The Colonial Caribbean Landscapes of Power in Jamaica's Plantation System Case Studies in Early Societies Series

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

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

James A. Delle is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Kutztown University, Pennsylvania. He is former chief editor and current member of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology editorial board, and currently associate editor of Historical Archaeology. He is a member of the executive board of the Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology. Delle is author of An Archaeology of Social Space; co-editor of Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender and Out of Many, One People: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Jamaica; and editor of Limits of Tyranny: Archaeological Perspectives on the Struggle against New World Slavery. Delle has published articles in the Journal of Social Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Northeast Historical Archaeology, the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, and Archaeologies.