Abstract
Sugar planters on Tobago faced a variety of challenges. Foremost among these were creating and maintaining the economic viability of their estates while subjugating a vastly larger enslaved population. As a minority cultural group, however, planters were also faced with the task of reaffirming their own identities as British subjects. These goals were met by constructing a landscape that offered communications, familiarity, and symbolic power. Sugar estate layouts can be interpreted functionally by focusing on the issues of sugar production and control of an enslaved labor force. This paper adds a third dimension by examining the production of sugar and the control of labor from the perspective of the estate house and its relationship to the larger landscape. Additional hypotheses that could account for settlement choices are presented where production and control are insufficient explanation for patterned arrangements.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Adams, William Hampton 1990 Landscape Archaeology, Landscape History, and the American Farmstead. Historical Archaeology 24(4):92–101.
Anonymous [1870] Plan of the Orange Hill and Amity Hope Estates in the Parish of St. David, Island of Tobago. J. King & Co. (Limited), London.
1784 Carte Militaire de l’Ile de Tabago. Archives Nationale, France.
Archibald, Douglas 1987 Tobago: Melancholy Isle. Vol. 1, 1498–1771. Westindiana Ltd., Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Armstrong, Douglas V. 1990 The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. University of Illinois Press, Chicago.
Beckford, William 1790 A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica. T. and J. Egerton, London.
Benjamin, Park (editor) 1880 Appleton’s Cyclopœdia of Applied Mechanics: A Dictionary of Mechanical Engineering and the Mechanical Arts, Vol. 2. D. Appleton and Company, NY.
Brown, Kenneth L., and Doreen C. Cooper 1990 Structural Continuity in an African-American Slave and Tenant Community. Historical Archaeology 24(4):7–19.
Byres, John 1776 Plan of the Island of Tobago, Laid Down by Actual Survey. S. Hooper, London.
1832 Plan of the Island of Tobago, Laid Down by Actual Survey. New edition. James Wyld, London.
Cleland, Charles E. 1988 Questions of Substance, Questions that Count. Historical Archaeology 22(1): 13–17.
Clement, Christopher Ohm 1995 Landscapes and Plantations on Tobago: A Regional Perspective. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville.
Colonial Records Office (CO) 1808 CO 285/13. University of the West Indies Library, St. Augustine, Trinidad. Microfilm. Original manuscript on file, Public Records Office, London.
Deagan, Kathleen 1988 Avenues of Inquiry in Historical Archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 5:151–177. Michael B. Schiffer, editor. Academic Press, NY.
Deerr, Noel 1949 The History of Sugar. Two volumes. Chapman and Hall Ltd., London.
Delle, James A. 1994 The Settlement Pattern of Sugar Plantations on St. Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles. Spatial Patterning in Historical Archaeology: Selected Studies of Settlement, edited by Donald W. Linebaugh and Gary G. Robinson. Occasional Papers in Archaeology 2:33– 61. Department of Anthropology, William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research, Williamsburg, VA.
Eubanks, Thomas Hales 1992 Sugar, Slavery and Emancipation: The Industrial Archaeology of the West Indian Island of Tobago. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville.
Goodwin, Conrad M. 1987 Sugar, Time and Englishmen. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, MA.
1994 Betty’s Hope Windmill: An Unexpected Problem. Historical Archaeology 28(1):99–110.
Handler, Jerome S., and Frederick W. Lange 1978 Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Higman, Barry W. 1988 Jamaica Surveyed: Plantation Maps and Plans of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Institute of Jamaica Publications, Ltd., Kingston, Jamaica.
Jamieson, Ross W. 1995 Material Culture and Social Death: African-American Burial Practices. Historical Archaeology 29(4): 39–58.
Jefferys, Thomas 1778 Tobago from Actual Surveys and Observations. Robert Sayer, London.
1794 Tobago from Actual Surveys and Observations. Laurie and Whittle, London.
1969 Tobago. Reprint of 1765 map. La Mise en Valeur de l’Ile de Tabago (1763–1783), by Jean-Claude Nardin, pp. 88–89. Mouton, Paris.
Lange, Frederick W., and Jerome S. Handler 1985 The Ethnohistorical Approach to Slavery. In The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, edited by Theresa A. Singleton, pp. 15–32. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.
Lavaysse, J. J. Dauxion 1969 Statistical, Commercial, and Political Description of Venezuela, Trinidad, Margarita, and Tobago. Reprint of 1820 translation. Negro Universities Press/ Greenwood, Westport, CT.
Lewis, Kenneth E. 1984 The American Frontier: An Archaeological Study of Settlement Pattern and Process. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.
1985 Plantation Layout and Function in the South Carolina Lowcountry. In The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, edited by Theresa A. Singleton, pp. 35–65. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.
McKee, Larry 1992 The Ideals and Realities Behind the Design and Use of 19th-century Virginia Slave Cabins. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz, edited by Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, pp. 195–213. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Nardin, Jean-Claude 1969 La Mise en Valeur de l’Ile de Tabago (1763–1783). Mouton, Paris.
Niddrie, David L. 1961 Land Use and Population in Tobago: An Environmental Study. Geographical Publications Limited, Bude, Cornwall, England.
Orser, Charles E. Jr. 1988 The Archaeological Analysis of Plantation Society: Replacing Status and Caste with Economics and Power. American Antiquity 53(4):735–751.
Otto, John Solomon 1975 Status Differences and the Archaeological Record: A Comparison of Planter, Overseer, and Slave Sites from Cannon’s Point Plantation (1774–1861), St. Simons Island, Georgia. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville.
1977 Artifacts and Status Differences—A Comparison of Ceramics from Planter, Overseer, and Slave Sites on an Antebellum Plantation. In Research Strategies in Historical Archaeology, edited by Stanley South, pp. 91–118. Academic Press, NY.
1980 Race and Class on Antebellum Plantations. In Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America: Afro-American and Asian Culture History, edited by RobertL. Schuyler, pp. 3–13. Baywood, Farmingdale, NY.
1984 Cannon’s Point Plantation, 1794–1860: Living Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.
Padgug, R. A. 1976 Problems in the Theory of Slavery and Slave Society. Science and Society 40:3–27.
Paynter, Robert 1982 Models of Spatial Inequality: Settlement Patterns in Historical Archaeology. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.
Pulsipher, Lydia Mihelic 1992 Here Where the Old Time People Be: Reconstructing the Landscapes of the Slavery and Post-slavery Era in Montserrat, West Indies. Paper presented at the Conference “The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion,” Hamilton College, Clinton, NY.
Pulsipher, Lydia Mihelic, and Conrad M. Goodwin 1982 Galways: A Caribbean Sugar Plantation; A Report on the 1981 Field Season. Unpublished manuscript on file with the authors.
1988 The Betty’s Hope Conservation Project, Betty’s Hope Estate, Antigua, West Indies. Pilot Study report submitted to Antigua and Barbuda Betty’s Hope Committee.
Smith, Keithlyn B., and Fernando C. Smith 1986 To Shoot Hard Labor: The Life and Times of an Antiguan Working Man, 1877–1982. Edan’s Publishers, Scarborough, ON.
Warren, Robert E., and Michael J. O’Brien 1984 A Model of Frontier Settlement. In Grassland, Forest, and Historical Settlement: An Analysis of Dynamics in Northeast Missouri, edited by Michael J. O’Brien, pp. 22–57. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
Wheaton, Thomas R., and Patrick H. Garrow 1985 Acculturation and the Archaeological Record in the South Carolina Low Country. In The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, edited by Theresa A. Singleton, pp. 239–259. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.
Wilkie, Laurie A. 1995 Magic and Empowerment on the Plantation: An Archaeological Consideration of African-American World View. Southeastern Archaeology 14(2):136–148.
Willey, Gordon R. 1953 Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 155. Washington, DC.
Woodcock, Henry Iles 1866 A History of Tobago Reproduced from the Printed Manuscript. Box and Labels Colour Printers Ltd., Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Wray, Leonard 1848 The Practical Sugar Planter. Smith, Elder and Co., London.
Young, Sir William 1809 An Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive Account of the Island of Tobago. Microfilm. University of the West Indies Library, St. Augustine, Trinidad. Original manuscript on file, British Library, London.
1812a An Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive Account of the Island of Tobago. Microfilm. University of the West Indies Library, St. Augustine, Trinidad. Original manuscript on file, Windsor Library, Windsor Castle, London.
1812b An Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive Account of the Island of Tobago. Original manuscript on file, University of the West Indies Library, St. Augustine, Trinidad.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Clement, C.O. Settlement patterning on the British Caribbean Island of Tobago. Hist Arch 31, 93–106 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03373605
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03373605