists turned their attention to stone
as a construction material. Mill complexes prior to 1685 had masonry boiling tables
(Spanish trains, with ﬁres beneath each cauldron) covered by wooden superstructures.
Ancillary structures were built of wood or a combination of wood and masonry.
Introduction of the Jamaica train early in Phase II coincides with increased prevalence of
masonry structures in the archaeological landscape, suggesting both a new focus on
permanence of industrial sites on the colony and a focus on factory levels of production.
It was an important period for capital investment and mirrors developments elsewhere in
the Lesser Antilles in Both British and French sectors.

Variable Loads in the Colony

The beginning of this chapter raised important issues concerning the synergism of
culture and environment, accepting as a ﬁrst principal that the two are part of a system. In
my view the resulting landscape stems from the compromises arising from the tension
between the two elements, but this is an oversimpliﬁcation. Cultural engagement with
environment does not spin on a single behavior and environments are constituted by
multiple variables. Identifying variables and the degree to which colonists adapted,

modiﬁed or attempted to ignore them has been the goal of analysis. Decisions by

240

 

 

colonists contributed to the landscape formation. Returning for a moment to the model
presented in Chapter One, we can see that the landscape is a synchronic manifestation of
the culture/environment synergism, but also an active element in the synergism
diachronically. Initial colonists were faced with multiple ecological variables and
environmental obstacles. But their chief objectives could be satisﬁed within the ecology
as they found it: the cultivation of speciﬁc crops at limited scale shared attributes of
indigenous agricultural practice. As demand increased and the settlement scaled up, the
demands of agro-industrialism imposed new pressures on the local ecology.

Of the many variables colonists were confronted with, few were as important as water
availability. Everywhere on the landscape are constructions aimed at capturing this vital
resource. But other variables played as dynamic a role in shaping the trajectory of
settlement. These include, land availability and fertility, slope, and localized climate.
Even the climate changed over time as each variable gained or lost importance with
successive generations of colonists. Non environmental variables include distance to
shipping sites, labor and estate management skills, technology, and market activity.
Adaptations and decisions made in the context of the colony had serious implications for
cultural development on the island, while the system in which it evolved had signiﬁcant
affects on socio-economic change within the core state historically.

Changes in Landscape Structure

Again focusing on Hypothesis 2 and the essential questions of landscape change we
have several lines of evidence. Prior to 1650 last wills principally include bequeathals of
tobacco with barely any mention of sugar at all pointing to the focus in Phase I on small

farms. Plantations prior to 1650 tended to be small, of 200 acres or less, the majority of

241

 

 

 

 

no more than 100 according to documentary sources. Archaeological evidence from this
period is minimal. Middling and small holders were the norm. When divided, resulting
plantations could scarcely qualify as estates. But an explosion of sugar production after
1650, in what has been termed the "sugar revolution" (Sheridan 1963), led to colonial
expansion and plantation development that also instigated changes in land usage. After
1650 plantations begin to average closer to 250 acres and some large estates of the
eighteenth century had land in small lots across the island. For example, the Gardner
estate in 1768, held land in lots of 140, 30, 210,and 60 acre across three different
parishes, each running upslope from the sea. Another planter in 1774 had plantations of
100 acres in St. Thomas and 100 in St. John parishes.

With the colony focused squarely on production, shipping centers and road networks
were organized to facilitate commodity transportation and settlement expansion. But new
settlement was plantation based not structured around new towns, farms, or villages. The
modern archaeological landscape contains vestiges of this episode in island history.
Harbor locations were dictated by geography and settlement followed. Mill complexes
became larger and more permanent in character. Estates for which records exist tend to
be rectangular, even linear, and for many this unavoidably meant elevation variations
from one end to the other. Another aspect of such a land and space arrangement is that
contemporary models for estate efﬁciency could not effectively be applied. Sugar works
were located nearest to roads, as were residences, but laborers could not be efﬁciently

situated for optimum distance-to-ﬁeld, or for constant surveillance as was considered

 

ideal. The landscape seems to suggest that maintaining social distance was more prized

242

than agricultural efﬁciency among many planters. But also, that plantation dimensions
and spatial units on Nevis helped in deﬁning social space.

The discemable variable load shouldered by planters during each Phase changed
incrementally as environment was altered and availability of land for second generation
entrepreneurs diminished. Variables inﬂuencing settlement during the ﬁrst quarter
century beyond those already mentioned included forest cutting, land clearing,
agricultural expertise, topography, and instituting markets at home—almost archetypal
frontier mode. The second wave of colonists were free from the initial hardships but
were forced to stake out less desirable land at greater distances from shipping and at
increased cost. On comparatively larger islands, like St Kitts, this likely was of even
greater importance, on ﬂat islands such as Barbados, less so.

Small changes had large impacts. Clearing accelerated erosion and forced planters to
implement terracing not only to create ﬂat land but to retain soil. The many ghuts on the
island have become enlarged due to excessive runoff. Several patterns of land use on
Nevis are interpretable in the context of this study. Water availability was not a
determining factor in plantation spatial organization or acquisition in the way Clement
(1997) found to be the case on British Tobago, although this research corroborates his
analysis that environment played a key role. Nearly every estate suffered from the same
inadequacy of the resource. Cistems became an essential and familiar landscape feature.
Rain runoff from roofs was channeled into retention tanks at plantations and residences.
Some mill works were located near ghuts where intermittent water ﬂow could be
channeled and redirected. Maintaining fresh water springs became a central concern of

the established Nevis Council as it sought to combat urban pollution.

243

 

 

 

If clear-cutting by the ﬁrst planters had generated unforeseen environmental
degradation, the use of marginal land and steep terrain by subsequent estates only served
to exacerbate soil problems. Crops yielded less sugar juice per acre as a result of nutrient
depleted soils. The larger plantations that were more common during the eighteenth
century emerged in part by the need to produce more cane simply to procure juice yields
equivalent to what smaller plantations had managed the century before. More research is
needed before we can say environmental change indirectly stimulated capitalist
investment. As Richardson (1997:10) ruefully remarks, there existed an "incongruity
between the Caribbeans' externally introduced peoples and the lands they occupied." The
lack of any intimate link between colonists and the land contributed to an
industrial/environmental imbalance that predates the institutionalization of capitalism and
cannot be blamed on the economic system outright.

With respect to the rise of capitalism framed by Hypothesis 1, we would expect that
increased capitalization would lead to changes in the social arena and this would be
evident in architecture and material culture In the seventeenth century, a planter obtained
credit from a merchant who supplied the estate with necessities. When a crop was ready
it would automatically be consigned to the same merchant who sold it on the British
market and took deductions for supplies, commissions, and so forth. The system worked
well enough unless prices fell or war broke out, as we have seen they frequently did.
More signiﬁcant for investment was the innovative ways new banks offered credit to
induce planters to adopt the new technology, just as planters were accepting

compensation from Parliament for costs incurred from emancipation (Lobdell I972).

244

 

 

The eighteenth century saw the conﬂuence of increased ﬂow of capital from new
sources of credit, but also the need to have larger estates to be competitive. Moreover,
Nevis is a small island. It's chief competitors were larger islands. The various colonies
were not a uniﬁed system but shared the same market and competed within a closed
system. In this economic climate after 1700, a small planter on Nevis could not compete
successfully even in the protected, monopolistic markets guaranteed in the British
system. Consolidation of small estates into larger ones by fewer owners during the later
half of the eighteenth century changed not only the plantation landscape but the social
landscape as well. Middling planters could still maintain a presence but eventually many
sold their interests to large holders. Adoption of technological advancements, especially
in reﬁning methods, led many operations to rebuild existing sugar-works in order to
remain competitive. While great house and rural townhouses reﬂect the status displays of
the wealthy, small residences, such the ridge house examined in St. John parish, open a
window on to the life of planters of more modest means. Even here we learned that
material culture expresses efforts to be, using modern parlance, "upscale" in behavior.

Demographic changes on Nevis appear to have been inﬂuenced by two principal
factors, estate growth and external conﬂict. As estates grew in size physically, greater
numbers of slaves were being imported. Simultaneously, the European population on the
island declined.

Technology was another contributor to patterns of settlement shaping the landscape.
The environment of each plantation set perameters with which planters had to
accommodate. Nevis had no streams so water wheels were out of the question. The next

best application of milling technology was the windmill. But not every plantation could

245

 

take advantage of wind. Where animal mills were the preferred approach, there was still
ﬂexibility in spatial arrangements of the complex so long as the mill platform was raised
above the collection vats. Since mills could be placed anywhere on a property it is not
surprising that proximity to roads was a deciding factor where wind capture was not
critical. When wind was the driving force, mill placement was more constrained. Steam
powered mills were introduced shortly after the cessation of the British slave trade. Steam
engines were an important feature of the industrial revolution and I will address it only in
the context of what I see as a major ﬂaw in arguments concerning new technology
investment throughout the Caribbean. It is often taken for granted that steam engines
were introduced to reduce costs, especially as emancipation approached. In fact, steam
engines did not fundamentally decrease labor or cost. The bottleneck in productions was
not the milling process but in management of harvest and subsequent curing. What steam
engines did was eliminate dependency on wind, daylight operation, and the need for
animals and fodder, although water continued to be a weak spot. Even if a steam mill
could crush faster, there still were the problems of juice collection and boiling.
Harvesting remained the principal labor issue. Within twenty-four hours cane juice
begins to spoil. Cut or crush too much and much goes to waste. Boiling facilities could
not process cane juice faster simply because more juice was on hand. Instead, estate
managers were required to change the entire cultivation and harvest cycle for constant
operation of mills. These factors may explain the slow adoption of steam on Nevis rather

than traditionalist behavior or any reaction against capitalism.

246

Residential Patterns Across Ph_a_se_s

The modern landscape belies past practices. A pattern of separating slave housing
from planter residences is evident in the documentary record, particularly evident in
estate maps but the sample is small and has not yet been conﬁrmed archaeologically.
Additionally, Europeans appear to have lived in smaller aggregate units than the African
populations. This issue merits further investigation. There were no European villages the
way there came to be African villages. Were the plantocracy living in isolated family
units, exercising freedom of mobility to interact in the urban centers, while slaves lived in
larger congregations and focused on interactions between congregations? If this were the
case, two separate, overlapping systems of interaction spheres might be operating
independently over the landscape. Ofﬁcial maps give us an indication of road networks
but no hint at unofﬁcial tracks. Lacking historical records to inform us, the only recourse
will be to test this possibility archaeologically and through analysis of folk histories for
pre-emancipation behavior.
Assessing the Model of Development: Phased Exploitation

These were two different Caribbeans. One founded on exploration, conquest, tribute,
patronage, assimilation and exploitation of indigenous populations, but also an expanding
world empire's conscious extension of culture. The other was based fundamentally on
environmental exploitation and experiments in modes of labor relations and management.
The indigenous peoples were largely gone or contained as the age of exploration waned.
The agricultural base of both eras was founded on slavery but the institution within each
system was cloaked in unique qualities. The Spanish population swelled while the

English, Dutch, and French never achieved substantial numbers comparable to that of the

247

 

 

 

Latin Caribbean. Naturally, the Lesser Antilles make up only a fraction of the land mass
of the insular Caribbean region and are small by comparison to the islands of Cuba and
Hispaﬁola, which could absorb a great many people. But that fact alone does not account
for the population differences. This issue is widely debated by social historians but I ﬁnd
the evidence supports the argument that intent of colonization is at the root of intent in
settlement dynamics. The following three maps provide a graphic interpretation of these

settlement phases based on archaeological and historical data.

 

Newcastle

      

Jamestown

 

 

 

Figure 7-3. Nevis settlement during Phase I. Archaeological
Sites located during survey suggest coastal spread with limited
penetration beyond environmental zone D (0-500 feet).

In the British Caribbean frontier, land was devoted to commodity production operated
by semi-autonomous plantations, not for colony sustenance. These settlements were able

to absorb a laboring population but could spare little room for homesteads and farmers.

248

. .1 _.‘...

 

 

 

While there likely were a few farmers producing and selling locally, the documentary
evidence is mostly silent on the matter and the only archeologically substantiated
provision production was among Africans. Throughout the Spanish Caribbean there
appears to have been greater emphasis placed on settlement infrastructure than is
apparent in the Lesser Antilles under the British, with more land devoted to basic
subsistence and agricultural support of the populous, again underscoring the signiﬁcance
Settlement on Nevis appears to have been coastal and within Zone D for its ﬁrst quarter
century. However. by the end of the seventeenth century, settlement, or at least

cultivation, had penetrated into much of Zone B up to 1000 feet.

 

Newcastle

 

 

 

 

Figure 7-4. Settlement during Phase II. Extensive penetration
into higher elevations and around the coastal regions. Evidence
in the form of mills, house structures, roads, and terracing in
addition to historic sources point to rapid environmental
exploitation. Jamestown will fade from history in early half of
the eighteenth century. Charlestown becomes the principal

port in the latter half of the eighteenth century.

249

 

Late in Phase II settlement and environmental modiﬁcation was evident in the upper
reaches of Zone A. Phase III settlement retracted slightly with consolidation and with less

land under cultivation, yet settlement had encircled the island and had penetrated Zone A.

 

Newcastle

.2_L

 

 

 

 

Figure 7-5. Nevis in Phase III. Although many plantations had
ceased operations, and less land was under cultivation, settlement
had reached all areas of the island.

Nevis in the World System

Nevis' place in the world system can be highlighted by examining its rise and fall
with external affairs. Development of agro-industrial outposts in the frontier created
peripheral nodes in an economic system busy producing exchange commodities desired
by core states. During Phase 11 government encouraged--but entrepreneurs and
consortiums developed--the colonial enterprises of the Caribbean frontiers. This sounds

like modern policy of major capitalist states. By development I mean substantive

250

establishment of plantations, commercial centers, ports, and the associated exchange
relations that operated between these diverse focal points. Colonial development
manifested challenges to existing support systems, which were met primarily by private
sponsorship until a combination of proﬁts and political power among an emergent planter
class gained momentum and political clout. Much of this is evident in contemporary
documents. Momentum was sustained by increasing consumption of colonial agricultural
products at every level of society in the core states. As the luxury of tobacco and sugar
broadened in use from the narrow conﬁnes of the wealthy classes to reach even "the
meanest sort," demand increased.

Caribbean settlement was dependent on shipping and cannot be understood in its
absence anymore than modern suburbia can be explained absent the automobile.
Mobility, trade and defense were dependent on shipping and integral to the colonial
system. Navies were an instrument of policy. Maritime requirements inﬂuenced
settlement patterns. The rise of insurance brokering in the context of plantations added
impetus to critical aspects of market capitalism, and supplied capital to new ventures.

Growth of the maritime sector came about as an answer to material and labor
problems, transporting indentured servants from Europe and slaves from Africa.
Maritime growth prompted adjustments in manufacturing, trade, investment, spawning
opportunities for economic expansion. English shipping interests had a long standing
practice of slaving stemming back to the Elizabethan's trade in slaves with Spanish
settlements (Hakluyt [Hawke]l972). Slaving networks already in place extended and
intensiﬁed to supply the labor-voracious sugar industry. Economic increase among the

colonies enabled maritime centers in Britain, such as Bristol or Liverpool, to participate

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actively in the trade where slaves were viewed as yet another commodity. These trade
centers also enjoyed expansion of manufacturing and growth.

Documents contained in folios of Acts of the Nevis Council provide clear examples of
the interaction between plantation settlement, commerce, and shipping. The desire to
increase settlement on Nevis was closely tied to establishment of ports and port location
was unavoidably dictated by environmental constraints (scarce availability of safe

anchorage for example). The principle phrases from the Act are,

"...Whereas a great part of your Majesty's Island of Nevis remains still unmanured,
especially in and towards the parish of St Georges', Gingerland, and foreasmuch [sic] as several of
your Majesty's subjects, inhabitants of these part, have quitted and do so daily quit the same,
which principally is to be attributed to the want of a free shipping—place, whereby the inhabitants
may with greater ease transport the product of their plantations by water to Charles Town. . .your
majesty's revenues will be augmented. . . lawful place to ship cotton, sugars, indigo and other
goodsu."

An Act for making Indian Castle a Shipping-place.

Laws of Nevis 1704-05 (see Appendix for reprint of Act)

The world system is a network of sub-systems and not monolithic. Obvious though
they may seem, maritime communities are often overlooked as critical cogs of
infrastructural links in the world system--sources of news and information, carriers of
ideas as well as bulk commodities. During the eighteenth century the impact of mariners
was widely suspected, and denigrated. Colonial authorities did not need a
Wallersteinesque world-system theory to recognize inﬂuences of maritime communities.
Barbados, for example, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century was visited by
150 ships or more per year. It is likely the average citizen engaged in greater trafﬁc of
ideas and news in Barbados than the typical country citizen in England. Scott’s (1986,
1991, 1996) and Bolster's (1997) important contribution exemplify the recent trend of

investigating the lives of slaves and free-blacks from the framework of semi-autonomy

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and resistance, as well as casting light on their contributions to Caribbean social
development in a wider world beyond the conﬁnes of the plantation. Scott's (I986, 1991)
study of black mariners, free and bonded, and that of Bolster (1997), cast light on a key
segment of Caribbean society. Thus, it is reasonable to incorporate maritime boundaries
into the broader colonial political landscape. Indeed, maritime activity often underscores
the permeability of boundaries that might be supposed to exist between nations or
economic spheres.
Periphery-Periphery

The relationship between British island colonies, such as Nevis, and those on the
North American mainland in some cases may have rivaled the importance of that
between the islands and the metropole—the sea acting less as a barrier than a highway for
distribution of raw and manufactured materials. Similar relations held sway for French
colonies, while Dutch holdings functioned in a singularly different manner. Dutch
enterprise in the Caribbean may have indirectly contributed to changes in merchant
capitalism through free ports and unrestricted trade (Crouse 1943; Klooster 1998).

During the eighteenth century, demand for sugar grew to such an extent that it passed
from luxury good into common usage approaching the status of a staple. The steady ﬂow
of sugar kept 1500 reﬁneries operating in London alone by the mid eighteenth century.
Several industries that had once stood independent of the West India trade became deeply
invested. The increasingly tangled economic relationships that emerged in this period
form the backbone of the capitalist paradigm that would fund the industrial revolution
before the century's end. As the West Indies emerged as the hub of Atlantic commerce,

shipping, manufacturing, and the slave trade grew concomitantly. English commercial

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sailing expanded to accommodate the rising tide of bulk cargo, and the insurance industry
developed with it as a means of protecting planters from losses suffered during the
vagaries of sailing or from conﬂict.

Shipping as an industry began to grow as the colonies began to prosper. It must be
noted that sugar imports to England were a protected market and for solely internal
consumption, whereas French and Dutch imports were just as likely slated for re-export
within Europe. During this phase, non-British sugar also occasionally made its way into
the British market as a result of various governmental policies. These differing policies
had contrasting inﬂuences over price ﬂuctuations, product availability, and impact on
economies in the core states.

The web of political, colonial, and industrial development was beginning to strengthen
and expand. Like it or not Nevis, and indeed all the sugar islands, were becoming
integrated into a world system. The sugar colonies as an important economic zone was
recognized and new waves of investment indirectly related to Nevis, but relevant to the
developing capitalist economy, were undertaken. Signiﬁcant numbers in parliament were
planters sympathetic toward increasing the gains of the plantocracy. The target of trade
legislation in the colonies was Holland. Barbados and many others in the colonies had
been free to ship with whomever they chose and the Dutch were the principal carriers of
sugar in the Caribbean undercutting British shipping (Newton 1967; Klooster 1998). A
critical outcome of the restrictions was the imposition of the Navigation Acts that
restricted trade only to English ships. While this was good for the shipping interests it

placed a higher burden on the planters and costs were passed along to consumers.

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Even as the social landscape in the Caribbean was changing, so too was it the case at
home. The growth of port cities is just one example of the growing interdependency
evolving between the core state and periphery during the seventeenth century. With
population increases in the core we can detect concomitant and gradual rise of associated
small industry and incipient improvements in economic conditions.2 London alone
would eventually be home to 1500 sugar reﬁners as the government established measures
for creating and maintaining employment for the growing urban population.

In Wallerstein's world system framework, a key product of the world system that arose
after the sixteenth century is economic zonation, with peripheral regions serving to
produce surpluses consumed at the core, and absorbing the manufactured products from
the core. Even though hypothesized as a precondition for capitalism's expansion, there is
nothing inevitable about the ascendancy of capitalism in zonation. Although the core-
periphery model focuses on the nature of long-distance trade interactions, strictly
speaking, the British Caribbean as described here represents a variation of the periphery
concept. Caribbean colonies were not exploiting indigenous populations nor forging
hegemonic economic relations. But the region did form the backbone of an economic
zone that fueled the industries at the core while absorbing much of its manufactured
product. This was true for Britain, France and Holland at varying levels, but each
followed a slightly different course, in part because of the differences inherent in their
respective governments at the critical juncture of Caribbean colonization, mediated by the

nature of their colonies and the environments of their islands. Nevis was participating in a

 

2 There were, of course, several concomitant factors operating that made such a population available for
urban industry, most of which are outside the scope of this study. However, a few deserve mention.
Changes in the structure of farming, improvements in agricultural technologies that increased production.
enclosure laws, and surplus population resulting from improvements in food production and distribution. as

255

 

 

 

 

world system simply through its productive capacity of commodities it could not
consume on its own, but exported in response to consumer desires.
Economic Zonation

As touched on in Chapter One, differences among the various forms this dynamic as
manifested in the Caribbean can be explained in part by the differential investment by
central governments at the distant state. This derivation of Wallerstein's (I 974) notion
that state strength is key in the operation of unequal exchange between core and
periphery and appropriation of the world-economy by core states. Such an exchange may
be modeled effectively for late in capitalism's maturity but does not explain capitalism's
emergence. Nevis was not a peripheral state under hegemonic control, but an economic
zone with privileged access to markets of the core.

The central governments of England, France, Holland were dramatically different in
structure at the outset of Caribbean involvement. And while they may have initially
shared a common desire to carve out a slice of the Spanish pie, the historical trajectories
of their respective colonies in the Caribbean reﬂect the unique national character of each
state. Each national entity developed economic extractive zones in the Caribbean that
beneﬁted the state more than the colony in measurable but different ways. But the
instrument of economic zonation was uniquely environmental in character.

Zonation implies differential integration into a broader system and, indeed, the
Caribbean colonies functioned as speciﬁc agro-industrial centers. Resources extraction
was never based on staples but on luxury commodities, and as these industries succeeded

in broadening their internal markets to reach non-elites, the relationship between society

 

 

 

 

well as rebound from periods of disease, all contributed to making available the people demanded by the
urban centers. Some income was to be preferred to none.

256

and the agro-industrial system not only strengthened, it deepened. The astute observation
made by Champion (1989) that the cost of the state extricating itself from the system
became greater than of remaining embedded within it, shaped the social responses to
systemic maintenance.
Landscapes of Capitalism

Models by Wolf and Wallerstein suggest a global trade system was instrumental for
incipient capitalist development. My model is wrapped around the idea that capitalism
arises out of industrial colonialism and the synergism of support structures that evolved
in response to socioeconomic development in these specialized peripheral sectors.

A major question framing this study asks: Do phases of development identiﬁable in
the landscape indicate accelerated or countervailing resistance to changes, in spatial
organization, in social norms or the relations of production in correspondence with
historic events? To answer this we must ﬁrst ask if phases of development could be
identiﬁed. The simple answer is yes. But the answer is not simple. Development was at
ﬁrst lock step with production and certain pivotal historic events, but the process slowed.
The rapid pace of change from Phase I to Phase II is evidenced by plantation spread and
population demographics, but it appears the pace slowed due to saturation of space rather
than from resistance. Expansion was most rapid in the period when proﬁts were greatest
in the earliest stages of the development of the Atlantic economy and slowed with the
broadening of the world system. But current archaeological evidence is insufﬁcient to
rule out coincidence.

At least two economic innovations were critical in sustaining capitalism's inadvertent

rise. First, innovative forms of credit were made available to allow start-up. Second,

257

 

 

 

governmental encouragement through controlled markets. The resonance between global
trade and new credit stimulated wider prosperity for the plantocracy. Perhaps an
important reality of the transition from feudalism to capitalism was that those with
privileged positions in the upper levels of the social hierarchy remained there. In the
frontier social asymmetry persisted as well. Elites remained elite, but rules for entry to
upper levels were in ﬂux.

As to which aspects of settlement or segments of society most reﬂect the integration of
capitalism and adaptation to social change, the archaeological and landscape evidence at
hand only reﬂects the attitudes of Europeans. Inadequate archaeological evidence is
available from this study to address this intriguing issue among other social groups on
Nevis prior to emancipation. The archaeological evidence points to reliance on externally
generated consumerism and standards, internalization of culture-reinforcing behaviors
associated with socially-deﬁning material culture. However, the ever present colonoware
on sites hints strongly at local adaptations and continuities in the face of change, possibly
in all social sectors. Artifacts clearly indicate Nevis, although a peripheral economic
zone, was not a backwater. Nevisians were not the "country cousins" of consumerism that
Smart-Martin (1996) labels the frontier colonists of Virginia. The constancy of shipping
insured that the Caribbean colonies were unlike other frontier regions suffering more
social isolation. Material culture expressions at the core found their way into Nevisian
communities with minimal lag time.

More work is necessary to adequately answer the question that individual lives were
inﬂuenced by capitalism at the micro-level. Limited evidence from analysis of material

culture to this point suggests greatest assimilation of capitalism among those already

258

 

 

beneﬁting most from extant systems of social attainment. Members of the plantocracy
adopted capitalism as a modus operandi and assumed roles in the new social system that
assured their status. Always in debt, many planters welcomed new modes of credit as
long as their peculiar status in West Indian society could be maintained. As Ragatz
(1963) quipped, plantation life had marked characteristics, one of which was, ". . .to view
ﬁnancial obligations lightly, lack of public spirit, and a striking measure of ostentation.“

One expression was architectural--grand houses and facades, fashionable gardens, or
imported building materials--another through forms of semiotic social interaction
communicated by objects and praxis. Specialized ceramics, non-utilitarian wares, and
wares associated with social ritual, such as tea drinking, all indicate the assimilation of
behaviors promulgated from the core state. Yet the presence of locally manufactured
wares among assemblages also reﬂect a pragmatic concern for functionality. Evidence is
incomplete on the affect over individual lives at all scales other than incorporation of
consumer ideology among upper levels of society, and an acute wariness of being
perceived as creoloized.
Regional Trends

The case of Nevis informs on regional trends (non-Iberian) in the development of

capitalism and inclusion of the Caribbean in a world-system in several interdependent

ways. The very conception of the Caribbean as a distinct region emerges out of the old

world as rivals of Spain made incursions for plunder. The Spanish Main and the

 

3 Much like the tendency for banks today to freely offer credit cards to the public then later complain of
cardholders failing to make payments, or declaring bankruptcy, banks at the start of the nineteenth century
according to Lobdell (1972), continued to offer novel credit arrangements to sugar planters even as the
industry was collapsing. Planters used the money to maintain displays of success before investing or
repaying other debts. And just as banks today seek a legislative answer to a problem they helped create. so
too did banks appeal to Parliament. However, many members of Parliament were absentee planters with
speciﬁc sympathies for the colonialists.

259

 

 

Caribbean became separated cartographieally as it did culturally. Even the Latin
Caribbean developed special character relative to the mainland as the Greater Antilles
were bypassed by Imperial Spain to pursue objectives on the continent.

Colonies of the Lesser Antilles were a vital part of an interlocked system. World
markets and developments on the other side of the planet inﬂuenced plantation success,
ultimately affecting every colonist including slaves. Revolutions by the continental
colonies (with whom many Caribbean colonies sympathized), revolution in France and in
Saint Domingue (Haiti), all had repercussions of social and political scope. Disruption in
production inﬂuenced developments in the mother countries and the loss of a single sugar
island could have damaging effects on national economies.

The Caribbean periphery served both as economic zone and functioned as proxy site
for warfare. Thus it is apparent the region has long been a surrogate political arena for the
traditional powers of western and northern Europe. Far from being isolated, the
Caribbean was incorporated into the tentative world economy at an early stage of
development, and remained so into the twentieth century, albeit with less economic
signiﬁcance.

A second regional trend for which the evidence is compelling is that of environmental
degradation. Sauer (1966) was among ﬁrst to recognize environment as a key component
of Caribbean settlement. Pulsipher's (1972) dissertation research on Montserrat,
qualitatively combining landscape and ecology, foreshadowed environmental interest in
the region and a trend in landscape studies. Evidence of ecological transﬁguration from

Nevis is staggering. As one of the smallest islands in the Lesser Antilles, its problems are

260

 

 

 

greatly magniﬁed. But from this case we can recognize the pattern and the legacy of
environmental neglect.
New Knowledge

Study of the Nevisian landscape in the framework of capitalism has substantively
increased our understanding of the trajectory of colonial development and the far
reaching affects of environmental exploitation by exposing the degree and scope of
change. Furthermore, new knowledge and insights have been produced in three distinct
arenas: 1) factors imposing landscape change and long term affects 2) material culture
transformation and complexity, and 3) aspects of the spatial character during the rise of
capitalism. Furthermore, a mechanism has been suggested and investigated that may yet
improve our comprehension of the incremental steps leading to the transition from feudal
relations to capitalism.

This was the ﬁrst systematic, broad scale, controlled sampling of historic landscape
attempted on Nevis. Systematic sampling and landscape survey has revealed major
environmental change and irreversible damage, which in turn degraded the original
settlement enterprise. Yet those embedded in the system were apparently unable or
unwilling to extricate themselves due to perceived short-term costs, both ﬁnancial and
social. This pattern can be found in many frontier arenas and in regions of capitalist
peripheries in the modern era where capitalists and industrialists do not plan on
remaining after proﬁts are reaped. This study enables us to understand the historical
context of environmental problems in the Caribbean from new perspectives. For example,
as resource extraction after the model of a mining camp. Furthermore, many new sites

and plantation structures were located, many not on modern maps and unsuspected on the

261

 

 

landscape. these will provide substantial data on industrial practices, spatial organization,
and construction methods for future research.

In terms of material culture, Nevis was not an important entrepot, but an outpost. We
do not ﬁnd the full range of goods in archaeological assemblages available in England or
in the Dutch freeports, and we would not expect to, yet wide variety was nonetheless
visible in the archaeological record for middle and late phases. New knowledge of the
link between Caribbean consumer markets and the pottery industry has been forthcoming.
Within each assemblage are the basic export wares distributed in the English Atlantic
economy. Throughout the eighteenth century, potters produced an ever growing suite of
ceramic types and specialized forms for table use and decorative purposes. Adoption of
not only the latest style but the most recent forms by members of the affluent classes set
new standards by which attainment and position could be identiﬁed within social groups.
But the less afﬂuent were incorporating new wares as well. As a result, potters, such as
Josiah Wedgewood, to name only one of prominence, and others manufactured table
wares for special purposes uncommon in the centuries prior to colonization. They were
both meeting a demand and creating a desire. It bears repeating that the plantocracy was
not engaging in status behavior to impress slaves whose station was clear, but to create
nuanced distinctions among themselves, perhaps to replace the rank categories of feudal
retaliations that were eroding away as capitalism blurred old institutions.

New knowledge has also been produced concerning construction, of spatial
organization, adaptive reuse of factory technology, and mill-complex histories. This

project has documented how old mills were modiﬁed to incorporate technological change

262

 

and has produced a set of measured drawings that will form the basis for comparisons of
site footprints over time.
Future Research

There is, of course, a great deal more that can be done. Research on Nevis would
beneﬁt signiﬁcantly from advanced geophysical surveys in the areas of settlement. This
has been shown an effective means of mapping subsurface remains by Leech (2001) at
Jamestown and Terrell (2000) at the Jewish cemetery outside Charlestown. Sophisticated
GIS applications would further enhance landscape research by providing digital tools for
analysis. New systematic aerial photography and infrared studies would certainly
increase knowledge of settlement distribution.

More research is needed in the areas of capitalism's direct impact on the individual
through advanced study of the role played by material culture in shaping cultural
schemas. Cognitive studies and recognition of ideological constructs imbued in objects,
as well as studies of architectural iconography forcefully suggest material culture under
capitalism is, and has been, a powerful agent in social relations. But how this manifested
at various levels of colonial society remains speculative. Who sets the agenda of change
within material culture; the manufacturer; the social elite; or the underclass, continues to
be a vexing question in Caribbean archaeology. Archaeological research into household
artifacts among free laborers and slaves would signiﬁcantly improve understanding of the
penetration of consumer capitalism and attitudes toward social conformity functioning at
different levels of society. Elites continue to garner all the attention because their
residences are so visible and their records more accessible. Elites continue to

disproportionately inﬂuence the history of Nevis and colonial settlements generally. The

263

 

 

survey carried out for this study found several sites of middling and lesser domestic
settlement that offer signiﬁcant potential for illuminating the lives of colonial society's
non-elite, silent participants. Many of these sites are in archaeologically undisturbed
contexts and would be rich data sources. Phase II likely had separate stages but at this
point they cannot be distinguished. Future study may produce data which will help
discriminate sub-phases in Phase III settlement linked to economic restructuring.

In a similar vein, more research is needed to develop a basic theory on colonoware--
who actually produced it and for whom--and what functions did it serve. Was it strictly
utilitarian? In what contexts was it used? Too many assumptions continue to underpin its
interpretation. Dating the changes of mill construction and technological changes in
reﬁning would also be a productive area for study useful across the Caribbean. When and
why boiling cauldrons change shape and materials has not been adequately explained.
My work at Indian Castle on Nevis discovered coppers in situ, a rarity on Nevis
(Meniketti 1998). An established chronology of industrial technology would have
appreciably facilitated dating the associated structures rather than to resorting to still
debatable ceramic and pipe stem dating.

Maritime slaves traveled between the islands, North America, and often to Europe.
Association between slave sailors and those who toiled ashore can be construed to have
allowed communication between separated family members or groups. And with regular
sailings such communication would not have been as haphazard as a casual glance would
suggest. Research into this avenue of communication and parallel social development for

the un-free4 remains to be explored. Often what one sees depends on the lens one uses to

 

4 I have use the term un-free to distinguish between the slave and the free Black. Mariners who were slaves
inhabited a peculiar social space and enjoyed semi-freedom of a scope yet to be fully deﬁned.

264

 

 

view with. Interpreting extant documents with an understanding of maritime slave
community may help explicate several questions about Caribbean slave material culture.
Examining differences in households between ﬁeld-hands and mariners might also reveal
distinctions in social hierarchy with African communities not previously suspected.
Perplexing questions remain unanswered concerning pre and post emancipation,
African villages, capitalism and slave society, and inter-island social networks. Although
the separate British colonies shared a common heritage, they did not represent a national
unity. Each acted autonomously as its own state when possible, enacting local laws, and
competing vigorously. The approach to market development was quite different for
French planters. British sugar was almost entirely for home use while French sugar made
its way into re-export markets. A more comprehensive understanding of colonial relations
between Nevis and neighboring St Kitts could shed light on several discontinuities in
settlement strategies, particularly where environment plays a role. Comparative studies
between two English islands would be just as informative as comparing English and
French models of plantation development. Rivalries and environmental variations may
well have played signiﬁcant roles in settlement patterns. Questions remain concerning the
generalizability of the Nevis case. Future archaeological research into Caribbean
landscapes, whether aimed at contact period studies, explicating culture change, or the
relations of states, will unavoidably be ecologically oriented as the historical trajectory of
Caribbean settlement was inextricable from ecological change. Recently, researchers
have begun to take up the ecological banner because the full effect of environmental
problems is beginning to manifest itself. Ecotourism in the region has also sparked new

awareness of problems and the potential for economic growth within the tourist business.

265

Dominica has recently created underwater preserves and hinterland trails. Nevis recently
received UNESCO funds to complete a round island trail system. Other island
legislatures hotly debate the merits of cruise ships and related environmental dilemmas.
Archaeological research can contribute signiﬁcantly by emphasizing the historic scope of
the problem.

Only touched on by this study, inter-community and extra-community interactions
deserves future attention. Such interactions have implications for landscape use. This
alone could deﬁne a career. As more historical archaeology is conducted in the French
islands, comparative studies may be come realized. As the two culture systems
approached the Caribbean colonialization process from the perspective of two different
worldviews concerning slavery, production, and commerce, one should expect
differences in land use, spatial organization and landscape. There is at present practically
no such work underway. Preliminary examination of sugar industry sites on Guadeloupe
by Delpeuch (2001) and Kelly (2002) is promising and welcome.

Concludig Remarks

The Caribbean during the seventeenth and eighteenth century was developed as a
peripheral economic zone to serve the interests of traditional European powers. The
timing of Caribbean colonial development coincided with nascent economic globalization
and geopolitical hegemony by Europe. National interests were served but the
unanticipated result was the genesis of new institutions and socio-economic systems.
Incremental feedback between colonizers and core states affected development status and
infrastructure in economic and political sectors. Over time these systems became

embedded in the social and industrial fabric of the colonizing nations.

266

 

 

Founded at a time in which feudalism was the dominant social system, the island
societies gradually incorporated ideological constructs of capitalism, which affected
social and labor relations. Capitalism gained strength even as the system of slavery
served to retain elements of old feudal hierarchy, or perhaps, because slavery was a step
toward working out the issues of labor that are hallmarks of mature capitalism. The
nexus of nascent globalization, and proto-capitalist economics, allowed mercantile
adventurism to combine with novel investment opportunities, creating a new model for
settlement and colonization based on industrial entrepreneurial enterprise.

Nevisians today live in a changing landscape that still reﬂects plantation colonialism.
One can hardly walk about without encountering relics of the past. Plantation structures
and industrial artifacts are incorporated through adaptive reuse into residential properties.
The last mill closed only in 1950—a mill in operation since 1815. The family that owned
the operation continues to have stature on the island and has converted some works into
luxury hotels. Colonial status itself only ended in 1987. The road system today, better
paved perhaps, is the same as established in the seventeenth century and along with
property lines, patterns mobility, access to resources, and social attitudes.

The natural environment is unnatural. Nevis was cleared, partitioned, enclosed, and
modiﬁed to answer the requirements of industrial-age agriculture and shaped to the needs
of an emerging capitalist society, at the same time restricting mobility of the enslaved
majority. The environment with which Nevisians today contend is dramatically
unproductive, its foliage foreign to the region. Dependent on imported fuel to operate
generators, one wonders why Nevis doesn't capture the steady trade winds with modern

energy producing wind mills. The advent of eco-tourism may yet affect the Nevisian

267

 

landscape in unexpected ways and subject citizens to the demands of the new global
consumer capitalism of the twenty-ﬁrst century. This may well be the fortune of all the
former sugar islands unless the natural virtues of the former colonies can be turned to
advantage. There is still much to be learned about the forces that shaped the modem

Caribbean, and Nevis is one of the best places to conduct research.

 

Figure 7-6. Cane ﬁeld laborers delivering harvested cane to storage sheds prior to milling.
Stereoview from St Kitts 1910. A scene like this would have been very common on Nevis, both
before and after emancipation. Hipped roof design has been maintained, but zinc or tin sheets have
replaced shingle or tile roofs. The low aspect deﬂects strong wind and the lack of overhang
prevents the wind from getting a purchase on the roof and tearing it away. The double shuttered
doors are still a popular feature on West Indian homes.

268

APPENDIX 1

Descriptions of Sites Arranged by Parish and Phase.

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Site Descriptions / Supplementary data

This appendix provides individual descriptions for a majority of documented or
excavated sites located during surveys. Sites have been organized by Parish and Phase.

St John Parish
Phase I

SJ 8KD5/22-1, SJ 8MM5/22-1, In Bath plain, south from Charlestown. Artifact
clusters associated with earthen mounds—mostly domestic materials. Surface scatters of
seventeenth century ceramics and pipe stems. Bore diameters suggest late seventeenth
century manufacture. Ceramic types include combed brown and yellow lead glazed-slip
wares, colonoware, Rhenish stoneware, along with English delft. Also noted onion bottle
bases and body sherds. A number of depressions were also found with stone piles
suggesting house platforms with dug out cellars. The area is being developed with new
housing. Sites were located in open ﬁelds between housing projects. Evidence from ﬁnds
and documents make clear the areas has been continuously used for settlement since
founding of Charlestown. Bath area still has landscape marked by broad terraces but
much is obscured by housing. Components of the these scatters also indicate eighteenth
century Phase II refuse.

SJ l4BB6/30-l, Artifact scatters on the surface associated with stone piles and clusters
of stone in roughly rectangular layouts. The suggestion is house platforms. Artifacts
consisted mainly of domestic ceramics and pipe stems. Both seventeenth and eighteenth
century material was represented in the surface scatter. The site is adjacent to a ghut and
in the midst of dense agave and aloe on a wide ﬂat terrace. The location is about 100
meters from a small sugar works.

Phase 11

SJ 1 7MM7/1-1, Coastal well. Carefully maintained masonry well. There isn't a
dwelling for miles along this shoreline or rocky seascape yet this well has been cared for
with recent cement trough and topping. Interior is rough unﬁnished stone but the exterior
made use of ﬁnished stone. We found no evidence on the surface of a cistern as we had at
two other coastal wells. Remnants of the old coastal road are visible in the landscape as a
broad ﬂat road bed of cleared rock. An edge is discernible. The road is cut by ravines and
disappears at the shoreline cliff pointing to massive coastline erosion.

SJ 1 2KD5/ 16-1, Isolated freestanding masonry cistern. Plastered interior.

SJ IOMM5/19-1, (formerly PW7-31/02-1) Based on surface scatters and rock clusters
we believe this to be a village site belonging to Phase II and III, and certainly post
emancipation. Adjacent to a steep ghut on a bald, ﬂat top ridge in sight of Bush Hill mill-
complex, the artifacts are distinctly domestic in character. Iron kettles, belt buckles, bottle
glass, ceramics of mean manufacture dates ranging from seventeenth century to early
twentieth.

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The following two complexes described, SJ 14 MM 5/16-2 "Lower St John" (LSJ) and
SJ 9KR5/22-l "Long Point Road Complex," (LPR) have been grouped together for
comparability. Located in quadrat SJ Q9, the LPR complex was found by two crew
walking at 25 meter intervals, its outlying associated features were found by three other
crew. The complex is comprised of ﬁve immediately apparent industrial features: a
boiling facility, associated foundations, a mound that proved to be an animal mill, an
adjacent cistern and an enclosure fronting the boiling structure. An animal pen was also
associated and was linked by a stacked stone enclosure wall surrounding the entire
complex. All iron industrial artifacts were gone and the boiling facility had been
demolished to gain access to the cauldrons. Fragments of cauldrons were picked up
during surface collection. Initial impressions from artifact scatters, construction details
and small scale all suggested an early date for the mill. This site bore striking
resemblance to a modest complex found in quadrat SJ 14, termed lower St John complex,
also judged to be of early design and construction. By good fortune, SJ 9KR5/22-l was
located just off the new Long Point Road, on government land, and therefore satisﬁed
two important criteria for further testing.

Logistically, the site was accessible, and being on government land gave us authority
by permit to work there. Politically it had additional value. A new government housing
project was encroaching on the site and the nature of this threat justiﬁed thorough
documentation. Its proximity to the road meant representatives of the government could
visit the site to review our work (a condition of our permit). The other complex was in a
better state of preservation, undoubtedly due to its remoteness, but its very isolation far
from roads presented its own set of logistical problems. We elected to conduct
excavations at the Long Point road site and to document for measured drawings the
remote LSJ complex for comparison. This proved a wise decision as the two complement
and inform on one another in design as well as construction.

An excavation unit was sunk at the base of Feature 1 (SJ 9KR5/22-1) to determine
construction details and to learn if any ﬂoor remained between it and Feature 2. A second
unit was excavated at the southeast corner, in part to capture construction details but also
in hope of locating a builder's trench. A third unit was eventually placed at a curious
mound at the north side of Feature 1 which we believed to be a passage area between the
two structures.

In addition to these test units, the entire enclosure was systematically tested by shovel
test at random points on a grid. Surface collection of artifacts was also carried out within
the enclosure. The space deﬁned by the surrounding stone wall was divided into 10 x10
foot quads. A random selection of quads representing a 10% sample was systematically
surface collected. 100% of artifacts in the quads were collected. The objective of this
artifact sampling was to provide material that could characterize use of the site as well as
give a framework for relative dating. It is worth noting here that artifacts were of a
typical domestic character in contrast to the more obvious industrial nature of the
architecture. Furthermore, while the site exhibits characteristic late seventeenth and early
eighteenth century industrial components, the artifacts constitute a late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century assemblage. Based on this evidence, we widened our survey and
located two adjacent areas of possible domestic occupation indicated by stone house

271

 

 

platforms. Shovel testing revealed deep charcoal deposits. An aged mango tree next to
one of the platforms and the traces of an abandoned road further suggested the site had a
long and varied history.

Unit I exposed the plastered wall of feature 1 and its underlying cobble stone bed.
Flooring had been removed, perhaps at the same time the cauldrons had been torn free of
the masonry. Unit 2 did not reveal a builder's trench as hoped, but did expose massive
dressed foundation stones set in mortar at a meter's depth. We were unable and unwilling
to break through this layer. From the substantial footing revealed by the unit excavation
and the quality of construction we can infer that Feature 3 was multi-storied and built by
master masons, or at least the construction was managed by a master. Artifacts from the
unit were few but informative, hinting at a late seventeenth century construction. Unit
three was not continued after it was found to consist of stone debris from the purposely
destroyed wall of Feature 1.

The ﬁrst variation we noticed between LPR complex and others was that it was
aligned on an axis of north-south. The animal mill had been artiﬁcially raised above the
rather level terrain to create a gravity feed to the collection vats that would have been
housed in the structure built twenty feet south. The mill platform was more rubble pile
than structural, however we found a section of dressed stone that formed an are at its base
enabling us to extrapolate its dimensions. The mill is among the smaller platforms we
recorded. We currently believe the entire area of the works was artiﬁcially raised above
the surrounding ﬁelds. The boiling train measured 17 feet by 4 feet.

Systematic surface collection and shovel testing were carried out before any test
excavations were undertaken. These were extended into adjacent areas exhibiting
evidence of domestic occupation. Only a 10 % random sample was executed. Sheer
volume of artifacts across the site was a factor in collection of only a representative
sample. In addition, artifact distribution was of principal interest, not simply accessing
the character of artifacts in proximity to the structures. Unlike the ridge complex, no
house structure was located within the conﬁnes of the complex, even though the artifact
assemblage was similar in terms of domestic consumer goods, vessel type, and diversity.

The sugar complex stands in a broad plain that is tilted slightly downslope toward the
sea. Deep Sulfur Ghut runs to the sea not far to the north. Like the ridge complex, this
site also is enclosed by a wall of stacked stones but it is not possible to state the two
constructions are contemporary. Unlike other complexes we encountered, the long Point
Road site has a associated stacked stone animal pen for holding livestock. The pen is
adjacent to the mill platform. A cistern is also adjacent to the platform on its east side.

Foundations were cleared for documenting. A broad threshold was centered on the
east wall with the doorframe cut into massive cut stones, with average measurements of
24 inches. Evidence for stone ﬂooring remained despite clear signs of robbing. Feature 2,
the curing house, displayed a marked depression where its interior space had been gutted,
perhaps to gain access to vats and other industrial material. Likewise, the boiling
structure (Feature 1) had been destroyed on its western side to remove the cauldrons. This
left the east side intact up to its mortared and dressed top course. I refer to Feature 1 as a
boiling structure rather than a boiling house because it is raised above ﬂoor level and

272

 

 

 

 

    

  

. ' wt if“ “”77“" - 11" . .
. . . - . war , . , 4 . ~ .\
Figure Apl-l. Unit 2 at SW comer of curing facrlity. Note foundation support blocks separated
by layer of mortar from stones above. Artifacts were found in this unit at 90 cm depth of late
seventeenth century manufacture.

 

[1 stone
dressed stone

mortar

 

SOll lmortar mix

1:1 topsoil
roots

 

 

West wall section North wall section

Figure Apl-2. Wall proﬁles for Unit 2. Long Point Road site. Note the size of base stones. These were set
into a mortar and cobble platform for stability.

273

 

 

 

    

 

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SJQKRS-ZZ-l N m B: Curing house or E: Location for ﬁreboxcs
::_ juice collection
0 2 C: Foundndtions leading
Meters to mill platform

 

Figure Apl-3. SJ9KR5/22-I Foundation of curing facility and adjacent (attached) boiling table. The train
had been badly damaged by Iooters who removed the coppers ﬁ'om the west side. Excavation unit 2 is

indicated.

does not indicate it was enclosed by more than a wooden roof, very like that shown in
sketches by Labat in 1724. In contrast, LSJ complex had a masonry wall on its western
side that gave the boiling house a second clear story and would have supported a hipped
roof over the narrow train. Feature 5 of LPR complex fronting the boiling structure was
of indeterminate function. Stacked stone walls lacked any mortar or evidence of similar
construction and may have been for storage or be from a later period of use on the site.

274

 

 

 

Feature 4 was a plaster lined cistern adjacent to the animal pen (Feature 6). Four coppers
were once supported by the train. Iron cauldron fragments were found during surface
collection, possibly broken off during salvage. Destruction of the train made it difﬁcult to
determine its technological phase but we had some evidence that it had been a Spanish
train. Unlike the very similar sugar complex at SJ 14MM5/ 16-1 , we found no trace of
modiﬁcation, but this may be misleading due to the nature of destruction. The associated
cauldron fragments included a prop for a straight sided cauldron. There is some pictorial
evidence that this is a seventeenth century style hat later gave way to curved and rounded
forms. Unfortunately, no study of cauldron forms or chronologies has ever been
published that would conﬁrm this.

Masonry features and ﬁnishes hint at an earlier building date. Further, it is clear from
foundations revealed by Unit 2, that the building was designed to support a heavy load
and likely supported a second story with hipped roof reaching out to cover the boiling
train. The site was not precisely aligned to cardinal points, but being on relatively ﬂat
land, the builders would not have been constrained by topographic features prevalent at
other sites we examined. The complex was small. By the standards of the eighteenth
century the complex would have been inefﬁcient. The site falls within the area
hypothesized as among the ﬁrst zones on the island to have been developed. Without
further evidence, we can only speculate that the lack of modiﬁcation and upgrade of the
complex suggests a middling operation that failed as the land itself ceased to be
productive in the area.

SJ 14MM5/ 16-2 the Lower St. John site. This structure was by far one of the more
intriguing, in part due to preservation and partly owing to its proximity to the Grandee
ghut. In retrospect, Grandee Ghut site would have been a better name. One gets the false
impression in the modern landscape of acacia trees that block views in all directions, that
this site was extremely remote. But in fact it would have been in clear view of other
coastal complexes when the surrounding ﬁelds were in cane. Remnants of the former
coast road are not far to the west and would have afforded easy transportation to
Charlestown. Although I suspect this complex was I use during Phase I, the evidence
supports a Phase 1] operation with more certainty and so I have grouped it accordingly.
We found no Phase I associated artifacts.

The complex has a strikingly similar layout and spatial organization as the Long Point
Road site, with an important distinction. The boiling house was more substantially intact
and was enclosed with a stone wall and hipped roof. The complex had been robbed of its
cauldrons but care had been taken in the process, leaving a remarkably intact boiling
table. The boiling facility had undergone modiﬁcation during its use-life, and was
converted from a Spanish Train to Jamaica Train. Its ﬁre boxes were completely sealed
off with stone. The train measured 24 ‘/2 feet by just under 5 feet. Like the Long Point
site, it once housed four cauldrons of diminishing size, but with the boiling table in such
good condition it was possible to measure diameters from the cavities left behind. The
coppers had been salvaged by breaking only one side of the masonry supporting the ﬁrst
coppen

The animal mill platform was little more than a raised earthen mound and raises
several questions. No channel or masonry was found to indicate a means of gravity
feeding juice to the works. Elevations were surprisingly shallow at less than two feet

275

 

 

(assuming we were measuring from the highest point on the platform). Whatever mound
had been present was now nearly ﬂattened. A wide area search found dense artifact
scatters of eighteenth century domestic ceramics, bottle glass, and colonoware among
stone piles about 300 yards away on the edge of the Ghut. Nearly impassable stands of
aloe and several tamarind trees bordered the vicinity. Both the long Point and Remote
mill-complexes were small operations compared. The compact spatial arrangement,
however, was a characteristic of later sugar works as well, where efﬁciency of moving
product through the system was carefully designed. The nearest road to the Remote site
was the now eroded coastal round road to the west.

 

lower St. .lohn
SJ 14MMS/16—2

 

Feet

0 211

m

m:

0 7 \
Meters

V" ,,,, ‘ N

 

 

 

Figure Apl-4. Lower St John mill site plan. SJI4MM5/16-2. The mill has striking similarity to the Long
point road site. However, this boiling table was enclosed by a masonry structure. A: Boiling house. B:
Curing facility. C: Mill platform. D: F ireboxes and building addition enclosing ﬁreboxes.

276

 

 

Boiling house

 

 

 

 

 

 

J
)— f
’:C D.) , j ”C
rubb’lfe/L1 ‘ " ‘ ' ' L»; North elevation

 

  

L.

l

1', @m E1 m M

 

O 5 West elevation
Fcct zrjn Lower St John
Meters 0-3—3 SJ14MM5/16-2

 

 

Figure Apl-5. North and west elevations of boiling house, and adjacent foundations of Lower St. John site.
Nearly all of the dressed stone has been removed. The structure most likely supported a hipped roof
covered in tile. The boiling house could get very hot with ﬁres below and sugar juice boiling.

SJ 12MM5/ 16-2, SJ 12KD5/ 16—1(formerly 7- 30-3 2002), and SJ 12MM5/16-1, Ridge
house and associated Ridge mill-complex.

SJ 12KD5/16-1 , The "Ridge house." This residential structure found during 50 meter
interval test survey along a ridge during the pilot study in 2002, but was not
systematically documented at that time, was relocated during quadrat SJ 1 2 survey. Its
proximity to a sugar mill-complex and modest scale suggested an agent's residence or
home to one of the lesser planters.

The "ridge house" as we termed it, had a single threshold on the north side with
remnants of slate ﬂooring. Walls were two feet thick and foundation stones were
particularly massive. Condition suggested robbing of ﬂooring and dressed stone from the
walls. The north side opened onto a leveled area demarcated by a stacked stone wall.
Shovel testing indicated this area had been artiﬁcially leveled and packed to produce a
court or garden. Traditional structures on Nevis generally have a stone ground ﬂoor
which serves as both foundation for a second ﬂoor and as storage cellar, with entry on the
second ﬂoor which is usually constructed of wood. It was surprising then to ﬁnd a ground
level entry. Elevations, however, offer an explanation. This multistoried structure likely
had a second story entry facing south and the ground level threshold opened on to the
"garden" at the back. The house was perched on the very edge of the ridge and the view
from the leveled area was unobstructed toward Montpelier and Bush Hill estates, with
excellent views of St Kitts and St Eustatius. An eighteenth century structure in
Charlestown, currently occupied, also has stone ﬁrst ﬂoor with ground level entry,
stepping down, just as this one exhibits and might serve as model. But we were unable to
examine the interior ﬂoor plan (except when the occupants left their door open, which is

277

 

 

 

directly on to the main street. Downslope from the house was an outbuilding in a poor
state of preservation and was likely the kitchen. The kitchen structure had not been found
in 2002 despite being within 20 feet because of thick brush. It came to our attention
during a 10 meter interval survey. Immediately west and south of the structure the slopes
are terraced at close spacing averaging 12 feet across. Artifact scatters on the terraces
were characterized by eighteenth century domestic wares as well as pipe stems and bowl
fragments. These were noted but not collected. Our interest in the "ridge house" was
ampliﬁed by its unique location and proximity to an unidentiﬁed sugar mill-complex
about 300 yards away, found the previous year. A stacked stone wall encompassed the
ridge house and the mill-complex. The only map showing a mill in the area is the rather
distorted Iles 1871 chart. Based on relative positioning, our best surmise is this was the
Prenlis Estate. However, the usually reliable parish by parish list of estates and
plantations Governor Iles added as an appendix in his book, does not mention or describe
Prenlis or give names of owners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C.
J V., J
B ‘ 3
N

’0 10

Feet -:—:—
Meters _:— .
0 3 _ J

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure Apl-6. SJ4KD5/l6-l. Ridge house foundation plan. A: threshold, step down, slate ﬂooring. B:
room with stone ﬂooring, step down through second threshold. No evidence of steps remain at entry to B.

The masonry house foundation was in proximate association with the ridge mill-
complex and possibly was the house of an overseer or planters agent. A single threshold
stepped down onto the main entry. Remnants of slate ﬂooring were still embedded in the
threshold step. The narrow entry corridor probably enclosed a stairway to the second
ﬂoor in the manner exhibited by a few eighteenth century structures in Charlestown.
Walls were from 18 inches to 24 inches in thickness. The robust walls would have served

278

 

 

to support a second story and keep the ﬁrst ﬂoor interior cool. The foundation itself is
supported by rough cut blocks ranging from 18 x 9 x 6 inches to 24 x 9 x 9 inches.
Rubble ﬁll and white mortar constitute the wall core.

The structure faced southward and would have been able to take advantage of cooling
breezes and unobstructed view of the terraced ﬁelds below it and clear view of other
plantation works as well. A stack stone wall bordered the structure to the north and
retaining walls artiﬁcially leveled the space behind the house, which otherwise stood on a
sloping ridge. There is ample evidence the exterior walls had been thickly plastered.
Although we did not excavate the center of the structure, a circular depression hints at a
cellar. A detached kitchen building stood down slope (SJ IZSS6/6-1). Keeping the
cooking separate from the main house was not uncommon and helps reduce heat in the
dwelling. The masonry structure measured 14'9" by 22' with chimney rubble at its south
wall. Wall thickness averaged 24 inches.

Association of the house with the mill-complex SJ4MM5/16-1 was more evident
during the 2003 season because drought conditions had eliminated much of the
overgrowth and the two facilities could be viewed simultaneously. Based on the 1871 Iles
map, I tentatively identify the site as the Prenlis Estate, but more documentation is
necessary to conﬁrm this, because we located other candidates. The 1871 map shows
only one estate in the area whereas we located four mill-complexes within a tight radius.

Two complications surround work at the ridge house site. First was access. The
second issue was vegetation density, which affected mapping. The site could only be
reached by hiking in from a road currently embroiled in litigation. Apparently, someone
has purchased egress and is blocking its use. The Physical and Environmental Planning
Ofﬁce and the NHCS both strongly urged that we not use the road due to litigation
between the apparent owner and the courts.1 The site had been located during transects
that crossed the slope from below the ridge, not from the road. We used tortured routes
up-slope to reach the site for work. The project team was ﬁrst assigned documentation of
the mill-complex.

This complex is situated on the side of a bluff just below Saddle Hill with an
expansive view of terraced slopes. The structure had been found almost by chance. So
overgrown was it that only a fraction of an exposed portion of wall was glimpsed during
survey. It was not possible to comprehend its extent even when the crew was on the site
owing to the tangled vines and overgrown vegetation. We were not the ﬁrst to ﬁnd the
structure as the abundant vodka bottles testify. Shepherds use the structure and goats
were often in attendance. The arrangement of the complex was unique. It has one of the
largest animal mill platforms we documented. The platform is built above the boiling
facility to allow a gravity feed of sugar juice to collection vats, with an adjacent boiling
house. In this it is similar to nearly all works. Elevations reveal the structure was built to
take advantage of the natural topography.

 

' The road in question is clearly shown on maps dating to the early eighteenth century, and has always been
believed to be government property. Every Nevisian uses the road and it is the only access to a major
tourist attraction. A recent land purchase, however, seems to have included the road and easement, and the
"owner" is claiming sole jurisdiction. He has blockaded the road on occasion. The courts have ordered the
blockades removed until right of way is untangled. Meanwhile, the owner has successfully sued groups,
such as the NHCS, for trespassing. We were obliged to circumvent the road issue by cutting a path through
jungle overgrowth beneath the site. In doing so we discovered yet another abandoned village.

279

 

 

 

 

 

x
1

Ridge Mill
Complex
SJ4MM5/ 1 6—1

0 10 20
1111:1212] Feet
(12:) Meters
N 0 3 6

 

 

 

Figure Apl-7. SJ4MM5/16-l Ridge mill-complex. A: animal mill, B: curing facility, C: boiling house. D
room addition, E leveled platform with remnant foundations, F: ﬁrebox wall, G: cobble road. Points 1-6:
datum.. Section drawings through D-F. The north wall of room D completely blocks a ﬁrebox. Room D
was set against. not integrated with. existing walls. Stacked stone was used to form an enclosure at datum
3. In its most recent use structure B may have served as an animal pen.

Although the location would have seemed ideal for a windmill there was no trace of
such a structure. A road sided the complex, which continued southward downslope
toward the coast. We did not ﬁnd the boiling caldrons ("coppers") in situ, nor any milling

280

 

equipment, but the complex was not as badly robbed of stone as less hidden mills
generally are, despite its western wall had been torn down to access the iron works.
Based on its dimensions, the boiling room would have housed four "coppers." A second,
raftered story, supporting a hipped roof is likely. Plastered ﬂooring with a pronounced
convex or canted interior relief was still evident.2 The complex had undergone several
episodes of modiﬁcation. Most curious was the addition of a room to the exterior, which
completely blocked one of the ovens. The stonework of the room addition butted against
the existing exterior west wall. Construction was exceptionally ﬁne in all other regards
with ﬁnely crafted window and door frames, careﬁilly dressed facing stones, and precise
masonry at corners. However, other alterations were of far less quality or even crude.
Upper courses of stone work, especially on the north side, did not exhibit the same
craftsmanship as foundation and lower courses, and some walls were little better than
stacks of robbed stone.

Signiﬁcantly, all upper courses were "cheated" by use of extra mortar and ﬁller stones
than the close ﬁtting masonry that typiﬁes better construction and greater cost. In part,
this was an answer to the lack of quality cut stone available to the masons making these
additions. Lacking uniformity of size and shape, the stones were stacked into excess
mortar or gaps were ﬁlled with irregularly shaped stones as wedges. A clean out vault
added to the north side had been butted against the wall with mortar and was not integral
to the wall. One hundred feet south of the complex we located a wrought iron shaft for a
vertical crusher roller protruding from the ground. It was left in situ. The structures were
not simply dropped onto the landscape sans planning. Each had been carefully integrated
into the contours to take advantage of what this afforded.

Once mapping was complete, the area between the complex and the ridge house was
surveyed at ten meter intervals to assess boundary zones associating the two structures.
Stone walls were found to demarcate the area inclusive of the mill and house structure
and to separate it from adjacent areas that also hosted additional ridge structures. The
walls indicated an enclosure over 200 meters in length. A 100% surface collection was
executed within the enclosure, which encompassed the house structure and lower reaches
of the complex (see Appendix 3). Intervals were at three meters or less on the ﬁrst sweep
and one meter on the second. In the process, a second structure, believed to be the kitchen
building for the ridge house, was discovered. A team was assigned to document the
structure and another to conduct shovel testing of the foundations. A third team returned
to the mill-complex to acquire elevations and survey old roads found adjoining the mill.
Full proﬁles were recorded because the structures clearly had been modiﬁed and rebuilt
for different purposes during its functioning lifetime.

The boiling house of the Ridge mill-complex was situated down-slope from the
adjacent animal mill, allowing cane juice to be gravity fed into collection tanks before
boiling. A cobble road abutted the mill platform on its east side at nearly the same level.
The platform rose just above the road. which was accessed by a ramp. On the west side
the platform stood nearly six feet above the ﬂoors of adjacent structures (see photograph
and elevation drawings.

 

2 In truth, I can not say whether or not the cauldrons were in situ. The ﬂooring construction was similar,
although the room smaller, than found at the Indian Castle Estate complex in St George Parish. There
"coppers" were discovered in an undisturbed plaster ﬂoor (Meniketti 1998).

281

 

 

 

 

7‘ N NEVIS 6 6-03
WI

M57 WALL
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e

 

 

Figure Apl-9. The mill platform at the Ridge mill complex. Fine masonry contrasts with rubble
stack walls of later addition to boiling house.

282

 

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SJ15MM5/21-1 , Located adjacent to Brown Hill village. A complete crusher with gear
and center spindle was found on the edge of the animal mill platform. These industrial
components are more often found separately if ever. All other industrial artifacts had
been salvaged. The boiling train had been torn asunder to access the coppers. There is
architectural evidence near the cistern suggesting the site was also engaged for distilling,
but no artifacts of the distilling operation were recorded.

 

Pembroke Works
SJ15MM5/21-l

G br house

“'K
ipv

\ ’3 \ o oven
\\ \/\ 1.1!
\\\

A: Cistem k“__'/

B: Distillery \
C: Boiling train
ﬁreboxes M
D: Animal mill
E: Curing facility
F: Storage (‘3) 48

G: Residence \J,.\‘ Feet 0 24 N

H: C 1 stem Meters

 

 

 

 

 

K: Foundations 0 5 10 15

 

Figure Apl-12. Pembroke mill-complex. The animal mill is irregularly shaped. The structure was built on a
bluff overlooking terraced ﬁelds. The north side of the mound supporting the mill may be artiﬁcial. Feature
F is built over ﬂat bedrock which appears to have been incorporated in the design as a floor surface.
Rectangular paving stone is indicated by letters pv, and brick ﬂooring is indicated by letters br. The crusher
shown in Figure 5-16 is depicted here on the animal mill where it was found.

Tentative identiﬁcation as the Pembroke estate complex is based on review of the
Burke Iles map of 1871, and on the 1984 OSM. Pembroke fell within quadrat SJ 1 5.
Situated on a bluff to the west of Brown Hill Village, Pembroke exhibited a layout and a
few features not found at other mill works, but shared the spatial orientation found at
other industrial sites of attempting to ﬁt the various functions of the complex into the
extant topographic contours. Alignment did not coincide with cardinal compass points.
The layout took advantage of stone slab outcrops for ﬂooring in a staging area, and high
ground for placement of the animal mill. The juice retention vats and boiling house were
on lower ground, which may have been excavated further, to allow a gravity feed of

 

crushed cane juice to the vats. Nearly all iron boiling and mill equipment had been
robbed out, leaving gapping holes in the structure. Only a single iron, vertical crusher and
spindle remained in situ (and I use in situ in the most generous sense). One curious
feature of Pembroke is its cistern, which exhibits unique architectural elements. The
trough feature has not been found elsewhere on the island but likely was used for a
distilling operation.

The view from Pembroke is outstanding with unobstructed surveillance of terraced
ﬁelds on three sides, and clear sight of several other mill complexes. The character of the
land in this part of St John is such that it would be impossible not to have sight of other
estates and to suggest intentional spatial arrangements for that purpose would be weakly
supported as the spatial pattern could have arisen by chance. The mill platform was
artiﬁcially raised above surrounding works but was nonetheless built on the highest
ground, perhaps reducing the need to build it very high. Measurements of the mill taken
at several diameter suggest it was not symmetrically and round which gives it a slight
distortion in plan view. Additional structures on the site are aligned along a north/south
axis and with associated construction details suggest a later phase of construction.

SJ MM8/2-9[02] This mill complex was not located in any of our survey quads, but was
visible below project headquarters at Donderhill, Cole Hill. The property owner kindly
allowed me a brief inspection. The complex is on property at the corner of roads leading
between Montpelier and village Cox. It consisted of a raised animal mill (ﬁve feet high)
and adjacent boiling house with three ﬁre boxes. (there may have been four based on
spacing but one was obscured by a tree growing out of the structure. The mill was at
least 30 feet across. The boiling house measured approximately 27 feet by 42 feet and is
aligned on cardinal points north-south. Interestingly, the boiling house is sunk into the
ground below the mill, which gives the mill greater relative height. Two other very small
masonry structures stood nearby. No sign of any curing facility. This structure is not
shown on the OSM map. Iron industrial components were present at the mill.

PW7-30/02-4, A small masonry structures with two ovens or ﬁre boxes. Interior
measurements 20'6" by 12'6". The building was a curiosity because it was not associated
with a mill or any other building. It is tucked into the hillside along a cobble road just
outside Cox Village leading to saddle Hill. The hillside is extensively terraced.

SJ2MM5/13-1, Stacked stone animal pen built against large boulders. Found during
deep forest transect. The only hint of age comes from two pipe stems. In all likelihood
this pen served for its function into the twentieth century. It is heavily overgrown and
shows no sign of recent access. The land around is densely forested but also extensively
terraced. Terracing is apparent in landforrn and the occasional stone retaining wall. Large
Kapok tree growing up within the enclosure. The stacked stone wall is 3 feet wide and
four feet high. Boulders on uphill side at least 15 feet high.

SJ1DR5/13-1, This cluster of artifacts represents the highest site identiﬁed by our
survey in Zone A. A new luxury home had cut a driveway up the slope and seventeenth
and eighteenth century ceramics and pipe stems were exposed. No structures were in
association. We surveyed upward steeply between two luxury properties across terraced
slopes. The nearest sugar works was Zetlands at 1100 feet zone B.

285

 

 

 

 

Fort Charles. The fort served Nevis from early in Phase I] through early Phase III.
The fort was examined principally for construction details. We did not fully document the
compound and its history is published elsewhere. However, the fort has never been
archaeologically tested. The large ﬁlled in cistern and other structures await proper
documentation. We scraped off a layer of soil at its western wall and found that wide
paving stones are in situ. A pipe stem found embedded in the mortar of a collapsed wall
section had a bore diameter of 7/64 inch; about right for a late seventeenth century date.
The fort deserves future study as it is being undermined by wave action and the south
wall has collapsed into the sea. Two sets of cannon are on the site but many were brought
there from a different fortiﬁcation.

Pilot Quad 3, which connected SJQ18 and SJQ19, intersected two mill-complexes.
Both were in operation from Phase 11 into Phase III judging from construction details and
artifacts. Both are shown on the Iles 1871 map. These were easily identiﬁed as Coxheath
and Dogwood estates. These have not been fully documented. Both had animal and
windmills. Dogwood is listed by Iles as having operated with a steam engine but we
found no clear evidence. Both are large factory scale facilities and had residential
components. Dogwood has several cisterns, one measured 41 feet in diameter.

At Coxheath the residence was substantial enough to refer to as great house. It had
vaulted cellars, expansive staircase, and multiple rooms. The structure overlooked the
boiling house an mill. The animal mill measured 52 feet in diameter. The vaulted
windmill tower was smaller.

SJ 14KD5/ 19-2, Small unidentiﬁed boiling train. No coppers in situ. No associated
buildings. No artifacts associated on surface. Although possibly from Phase I, we lack
evidence to place it in such a narrow time frame.

Phase III

PW8-1/02-1, Small house foundation along old cobble road joining Coxheath and
village Cox. Built mainly of robbed stone with a cement addition. Walls 20 inches thick
and 74 inches tall. Small cistern close by. Artifacts late nineteenth century through
modern era, mostly ceramics (blue transfer-wares, hand painted polychromes and thick
black bottle glass.

SJ 14HCLP5/19-1, The (Douglas)-Richmond-Lodge mill works has both an industrial
and residential component. The works are located at the end of the road leading out from
Brown Village, and is situated adjacent to an old road (now footpath) leading to the Bush
Hill Estate. Douglas-Richmond lodge and Pembroke are 250 meters apart and visible one
from the other. The present ruins contain a steam engine manufactured by the Fletchers
company, Derby, England, about 1873. There are two clariﬁers present. The stately,
multi-storied, stone masonry residence with sweeping front staircase sits on a hill above
the mill works and enjoyed expansive vistas from its west facing front porch. However,
this view would have been completely obscured from smoke during periods of mill
operation. A separate cistern stands adjacent and may have been for household use. No
evidence of animal or wind mill was found and the design layout suggests a nineteenth
century construction and operation. However, nearby windmills at Douglas estate may

286

 

have been used. The linear alignment of the complex on a road comer and its axis are
consistent with nineteenth century industrial practices.

 

o 20 N
Feet 5
‘ Meters =5 450
; 0 7
I
s:
3
9..
an Area 2 H
13

 

 

 

 

 

 

AS

v

Area 1 j l Dump site \To Area 3

Figure Apl-13. Richmond Lodge industrial section, Area 2. A: stone boundary wall, B: storage
building, C: reﬁning/boiling house, D: clarifying room, E: engine house (steam engine in situ), F:
possible fuel storage, G: boiler, H: iron cauldron, J: clarifying vat, K: channel. AS: domestic artifact
scatters. GPS coordinates taken. The road to Area 3 rises upslope to a great house elevated above the
industrial sector.

 

 

 

The Richmond Lodge complex is well known and on named on modern maps but
undocumented. The mill-complex displays highly signiﬁcant features relevant to the
discussion of social and technological transition. Two and possibly three construction
phases are evident at the site marked by differences from other mills in construction
techniques, particularly the use of imported brick, other exotic materials, and spatial
orientation. Structures are evenly spaced and set to a grid of forty-ﬁve degrees of north.
The rigidly aligned structures housed a steam mill, and the usual compliment of
buildings. But all were level with one another. Sugar juice was sluiced down a channel to
vats engineered to provide shallow gravity feed. The underground component of the
engine house was not investigated. The area was partitioned into three areas. Area 1
consisted of large cisterns and storage facilities overlooking gently sloped ﬁelds. Area 2
was the industrial center. Area 3 was situated above the mill-complex on a bluff less than
100 feet east of the mill. A multistoried stone great house stood on the slope with a
panoramic view over the mill buildings in Area 3. A great cistern, measuring 18' by 16' is
built adjacent to the house. stood adjacent to the house and probably served household
needs. The house is of mid-nineteenth century architectural style with a sweeping front
staircase and archway. Front porches and stone rear patio are overgrown but intact. Three

287

 

 

 

grand rooms are raised above surrounding terrain creating a lower "basement space." An
additional level is suggested by wall thickness and center pillars. The next ﬂoor level
may have been wood as we found insufﬁcient debris to hint at a masonry upper level.
The overall area for the house and associated structures measured 145' by 64'.

SJ 7MM 8/2-2, west (previously SJ 8-2-2-02) This small house structure was located
during single area transects in 2002 and is typical of many house platforms found in the
bush or on borders of plantation estates. I include it here as a representative of more than
a dozen of this type recorded. The structure was on the edge of a precipitous slope
overlooking Brown Hill village, west from Montpelier. Stones were clustered in a
roughly rectangular arrangement 15 feet by 10 feet. Two foot paths joined to form one at
a cut away boulder and large ginnip tree adjacent to the structure. A tamarind tree was
also noted. Common blue transfer printed wares, nineteenth century ﬂoral painted and
feather-edged Whitewares (mostly plate and saucer forms), yellow-slip stoneware, brick
fragments, clay pipe bowl fragments and additional domestic artifacts are suggestive of
an early to late nineteenth century household. Built on marginal land, without terracing,
with stone piles as props for the house, this site reﬂects both the conditions for poorer
Nevisians, but also hints at the range of consumer goods being used. Humble dwelling
perhaps, but attractive day-wares for the table.

Villages

All three villages investigated by the project have been placed in Phase III. They are
shown on a post emancipation era map but are not evident in earlier documents. We have
not excavated or sampled artifacts. Although a pre —emancipation occupation is possible,
I can not support such a dating at this time. Morgan's is located in St. John. The other two
are in St. Thomas and St. Paul parishes, but are grouped together her for ease of
comparison.

Morgan's village was more extensively surveyed than Vaughan's and provides a
greater sample. We surveyed at ten meter intervals owing to the density of brush and tree
cover. Here the terrain was steep, dropping as much as twenty feet over 100 feet, and to
accommodate the slope the village was extensively terraced. Although terracing was
mostly evident in leveled earth, extant stone retaining walls were intersected several
times, usually with elevation changes of six feet. Along the ghut that demarcated the
northern extreme of our sample, house platforms were sided by small ﬁrrrowed patches of
land demonstrating at least minimal household agriculture. A public road bisected the
village. House platforms were tightly clustered. In a space equivalent to that sampled at
Vaughan's, we recorded in excess of 30 stone pile house platforms. Few exhibited the
same uniform shape as found at Vaughan's, however, and groupings were less distinct. If
indeed all the platforms were for single families, and using the same assumption of
household as employed for Vaughan's, we arrive at 120 persons in the sample area. This
intuitively seems excessive and suggests the basic assumption of household is likely
incorrect. But as a comparison, and accepting that the two samples are comparable,
Morgans village was signiﬁcantly more densely occupied than was Vaughan's.

288

 

 

 

{ Area graded for housing development

//

Road

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A I F (1 Road
% PM o 15 30 \2400
aé Morgan's 1 “WW?“ K4 N

 

Figure Apl -l4. Morgan's village. Downslope from dirt and cobble road bordering Morgan's mill
and works. T: terraces, M: mill, F: furrows, Fd: foundations, As: artifact scatter. h: cane hoe.
Terrace heights varied from three to six feet. House platforms consisted of stone piles in circular
or roughly rectangular arrangements. This section is adjacent to a ghut on its NW side (right side
of plan) and begins where the public road crosses a stone bridge (B).

Vaughan's (ST20alt) was investigated to increase data about village spatial
organization. The village was located east and south from the townhouse described
below. Here we found that a historic road bordered the village and narrow avenues
meandered between the stone platforms. Platforms were of two average sizes but the
majority measured less than ten feet to a side, and under three feet in height. Although
not located in the immediate vicinity of where we recorded house platforms, a cistern was
found that probably served the community.

289

 

0 10
Feet [III-I: l
N

A: masonry foundation

 

B: stacked stone retaining wall
C: clustered stone house platforms
\ A GPS coordinate
terrace

Figure Apl-15. Vaughan's Village plan. This randomly selected section of the village

was bisected by a wide lane that met a cobble road. House platforms consisted of stacked
stones. The height of individual platforms ranged from 5"3" to 2' although most were 2'6".
Each platform created a hollow space or enclosed cellar. The same spatial order continued
in all directions. We estimate coverage of less than 1% by our sample.

 

 

 

The population density in Vaughan's was likely very high. We recorded thirteen
platforms in a 200 foot by 100 foot block with an spacing of ranging between ﬁve and
twenty feet. However, we do not have any reasonable idea of the number of people per
dwelling. Given a basic household of 4 on
the assumption of two adults and two children per unit (probably an unrealistic
assumption) we ﬁnd 52 people packed into this small sample area.

Harpies was investigated in 2002. This former post-emancipation village for Afro-
Nevisians was threatened by new road construction and brieﬂy surveyed. The area is
generically depicted on the 1871 Iles map. Ten foot intervals (roughly 3 meters) intervals
were followed on compass tracks.

 

 

 

I Section 2
. T

 

 

 

0'8

 

road grade

 

 

 

// .00. O.
00
°9
:79

Section 3

F O 10 As: artifact scatter
‘——+— ect 953:1 , . . .
Mam 2:: IP. iron water pipe
0 3 T: terrace

 

 

 

Figure Apl-l6. Section 3 of 9 from Harpies village. House platforms
and earthen mounds are all that remain of the village.

We returned up slope on reverse compass tracks and repeated the process a third time
back downslope. Working between two recent road grades we sectioned the survey area
into six quadrats measuring 100 feet to a side. Several GPS coordinates were taken to
monitor coverage in the thick brush. The village has been cleared of most surface
artifacts and we noticed only a handful of white ware fragments, blue transfer printed
wares, or clay pipe stems, so our assessment was strictly based on terracing and
numerous probable stone house platforms. Our survey began at the uphill, eastern side,
on the "new bypass road" and was bordered to the north by the road where it turned
westward. The entire area exhibited distinct terracing for leveling.

House platforms were quite common but the distribution was slightly less dense than
we found at either Vaughan's and more inline with what we found at Morgan's. We
located no distinct roads through the village however we did locate secondary terracing
and retaining walls, as if to support separate levels of primary terraces. Late nineteenth or
early twentieth century iron water piping was recorded passing through the village.

291

St Thomas Parish
Phase I

Jamestown

The Jamestown site was investigated during the 2002 season and work there was
reported in the 2003 Interim report, on ﬁle with the NHCS at the Nelson Museum
Archive, Charlestown. Rather than repeat material from the report, I will simply
summarize relevant aspects of the survey. In all six structures were identiﬁed on both
sides of the main road. The main road passes parallel to extant foundations and in all
likelihood the modern road is simply over the historic road. The foundations all parallel
one another. Widening of the road in 2003 has probably covered some structures. We
cleared the foundations of two buildings and partially that of a third. Walls averaged two
feet in thickness. Narrow passages between the long sides of the structures are suggestive
of alleys between warehouses. A shovel test between structures did not recover any
artifacts nor encounter a cobble paving. Cobble paving was found during excavation of
Unit 1. Although several structures are in rubble heaps, cut cornerstones can still be
discerned and this enabled us to determine building dimensions. Shovel test data is
included in Appendix 9. Because few structures were located west of these six and due to
the nature of subsequent land build-up, as well as the nearness of the lagoon, we conclude
the most of Jamestown is east of the main road. Furthermore, the spatial arrangement of
the foundations we recorded also suggest a former beach front and its outline. The
structures probably are the forward-most of the settlement. The second building was
designated feature A2 as we had already assigned B to still another foundation. The
contrast in quality, width, and construction methods of the two became more apparent
during documentation. Differences in mortar also suggests different construction episodes
or reliance on a mix of sources. Limited analysis of mortar composition on Nevis has
been conducted. The one available study tentatively suggests pink-tinted mortars are
locally produced while white was imported (Williams; in Morris, et all 1999). Pinkish
mortar was especially noted in interior wall construction.

Future study would be able to conﬁrm this observation. Geophysical survey by
Southampton University also suggests a historic beachfront in 2002. (See Leech 2003).

292

 

Figure Apl-17. Photo of excavation Unit I, foundation wall of Feature A at Jamestown. Katherine
Forgacs, pictured.

 

   

 

Unit 1 west Unit 1 east
surface
level 1E
level 1w a level 2E
50cm
level 2W
level 3W Jamestown Site

cobble foundation wall Unit 1
North wall proﬁle

(1 25

 

 

 

Figure Apl-18. Feature A, Unit 1 proﬁle, interior and exterior of structure. Jamestown.
Levels were assigned based on color changes and soil composition.

293

 

  
  

Uncleared
Brush

 

°" Unclearcd
. Brush
‘ 0
° 0
0
Details ol'artifact
scatter in SW comer,
Feature Al is shown
in Appendix 8
along with shovel
Feature A-l test proﬁles.
0
Do 0 .5 e
on * °° ‘35 °
go resﬂgggﬁg§4aog .Q

 

 

 

Figure Apl-l9. Two attached structures. Several parallel foundations from Jamestown suggest a
possible warehouse district with residential component.

294

 

An exploratory shovel test XSTI was sunk between foundations of Feature A and B.

ST4MM5/29-l , ST4SSS/29-1, ST4KD5/29-l, House platforms made from clustered
stones. Ceramics and pipe stems provide the evidence for dating this site to Phase I. The
landscape is terraced but likely is from subsequent phase. These three sites within the
same quad suggest a scattered settlement. All are situated on broadly terraced land having
a gentle slope. Although in Zone D, these sites are well inland from the coast near 400
feet elevation.

ST5aMM7/ 1 1-1 , Isolated artifact scatter consisting of early seventeenth century
ceramics and coarse earthenware of indeterminate date. This quad was an alternate from
the original sample forced by new property development and fences. The site may be
related to the Jamestown site.

Phase II
ST7aKD6/ l -l , cistern associated with Tower Hill estate.
ST7aBB6/1-l, masonry foundations. No artifacts recorded.

ST7a BB6/1-2, small rectangular building with views toward St Kitts. Located on
property associated with Tower Hill estate. No artifacts recorded.

Stl9DR5/21-l , ST19DR5/21-2 Two stone buildings in close proximity to one
another. Both were found in dense jungle. STQ19 intersects former Pinney estate land
and these may be associated with early operations of the plantation. The terrain is hilly
and steep with deep ravines. Old access roads are crossed by more recent bulldozed
roads. One structure had two stories, masonry construction.

ST19KD5/26-1, "Arch site." An extensive mill complex with multiple buildings. The
mill platform was raised above the surrounding structures and three milling crushers for
the animal mill were in situ. This complex displayed several unique features compared to
all other mill complexes and is worthy of considerable future study. The slope was gentle
(approx. 5%), but signiﬁcant enough for the builder to cut away the hillside and grade the
area for the construction. Facing west, the boiling house stood two stories. Unique
architectural features were incorporated in the second story of the boiling house,
including a load bearing masonry arch across its main facade, combining structural
integrity with decorative distinction. A single large window was set above the masonry
and arched. The complex was symmetrically arranged. Both in layout and structural
design. Unlike any other complex, the mill was centrally located among the buildings
Narrow alleyways passed between structures, and several buildings may well have been
residential structures, as there numbers and size exceed any standards for milling
operations. We have tentatively identiﬁed the complex as Rossington. The mill platform
has the best preserved central masonry mount for the iron crusher of any animal mill we
encountered on Nevis. The list of mill operations provided by Iles places the complex in
St Paul parish but on the map in St Thomas. Site ST19KD5/26-1 still retained all three
crushers from a vertical mill protruding from brush on the animal mill platform, but no
other machinery was visible. Fragments of coppers were recorded among the ruins. A

295

 

 

single, intact, 16 inch long pick/hoe was recorded at the site. Its age is probably
nineteenth century.

ST17SSE5/28-1, This structure was not industrial yet was also unlike any residential
structure. The construction was square with sides of 51 feet except for the west side. A
stone lined and mortared channel ran diagonally from the uphill SE corner toward the
center. Remnants of another channel were found in the NW corner. An artiﬁcial
depression to at the NW corner gave the impression of a pond and we surmise the
complex was in fact part of a formal garden. A four foot high retaining wall at the
western side partitioned the structure into two distinct levels. The lower level was further
partitioned by masonry walls. A single masonry column was recorded in the NW corner.

ST17KD5/28-l, Townhouse (Pariss Garden?) Although we did not fully document
this residential complex, it deserves some special description as it is larger than any of the
mill complexes we investigated. We lacked time during the survey to acquire all the
measurements we would have thought important. In addition, Southampton University
intends to conduct a thorough documentation.

Several buildings were associated with the townhouse, as well as extensively
terraced platforms upslope from the west facing main building. Structure ST17MM5/28—1
measured 37 feet by 19 '/2 feet. We later designated it feature 1 after learning the extent
of the complex. As with many structures of this kind and early eighteenth century date, it
was built with natural contours in mind, conforming to land forms while artiﬁcially
creating "natural" areas. Retaining walls were set downslope to the west from the
structure. Proceeding upslope, we encountered additional buildings. Feature 2 gave the
impression of actually being a partitioned structure, each 10 feet by 20 feet at two levels.
This building joined a raised wall that extended on a north/south axis 100 feet. In all the
structure had four distinct levels with additional terrace walls behind it upslope
constituting another two levels. The entire complex was made up of nine buildings. West
facing structural wall was substantial enough that vaulted livery storage chambers were
intact. The upper ﬂoor was reached by a slate staircase raised on masonry. The terraced
platforms upslope from the residence proper, were each on a uniform north/south axis.
Completing the complex wee its own cistern and smaller garden areas where circles
decoratively edged by stone were in small alcoves.

The identiﬁcation as Pariss Garden by a team from Southampton seems a logical
conclusion based on our own survey information. The buildings in the cluster are of
matched, dressed stone and various exotic materials are evident. Slate steps and ﬂagging
stones were present. Arched doorways were of quality masonry design without evidence
of "cheating," or use of hidden interior timbers.

The grounds around the townhouse were terraced to provide level ground for the
buildings as they marched up the slope. Two retaining walls behind the house created
broad level terraces. The arrangement of structures and its expansive, west facing front
entry, speak of a successful planter's home away from the industrial site that was the
source of his wealth. This was a place where the owner displayed his position among the
elite.

296

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

D44--.-------------
(3343-.---“4- ......
B |—16 |
Direction 0 5 0
fl .
osopeL _1
3
A 4
2
”(1'1
Pht
N
Feet.)
0 3O

 

 

 

Figure Apl-20. Townhouse schematic ﬁom ﬁeld sketch, not at accurate scale (1 and 7 are not so near the
other structures). Six of nine buildings recorded are shown. Feature 7 was a near circular depression that
may have been a reﬂecting pool. Building 1 was the ﬁrst to be intersected during transects and was
carefully documented. Pht indicates where photograph shown in Figure 5-18 was taken. A-D represent
distinct levels. C and D are masonry retaining walls.

STI7MM5/28-1, Building shown as Feature 1 in above Pariss Garden illustration.
The structure was found before survey teams intersected Pariss Garden and was
documented separately. The building measures 31' by 19'6". Steps on the northern side
lead to a small porch with entry at a right angle through an arched doorway, measuring 3'
wide. The porch measures 13' by 11', but is irregularly shaped. A north side entrance was
on a raised landing, approached by steps and crowned by an arched doorway of 55 inches
height. Walls were 24 inches thick See Chapter Five for photograph.

ST4(alt)MM5/29-1, An unknown mill-complex east from the Jamestown site This
site may be part of the Lawrence estate shown on the 1871 Iles map, known to have been
active in 1815, but I have serious doubts as some architectural components of the
complex suggest earlier eighteenth century phase. It does not match descriptions
provided by Iles for mills in the area. Structures include a boiling house, animal mill
platform raised above the works (one of the largest) cistern, and out buildings. Several
aspects of the structure suggest a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century construction
date, particularly the use of imported ﬁre bricks around the boiling train, and rough hewn
facing stones. Details of mortar ﬁnish between stone courses is also reminiscent of
detailing from Charlestown structures dated to the nineteenth century. Yet the
arrangement of boiling train to curing house is similar in design to mills we have place
chronologically earlier. The cistern and other structures are not in alignment with the
works and also are substantially better constructed and has been spared the stone robbing
the other buildings have suffered.

297

The complex was built a few hundred feet south of a ghut that runs to the sea north of
the Jamestown site. No complex is depicted in the area on the Iles 1871 map and Iles only
lists one plantation with an animal mill in St Thomas, and that one (Good Hope) is
further north. Alignment of structures are not consistent nor are the masonry techniques
or the ﬁnishes between stone courses. The complex is well situated near the main road.
Elevation of this site is less than 40 feet above sea level, Zone D

 

Feet m
0 10

 

 

 

 

i
L3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ST7alt5/29-l
Mill complex

 

 

 

Figure Apl-21. Mill complex east from Jamestown. Two periods of construction on the site exemplify
the manner in which old mills were kept in operation for long periods of time.

A: Curing facility with attached boiling house. B: Boiling train. C: Cistem D: Unknown, but evidence
that this might be a distillery. E Foundations to adjacent structure, F: Animal mill platform. G: Well.

Phase 111

All of the above Phase II structures in St. Thomas Parish appear to have been
operational during Phase III and would have been part of the dynamic landscape past
emancipation. The Tower Hill complex seems to have been upgraded in the nineteenth
century with new buildings and a new mill. Our transects did not intersect any sites
uniquely Phase III.

St George Parish.

Rawlins Estate is the highest mill complex examined during this project. The
complex was not within the random sample Parishes. We documented features of the
works to add comparative information to the database for seventeenth and early
eighteenth century sugar work, and to examine a sugar-works built at high elevation Zone
B. The complex straddles a road with windmill and curing facilities on high ground, and
the boiling house across the road at a lower elevation. There is indication of nearby

298

 

 

housing, and several enticing mounds of construction debris. An aged strangling ﬁg tree
grows up through the center of the windmill tower.

Indian Castle estate is mentioned in the text as an early operation on the south east
coast. The structures may have been a harbor facility but also were used for curing and
distilling. Artifacts from the area date from at least the late seventeenth century, prior to
mention in extant ofﬁcial documents. See Meniketti (1998) for full site documentation.

Utilitarian Landscape

Roads were frequently encountered during survey. Measurements of these roads was
problematic because no justiﬁcation could be made for measuring in one place as
opposed to another. Several measures gave a very crude approximation of standard
widths at 15 feet for the more obvious cobble roads. Many of these had stacked stone
retaining walls on either side. But roads as narrow as ten feet were also common. While
we could determine that many roads served estates, not every road appeared to link
plantations, and may have in fact led to villages. Outside the village of Cox, for instance,
two overgrown cobble roads lead directly out from a paved road, along two branches.
One leads up hill toward Saddle Hill and passed an unidentiﬁed industrial complex,
while the other descends toward Coxheath complex. On either side are foundations of
various structures, and extensive artifact scatters. Most bottle and ceramic ﬁnds are
nineteenth century. The suggestion from our ﬁnds is that the village of Cox was once
considerably larger. A similar relationship between road and residences was noted on a
linkage between Montpellier and Bush Hill mill complexes. The bluff immediately east
of the Bush Hill mill exhibited the same scatter of domestic wares, iron kettle fragments,
ﬂatirons, buckles and rarities such as school slates. From this and other road walking we
have determined that Pond Hill, Cole Hill, Cox, and neighboring villages were once more
densely populated. Most of these roads are depicted on the 1984 OSM, but by no means
all of them. Several are so obscured by brush that they are not apparent until one is
actually walking on them.

299

 

 

APPENDIX 2

Chronology of Sites in St. John and St. Thomas Parishes.

300

 

 

Table Ap 2-1. Chronology of sites described in this study relevant to Phases. Only sites with structural
components are listed. Because artifact scatters were assessed in the ﬁeld solely to provide phase data but
were not collected and counted, valid statistical date ranges can not be made for the purposes of this chart.

Sites with multiple data sets, such as architecture, artifacts, and any documentary information were

incorporated into this chronology. Termination date for some sites is based on mention in Gov. A. Burke
Iles book and map of 1871. In other cases by comparison between sites. Mill complexes mentioned in the
text are assumed to be in operation to that date, which falls, in any case, outside the range of Phase 111. Sites
not named in the text are assumed not to be in operation during his tenure as governor. Many of these late
dates could be improved by using extant government Blue Books in the Horatio Nelson Museum Archive.

 

Site name

Pansh'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Site Number Zone Estd. date Category Type Phase
ran e
STKDS/29-1 none St Thomas D 16251 700 rural residential l
JT[7-02] Jamestown St Thomas D 1625-1710 urban foundations l
SJ14MM5/16-2 "lower SJ" St John D 1650-1800 industrial mill complex I
SJMM8-2-9[021 none St Thomas C 1700-1 800 industrial mill complex 11
no # ST Anﬂcan Ch. St Thomas D 1675-current relkgious church ll-lll
STMM5/29-1 none St Thomas D 1750-1900 industrial mill complex lI-lll
ST17aKDB/1-2 Tower St Thomas D 1700-1950 industrial mill complex ll-lll
ST17KDS.28-1 Pariss Garden St Thomas B 1750-1875 rural residential ll-lll
ST4aMM5/29-1 none St Thomas D 1700-? industrial mill complex It
$17aDR5/21 -1 none St Thomas C 1750-1800 rural residential ll
ST1 9K05/26-1 Rosington? St Thomas C 1700-1875 industrial mill complex ll-Ill
ST19MM5/26-1 none St Thomas C 1700-? rural foundations ll
_ ST17MM5/28-1 Pariss Garden St Thomas B 1750-1875? rural residential ll-Ill
SJ9KR5/22-1 "Long Point Rd" St John D 1650-1750 industrial mill complex ll-lll
' SJ14KDS/19-1 none St John D 1675-1750 industrial boilinLtrain ll-lll
SJ15MM5/21-1 Pembroke St John D 1700-1875 industrial mill complex ll-lll
SJ14(RD)5/19-1 Richmond St John D 1785-1875? industrial mill complex ll-lll
no # Dogwood St John D 1750—1875? industrial mill complex ll-III
no # Coxheath St John D 1700-1875 industrial mill complex ll-lll
no # SJ Anglican Ch. St John D 1675-current rﬂgious church ll-lll
no # Ft Charles St John D 1671 -1 785 military fort II
no # Bush hill St John C 1750-1900 industrial mill complex Il-Ill
SJ12MM5I16-2 Prenlis? ”Ridgg" St John C 1675-1875 industrial mill complex ll-lll
SJ12886/6-1 "Rim kitchen" St John C 1725-1875 rural/ind residential ll-lll
PW7-30/02-1 none St John C 1750-? ? foundations ll
PW7-30/02-2 none St John C 1750-? ? foundations ll
PW7-30/02-3 none St John C 1750-? ? foundations ll
' PW7-30/02-4 none St John C 1750-1800 industrial boilingiain ll
SJ12KDS/16-2 "Ridge house" St John C 1750-1875 rural/ind residential ll-lll
no # Douglas . St John D 1700-1875 industrial mill complex ll-lll
Village ~ Vaughans St Thomas D 1833-1900? rural villagL III-
ST7aBBG/1-1 none St Thomas C 1800-? ? foundations Ill-
S'l7aBB6/1-2 none St Thomas C 1800-7 ? foundations 111-
no # Harpies St Paul D 1800-19? urban villagL 111-
no # none St John D 1830-? industrial mill complex iii-
no # Mggans St John C 1800-19? rural village Ill-
MM8/9-02-1 none St John C 1850-19? rural residential N/a

 

301

 

 

 

Major known sites, such as Coxheath, Dogwood, etc., were not assigned site numbers. These were
investigated during the pilot study and not on speciﬁc transects. They will be given a site number consistent
with the 2003 system at a date of future site documentation.

Site categories were designated based on the component of landscape that best describes functional
characteristics. Mill complexes were termed industrial even though they generally are rural in setting. Sites
with no obvious functional category were grouped according to setting alone. Thus, a some structural
foundations found in rural landscape without clear association with industrial, military, or other category
were grouped as rural. In some instances even this expedient did not seem appropriate. Three sites found
during the pilot study (PW7-l,2,3) were in rural areas but near enough to both industrial sites and village
locations to have been historically associated with one of those categories. I played it safe and left those
"undeclared" in the table for future research.

 

302

APPENDIX 3

A Discussion of Artifacts from Jamestown
Site and the Ridge House Complex.

303

Artifacts

Artifacts have several important uses in archaeological settlement studies. Among
these are utility in establishing chronologies, determining settlement distribution or the
character of settlements, and in making comparisons between settlements of various
character. In the context of this study, artifacts were used in each of these capacities, but
also to glean insights bearing on the social status of individuals and to better understand
social consumer behavior. But ceramics are markers, not only of status and wealth, but of
inﬂuences from abroad, of changes in attitudes and behaviors, and of aesthetic sense.
While Nevis was not an emporium or important entrepét, its archaeological deposits
nevertheless exhibited the wide assortment of colonial wares so beloved by historical
archaeologists. Apparently often broken and discarded, yet durable in the archaeological
record, ceramics are often the only ready clue to site occupation and history. Colonial
types and styles are well deﬁned and forms generally understood. The challenge is not to
piece together an entire agate-ware bowl, but to understand the bowl and style in the
context of foodways and social life.

Mean ceramic mean manufacturing dates were compiled and used as conservative
chronological tool during surveys and excavation. The dates ranges, based on several
sources (see Appendix 11:332) provided a useful tool for assigning approximate date
values to assemblages and surface scatters encountered during the project. Additionally,
analysis of forms and their associations yielded information about possible usage. The
examination of midden composition and associated structures can be used to inform on
the possible activities at sites (King and Miller 1991). For example, utilitarian wares were
an important part of colonial households for food preparation and storage. Finer wares
were intended for serving and display at the table. This has almost become a mundane
statement. But this presupposes a household of some means that also has begun to
internalize behaviors of display. Households with humble wares may exhibit less
differentiation between wares for preparation and those used for consumption, yet may
aspire to the same behaviors displayed by social elites. Wares might be expected to serve
double-duty in households lacking the means to have specialized wares or sets. Should
we assume that humble means automatically indicates humble wares or simply fewer?

Artifacts recovered during surface collections are not unusual in scope and have
parallels elsewhere in the Caribbean, such as reported by Armstrong (1982, 1990) at Drax
Hall plantation in Jamaica, Mayes (1972) at Port Royal, Jamaica, Meniketti (1998) at
Indian Castle, Nevis and Morris (2000) on Nevis. For that matter, these same wares are
found in New England, colonial south, and frontiers of North America; a testament to the
remarkable expansion of material culture that followed Europeans. These and many other
studies have been particularly useful for developing an appropriate categorization of
artifacts. Categorization has beneﬁts for analysis, but its construction must not force a
line of reasoning on the archaeologist. For instance, if we are to label a particular vessel
as "food preparation" we may begin to identify the locations where the vessels are found
as kitchen areas. However, what is driving the identiﬁcation--sure knowledge of the
vessel as a kitchen item or its association with a kitchen? The assumption that an object is
found in its assigned activity area is compelling, but never certain. In the cases presented
here, categorization comes ﬁrst from architectural association and context. Artifacts from
Jamestown were associated with an apparent warehouse context and so the occurrence of
household goods requires explaining. At the Ridge house the association was a residential

304

In
I.

 

structure and smaller nearby kitchen structure, where table wares and food preparation
vessels would be anticipated.

Admittedly, the collections discussed here are not large and only limited statistical
analysis has been carried out, yet the sample does provide useful data, particularly in
addressing the issue of adaptation to changing consumptive behaviors.

The Jamestown collection: ceramics.

At Jamestown a minimum of 33 plates were identiﬁed. Of these only two were
pearlware and none were porcelain. The majority were transfer-printed types and
Whitewares. Whiteware and transfer-printed plates comprised 70% of the plate forms. I
have separated whiteware from transfer-printed types for because it was not always
possible to determine whether the transfer-prints were on pearlware or other white wares.
Therefore, transfer-print is used here as a descriptor of decoration. The chief purpose was
to have an indicator of date ranges and in as much as the period of introduction for
various print patterns and colors are generally known, this lack of exact knowledge of
ware was not a handicap. When referring to pearlware or whiteware the reference is for
plain, undecorated ceramics that can be distinguished as those common types.

Cups displayed the most variety, but again only two of 22 were porcelain and two of
pearlware. Coarse earthenware bowls constituted 48% of bowls with Whitewares and
transfer-prints representing 24%. Annularware styles, with distinctive incised and painted
rings around the vessels (generally blue) and colonoware bowls comprised 10% each. A
single pearlware bowl form was identiﬁed. A similar pattern holds even for sherds of
which forms could not be identiﬁed. Colonoware, earthenware and whiteware fragments
constituted 63% of the assemblage compared to .02% porcelain and 0.0% pearlware. We
recovered a few sherds of lead glazed yellow and brown, combed, slip decorated vessels,
but none identiﬁable as plates.

In terms of place-use, storage containers and kitchen wares totaled 7 vessels.
Insufﬁcient information was available to assign the earthenware bowls to kitchenware or
daily wares, so setting those aside for the moment, cups, bowls and plates of all types
totaled 101 sherds. Only two were porcelain. The earthenware bowls may have been for
serving or preparing food and together with the colonoware bowl fragments totaled better
than 58%. The general composition of this assemblage differs signiﬁcantly from that
collected at the residential/industrial site.

Sherds from ceramics included: salt-glazed stoneware, possibly from mugs and
tankards, as well as brown and white stoneware rims and bases; generic stonewares with
brownish mottling, widely used as storage vessels (these are often misidentiﬁed as
Bellarmine, itself a highly speciﬁc type of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century
manufacture); Rhenish gray stoneware body sherds and Rhenish tradition wares--deeply
incised and further decorated with blue paint from both mug and jug forrns—each
popular from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Plate rims and body
sherds included the highly distinctive basket pattern, along with feather-edged,
creamware styles (including Queen's ware). Shell-edge pearlware of varying qualities
were recorded. Pearlware was the English potter's answer to porcelain and produced to
meet the demand for ﬁne table ceramics. Many of these patterns are from the eighteenth
century. Willow pattern plate rims in a bright blue also were collected from the surface.
Again, an early eighteenth century date is suggested (Sempill 1944). These patterns were

 

305

 

produced in great quantities in English pottery factories for distribution and sale to a
rising middle class, eager to display hallmarks of their social attainment (Barker 1999).
Fragments of lead glazed slipwares were recovered in small numbers, mostly in yellow
and brown slip decoration representing at least two known styles: agate and marble
wares. Yellow and brown comb decorated body sherds also inform on early material
culture. Delft was noted but vessel forms were not always identiﬁable from the
fragments. Much tin-glazed earthenware or Delftware is Dutch in origin. Its popularity
reached a zenith between 1720-1740. Its presence on Nevis is not surprising. The Dutch
island of St Eustatius is nearby and Delftwares arrived on Nevis by legitimate trading
through England as well as via smuggling. The ware was characterized by a yellowish
paste and thick, buff glaze, usually with painted decoration. English delft was also
present. Delft was largely supplanted by ﬁner "soft paste" ceramics that imitated
porcelain. New types began to emerge on the market as consumer taste for coffee and tea
dramatically expanded after 1740 (Noel Hume 1985; Barker 1999)

Bowl or cup forms of common annular ring design (referred to herein as annular ware)
were of several colors. Sherds of course red, brown, and black burnished earthenwares
with grit and sand temper were abundant. These vessel fragments were likely storage
containers judging by the thickness, and body curvature, possibly sugar cone molds, but
several rim pieces had diameters that suggest serving bowls or tableware as well. The
general term applied to most of these is colonoware, a term meant to imply slave
manufacture or production in an African tradition. However, it can not be assumed that
slaves alone used the containers or that colonoware is indicative of residential debris. Or
indeed, that slaves were the manufacturers. Despite the presence of clay deposits on
Nevis, it isn't even certain the colonoware was made on Nevis.

If local materials were used for manufacture of sugar molds (documentary sources do
not provide any reliable indication) these would qualify as industrial artifacts. However,
molds for "claying" sugar were probably imported. Several plate fragments were
decorated by transfer printing in green, brown, purple, and blue.

In all 167 plate sherds were identiﬁed with creamware 32%, whiteware/transfer prints
10%, shelledged whiteware 9%, and pearlware 19%. Where porcelain was lacking on the
dinner table, it was instead well represented in cups at 36% of cup forms identiﬁed and
128 sherds or 16% of the unidentiﬁable forms, possibly saucers or more cups. On the
other hand, porcelain bowl sherds represent 34% of the collection. Colonoware bowls
comprise another 10%. Late seventeenth century tankards and mugs represented 48% of
other drinking vessels. White salt-glazed mugs also were a substantial 47% of the
assemblage. Also on site were a salvor, a puncheon, a porcelain teapot and two serving
platters. Intriguingly, jar forms were nearly all of late seventeenth century Rhenish style
stonewares. Where we might have expected earthenware or colonoware storage
containers we found none. The entire collection of storage container sherds consisted of
eighteenth and nineteenth century salt-glazed stonewares.

However, when median manufacturing dates for types and sherd counts are plotted, a
bi-modal distribution of manufacturing dates is produced, suggesting episodic
occupation of the site. In addition, we recovered fragments of small nineteenth century
stoneware jars. Median manufacture dates are not particularly useful in this analysis
because samples are small, and the date range is too imprecise to be an accurate
chronological tool. They do, however, provide conﬁrmation that the site was in use from

306

 

 

 

an early period of the colony. The table below quantiﬁes the number of sherds recovered
according to form and type/decoration. Data can be compared to the table of ceramics
from the Ridge house site, also in this appendix. A distinctive character of the assemblage
is its general lack of ﬁne or specialized table wares and the trailing off of eighteenth
century ware types. In terms of sherd volumes, the greatest numbers are among plain
undecorated white ware and earthenwares, some tin-glazed (possibly delft), as well as
colonoware. The colonoware may have been for storage, for serving, or for these
purposes combined. Does its presence signify Africans at the site or local adaptation and
use of easily made and cheap utilitarian wares? The answer to this question will require
additional research

Table Ap3- l. Jamestown ceramics.

W879

P S B C J IM Un otals:
4
4 2 7

brown

blue
ware

Rhenish stnwre
Bellarmine
& brown
decorated

unknown

otals:

P:plates,S:saucers, Bsbowls, Czcups, szars, Tletankards &
mugs, Urunidentifred, Chpt:chamberpot

 

307

 

 

 

 

Pipes and Smokig

Jamestown numbers are two few for valid statements of statistical signiﬁcance from
this collection, but are tantalizing. Calculations of mean date is barely worth the exercise.
We will say only that the majority of bowl forms and stem-bore diameters (following
formulas worked out by Harrington 1978; Noel Hume 1974) point to a late seventeenth
century date. Bore diameters varied, but 60% of a total 61 with measurable bores were
7/64 inch and 8% at 5/64 inch, well within the 1650-1680 range. Only 8% are of early to
mid eighteenth century manufacture. These lower percentages barely escape the margin
of error. Tulip shape bowls and spur bearing bowls, as well as bowls exhibiting rim
decoration, (rouletting) also suggest a range of 1650-1680. Some footed bowls displayed
monograms and other patterns. A surface ﬁnd of a pipe stem from the cleared foundation

at Jamestown exhibited rouletting around the circumference as well as ﬂeur de lis
stamping.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure Ap3-l. Examples of three pipe bowls at the Jamestown site. Forms are common to
mid to late seventeenth century.

Glass artifacts

Although onion bottle glass was recovered we had few suitable diagnostic pieces.
Such bottles were commonly used during the latter seventeenth century for liquors or
wines and shipped in crates. The few rims and bases identiﬁed ranged from early to late
eighteenth century styles rather than forms common to the seventeenth century. Black
glass from a square case bottle and brown and green bottle body shards were recorded.
We have far too few fragments to calculate signiﬁcant minimum vessel quantities.

Clear glass from a tumbler, stemware fragments, and a decanter rim and base of cut
glass allow us to say we have one of each vessel. Due to the incompleteness of the items
accurate dates can not be assigned. However these items suggest a measure of afﬂuence
for whom ever owned them and suggest a conscious effort to display such afﬂuence, even
in a frontier colony.

 

308

 

 

Metals
Few iron objects were found. These could not be identiﬁed but we could

determine they were of wrought iron. The extremely wet and salty nature of the site
hastens corrosion. Wrought iron square nails were documented as well as iron spikes.
Two tools were recovered from a single shovel test: a mattock or cane hoe, and an edged
cutting tool (see Appendix 9: 327). Handles had long ago rotted away. These tools were
common to the sugar industry, but continue to be used today.

One oddity we recovered was a small pin of bronze shaped like an S and decorated on
its surface to resemble a snake. It measured a little under two inches in length.

Two pewter buttons were also collected.

Ceramics at Rural Industrial Sites
SJ 1 2MM5/l 6-1 and SJKR5/22-l

A site with residential and industrial character was systematically surveyed during
this project. Both sites were enclosed by stacked stone walls, demarcating a segregated
space from surrounding terraced ﬁelds, creating a production/staging area. But each site
had distinctions. One (SJMMS/ 16-1) referred to as the Ridge mill-complex, also had an
associated domestic component, referred to here as the Ridge house. Artifacts were
collected from the mill-complex located on a ridge at 1000 feet, just below Saddle Hill.
As at Jamestown, crew walked close intervals and collected a 100% surface sample.
Beyond the enclosure, artifacts of similar character were visible on the surface and
against the rocks of terrace retaining walls downslope, but were not recorded.

From the Ridge mill-complex we recovered a wide range of domestic wares, of which
there were many of ﬁner quality, both in absolute numbers and type proportions. Few
were of early manufacture. It was not possible to always determine a minimum vessel
count due to the fragmentary nature of some sherds. But it was possible in many cases to
determine vessel types and vessel forms from diagnostic pieces, bases, rims, fragment
curvature and body thickness.

The assemblage differs sharply from that at Jamestown, and we would expect it to.
But not just the quantity of ﬁner wares, such as porcelain and pearlware, but also in
vessel forms. At the Ridge house site is an extensive selection of plates, cups, and
beverage containers. There is an abundance of Delft and creamware in plate forms. But
more important than a potpourri of consumer wares of the seventeenth and eighteenth
century, this assemblage also hints at display behavior as conducted at the dinning table
(Adams and Boling 1989; Smart Martin 1996). Discussion in Chapter Three examined in
depth the possible meanings of objects as status indicators and I will not repeat the
discussion here. However, it is worth pointing out that the assemblage included a large
number of colonoware fragments. We could not identify vessel forms reliably from the
sherds at hand, but it would not be unreasonable to conjecture they were types used in the
kitchen, alongside the generic white salt-glazed stonewares. It may also be conjectured
that these wares were used by house servants, but this is an assumption. Servants may
also have had access to ﬁner imported goods. Armstrong (1990:150) offers a reasoned an
compelling argument that colonoware was an "adaptive syncretism" that evolved from
generalized African forms and manufacturing methods. This seems to be the case on
Nevis, but its use may also have been a form of adaptive behavior among Europeans.

309

 

Glass

The principal form of glass recovered from the site were alcohol bottles. Based on
bases and rims we can conﬁdently say their date range spans from the middle of the
eighteenth century through about 1950. (Again, the chief source for identiﬁcation was
Noel Hume). The majority of pieces come from a single source among a pile of rocks just
50 feet up-slope from the ridge house foundations. Placement among the rocks
undoubtedly prevented the pieces from being subjected to the same site formation
processes as glass on the open ground. Using bases and rims to identify bottle types,
these ranged from the mid eighteenth century to modern. Possibly the rock pile has been
a favored discard site.

Medicinal bottles and other vessels identiﬁed as toiletry items make up the second
major category of glass artifacts. The fragmentary nature of these vessels make it
impossible to accurately assign a date to them, but they appear to mainly be of late
eighteenth to late nineteenth century manufacture, possibly the early twentieth century.
No ﬁne stemware was present but cut glass, decanter fragments, and other identiﬁable
kitchen glass was recovered. One medicinal was traceable to a Massachusetts company
operating between 1880 and 1920.

Pipe bowls and stems

Among the collected small ﬁnds were 126 clay pipe stem fragments and 208 bowl
fragments. One base exhibited the mark "LE" which is a fairly common manufacturers
mark of the eighteenth century, and examples are known throughout the Caribbean. Stem
diameters are of a range that spans the eighteenth century. Additional marks found on
stems further support an eighteenth century pedigree.

Miscellaneous small ﬁnds.

Small ﬁnds of unusual character included a glass bead, a polished coral celt, and three
worked-edge conch shell fragments. These are highly portable items and should not be
construed as necessarily suggesting a Carib site. Metal items included wrought iron
square nails, as well as other iron fasteners, iron cauldron fragments, pewter discs and
medallions, and one copper alloy furniture ﬁxture or possibly a boss for horse tack of
ornate design.

Brick and rooﬁng tile fragments and eight broken gunﬂints or strike-a-lights were
also recorded.

The table of ceramics from the Ridge house area illustrates an interesting character.
There is an abundance of ﬁner wares than at Jamestown, but more interestingly, the
percentage of wares associated with the table as opposed to preparation seems
unbalanced for a domestic household. The durable quality of food preparation wares may
account for the difference, needing to be replaced less often either for breakage or
changing styles and aesthetic taste.

310

 

Table Ap 3-2. Ceramics from the Ridge house site.

house ceramic sherd counts by ware form and type.

PCPISB SI'VPcIInSIVSt WLUI!
20 14 1 1 128

27

toothed yellow-311p

Rhenish
Westerwald
decorated
& marble ware
stoneware

ille

otals: 41 1 11 1801 11

. Plzplatter. s:saucers. B:bowls,TIM.tankards & mugs, lears. Srvzservlng dish. Pchnzpuncheon.
, Stzstorage vessel. T:leapot.SV:small vessels Ger forms). Lzlid. szunldentlilable body sherds

 

311

 

 

 

Ridge house 111
St. John Parish ‘

contour interval l0 feet

   
   
  

feet:—
0 20 40

Elceramic
I@pipe stem
- glass
“ﬁgs/I [Emetal

‘ .. f tu

i 4 ‘r. E} ea re

Figure Ap3-2. Area plan for Ridge house artifact surface collection. (Modiﬁed
for this format. 1: residential structure, 2: foundations for kitchen structure,

3: enclosing stone wall, 4: secondary structure and cave entrance, A: polished
coral celt, probably Carib. Due to terrain, many artifacts were likely washed
downslope. Individual items are not distinct at this scale, but overall distribution
and clustering is discernible.

 

 

 

312

 

 

 

     
  
 
 

 

 

 

  

 

' D E ucstrian center
Jamestown Site can _- ‘1 Modcmroad
St Thomas Parish 1.
Thicket
0 10 20 30 4_0 st: 6070“ 3:}: 1‘0 2_0 s9 40 50 60 70 80 90100
\’f0 .. i475 ":
, ‘ 53?? x, O.
I: . U1 rte-E. L. £-
? e81; ,, -£-.’.‘. ’5 :1
t, v TN" 3:. A W ' h , . ’25::1.‘ a .3
Coconut { EM; 5;. -" w'. ' :35? a .. .-
Thiekct ‘ ~~~~~~ a A t' “ ~.g
. ,o a. u a ’ a ‘.
(’A‘ ~~~~~~~~ \ 1‘ ‘ l f . in};
(t 1) in I {.4 «- \\‘ 'g
L \“I \ ¥~warzF '. (:1. or $ :3 I 1 G
o ié'lé‘.‘ , o. ’ o
. C‘ .I: a ,. .. ‘ 0
v 2" 0 3- 1a
" '
,I ' _ _ i
’ f/ 9 ‘ i-.
/N [w “i 111 VI
"\ 10 TO
. a -
}, mews Thicket . - . Beach
. \ I:.:.:310 feet _ ' 1 . ﬂ
." 0 15 ' Swamp ' ,

 

 

Figure Ap 3-3. Section from area map at Jamestown site modiﬁed for this format One hundred meter
quadrats were set (indicated by Roman numerals) with survey team walking transects at ten meter intervals
(Arabic numerals). Transects were continued westerly an additional 100 meters but no artifacts were found
beyond the line lV-lll-Vl. At this scale individual artifacts are not distinct but represented by dot clusters.
Each small c, p, x, o and dot represents ﬁnds of ceramics, glass, pipe stems, metal, or other items.
Clustering of artifacts along line 20 and 30, between quad comers 11 and V, may indicate another structure.
Structural features are A, A-l, B, C, and D. Excavation unit 1 is indicated by U] along the wall of Feature
A. Several earthen mounds and depressions are encompassed by quad l-ll-Ill-IV. Several foundations are
emerging on the property of the equestrian center. Artifact scatters at D include pipe stems and ceramics.

313

 

 

APPENDIX 4

Burial Excavation at Pinney Beach.

314

Beach burial.

Late in the project members of our crew were approached by a Nevisian with queries
about bones. On investigation we learned he had discovered a human skeleton eroding
from the Pinney beach. The location was north of Charlestown in an area where previous
skeletons had been reported. Recent hurricane damage to the shore has apparently been
exposing a historic cemetery. Although a cemetery is shown on the 1871 Iles map nearby,
this usually is interpreted to be the small Catholic cemetery visible today. No known
cemetery is located where the skeleton was found. Furthermore, the area has been so
eroded over the centuries that we conjecture the burial was originally two hundred yards
inland from the shore. Wave action, however, is now revealing the burials. Its association
with a standing eighteenth century defensive structure in the same matrix, and the soil
suggested a historic rather than recent interment and I recommended the date range of
two to three hundred years.

After informing the Nevis Conservation and Historical Society, we undertook a two
day excavation on their behalf. The remains were subsequently cleaned, stabilized, and
prepared for the museum to curate the bones until further study is possible. The burial
was east to west with the head in the west. The crania had long before eroded out and
was lost. The individual was on his back with arms stretched across the body with hands
crossed over the pelvis. Based on pelvic dimensions, robustness of limbs, as well as
ﬁised epiphysis in the femurs, we are tentatively suggesting the burial to have been an
adult male.

The surrounding sandy hardpan matrix was rock hard and required chiseling for
removal. No evidence of clothing or a cofﬁn were found. The excavation presented some
practical problems but we had no difﬁculty keep in the bones from drying out as the
waves broke over the excavation. The challenge was preventing any bones from being
washed a way. A small, partial coffer am was constructed on the seaward side to blunt the
force of the sea. Bones were kept moist, rinsed for several days in tap water to dissolve
salts and consolidated over several days with white glue in ever increasing
concentrations. After drying the bones were wrapped and boxed for the museum. The
skeleton remains to be fully studied. Without the crania, a more informed assessment of
sex, age, and possibly race could not be made from our cursory investigation.

On March 28, 2004 an email was received stating that a skull had been found by a
beachcomber a year ago. After reading the article in the local paper about the skeleton the
individual contacted the NCHS. The skull was still in his possession and he wished to
give it to the museum—all teeth intact. The odds that these two belong together is remote
but not beyond the realm of possibility. A future trip to Nevis with forensic experts may
answer the obvious question.

315

 

 

Figure Ap4-l. Burial during excavation. The hard-pan sand matrix was hard as stone. The
full skeleton was recovered (sans crania) and is being curated by the NCHS.

316

APPENDIX 5

Changing Technology of Sugar Production.
Comparison of Spanish Train with Jamaica Train.

317

 

 

 

Figure Ap5- 1. Boiling table or Spanish train. The sugar is boiled in coppers, each with its own ﬁre. The
structure pictured is similar in scale and design to ﬁnds on Nevis, Phase 1 and 11. Cane is being crushed for
juice by a three-roller vertical animal mill. Juice runs through a sluice or channel on gravity feed to a
retention tank. The old technology was eventually replaced by the more efﬁcient so-called Jamaica train.
The innovation was probably by the Portuguese in Brazil. Source: Owen's Dictionary Vol. V11, 1775. The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

 

 

 

v"~.'.._ K .. ..V-

Figure Ap5-2. Jamaica train. In this technological advancement for sugar manufacturing only one ﬁre (4) is
used. A chimney (6) draﬁ allows heat to be drawn under the coppers allowing for more control over heat.
The system is easier to control and requires less labor. Copper A is where sugar processing begins and
syrup is moved toward copper E at appropriate stages of reﬁnement; large copper to small. Source: Recuel!
De Planches sur Les Sciences (Paris) 1751. Library of Congress, Washington DC.

318

 

 

APPENDIX 6

Bellin Map, 1758

 

319

 

Tomi-'1 A394,.
CARTE m: L' ISLE DENll-IV'ES

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Figure Ap 6-l. Bellin map of Nevis of about 1758. Note the defensive works along the western shore. The
Town of Newcastle appears in the wrong position to the east rather than at the north. He road system is
extensive.

320

 

 

APPENDIX 7

Map of Nevis by
Governor Alexander Burke Iles,1 871 .

 

321

 

 

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322

 

APPENDIX 8

Excavation Detail from SW Comer of Jamestown Foundations.

 

 

323

 

SW comer
Jamestown structure
0 10 Feature A-l

Q

C: ceramics

P: pipe bowls/stems
G: glass

1-8: metal

   
 
 
  

mortar ﬁll

 

 

 

Figure Ap8-l. Southwest comer of Jamestown Feature A-l foundation
showing distribution of artifacts. Pipes and ceramics ranged in date from late
seventeenth to mid eighteenth century. Most glass was of nineteenth century
manufacture suggesting the comer has been exposed for sometime. Metal
fragments were unidentiﬁable corroded wrought iron.

324

 

 

APPENDIX 9

Shovel Test Proﬁles from Jamestown Site.
A Representative Sample from the Grid.

325

 

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326

Shovel tests at Jamestown were dispersed over a grid pattern covering the entire survey
area and generated additional data concerning shoreline evolution and site history.
Twenty standard test holes measured 30 cm to aside, and were dug following natural
stratigraphy in a squarish shape. Shovel tests were not dug within the interiors of
structures to avoid unnecessary site disturbance. All material was screened through 1/8
mesh.l Results of our shovel tests were surprising. Less than 10 feet west of the
foundations (Feature A) rich sandy loam was reached at 40 cm depth. Water seeped back
into our test holes at 60-70 cm depth. Test holes located close to the modern road reached
a meter in depth without encountering water, but sandy loam was reached at 50 cm depth.
Artifacts were recovered from each level. In one case an entire mattock, or cane hoe, was
unearthed along with another edged iron tool Figure Ap9-2(no.3). A sterile level was
never achieved due to groundwater seepage.

 

 

Figure Ap9-2. Cane hoes found during survey and shovel testing. Specimen 3
was found in a shovel test at Jamestown site.

 

1 This mesh was much too ﬁne for practical purposes because the soil matrix of organic material and sandy-
clay could barely be passed through the screen. The U8 mesh, however, was all that could be obtained
locally until the following season when V. inch mesh became available.

327

 

APPENDIX 10

Conﬂicts Inﬂuencing Colonial Development in the Caribbean
with Particular Emphasis on Conﬂicts Affecting Nevis.

328

 

 

Table Ap lO-l. Chart illustrating the periods and duration of various conﬂicts in Europe, North America
and the Caribbean that inﬂuenced development on Nevis. Affects could be positive or negative. For

planters either by affecting prices for products, disrupting shipping, or by interfering with rivals r cutting
off trade partners.

. Conﬂict in the Caribbean Euro ean conﬂicts fou ht in the Caribbean)

 

 

 

 

 

Seventeenth Century Eighteenth Century Nineteenth Century
1600 1700 1800
1702 War of Spanish Succession Napoleonic
1706 France invades Nevis 1805 War cont.
1812 War with
1713 United States
1618 Thirty Years War
1627 *Nevis Settled
1629 *Spanish attack Nevis
1630 English Civil War
1640 1833 Emancipation
1648
1652 First Dutch war
*War with Spain
1654
1655 Cromwell's Western
Design
1756 Seven Years War
1763
1665 Second Dutch War
1667 I
1672 lThird Dutch War
1674
1776 War of American
Independence
1782 France invades Nevis
1688 War of Grand Alliance
vs. French and Dutch 1789 Haitian Revolution
1792
1793 French Revolution
1697 & Napoleonic wars

 

 

Data based on Merrill I958; Pares 1936; Newton 1967; Hubbard 1996; Davis 1962; Williams 1970

 

329

 

 

Appendix 11

Mean Manufacturing Dates for the Various
Ceramic Types Recovered During Surface Surveys on Nevis.

330

 

 

Table Ap l 1-1.Ceramic types from Nevis. Median manufacturing dates for common colonial ceramic
artifacts. Date ranges are shown to illustrate possible use periods.

1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 median

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pearlware ----* ----- l 790
Painted ------ * ------ 1797
Whiteware * 1860
Shelledged ---*---- 1772
Willow pattern ----- * ----- 1812
Dot/diaper, basket ----" ------ 1752
Creamware * 1782
Transfer-printed (on white wares)
Blue ----*---- l 792
Green ----*---- l 792
Bm/blk ----* ----- 1815
Agate/marble ware * 1780
Yellow&bm slip decorated * 1730
Polychrome ----- * ------ 1 830
Annularware ----* ------ 1802
English Delﬁ * 1670
Dutch Delft * 1675
Porcelain * 1730
Earthenware
Shp ------- * -------- 1787
Coarse -------- * -------- 1787
Stoneware
Saltglazed "' 1 762
Belramine ------ * ------- 1675
Brown mottled * 1733
Rhenish gray ----"‘---- 1707
Westerwald ----- * ------ 1 700
Colonoware - - - - 1740

 

1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900

Sources used for compiling these date ranges include, Sempill 1944; Mayes 1972; Noel Hume 1974,
1985; Adams and Boling 1989; Allan 1999; Barker 1999. The use of these median dates, by default, places
most of the sites on Nevis investigated during the present study into Phase 11. But it was still possible to
assign Phase I dates when ceramic mean dates coincided with architectural data and was combined with
date ranges provided by tobacco paraphernalia and glass forms. In particular, Phase I dating in this study
was never founded on presence of any single ceramic type. Our protocol required at least two types in
addition to other data sets with comparable ranges.

No mean date is provided here for colonoware because data I consider suitable regarding its
manufacture is unavailable. The ware was present at most sites and in assemblages assigned to each phase.

331

 

 

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