DOUGLAS V. ARMSTRONG

RECOVERING AN EARLY 18TH CENTURY AFRO-JAMAICAN COMMUNITY: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SLAVE VILLAGE AT SEVILLE, JAMAICA

INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH AT SEVILLE

The slave village site at Seville (occupied circa 1670-1900) was part of a large British colonial sugar estate consisting of over 2000 acres consolidated soon after the British took the island from the Spanish in 1655 (Figure 1). The estate is located as St. Ann's Bay on the north coast of Jamaica. It consists of a strip of land extending from the shore to the mountainous interior of the island. Sugar was grown on gently sloping tract of fertile land along the coast, the slave village was located further inland, behind the planters great house, on a small piece of land at the edge of the lush tropical forest that rises sharply to the south1,2 The slave settlement at Seville estate was one of the "finalists" in the intensive selection process that resulted in the excavations at Drax Hall (Armstrong 1983, 1985, 1990). It met all criteria for excavation: excellent documentation, detailed maps, slave lists and other records dealing directly with occupants of the estates Afro-Jamaican settlement. A comparative study of Drax and Seville was considered but the realities of time, energy, and money limited excavations to Drax Hall where more complete documentation was available and where the foundations of slave housing were slightly more visible as flat anomalies on the slopes of gently rolling hills. While excavating Drax the importance of archaeological research at Seville became more and more apparent for reasons not entirely tied to the past, but rather by the way in which the history of Seville was being presented in the present. Seville Estate had been acquired by the Government of Jamaica for the establishment of a National Historic Park. The estate and the adjoining bay have witnessed the full spectrum of Jamaican history and prehistory. Arawak Indians lived in at least three sites on the estate, Christopher Columbus beached two ships and lived for more than a year in the area, the second European occupied city in the New World, Sevilla la Nueva occupied a section of the property in the sixteenth century, a major sugar estate was build by British planters, and more than 250 persons of African descent were brought tin to work the estate for nearly three centuries first as slaves and later as free laboring tenants. It could be argued that few places in the Americas have such a long and culturally diverse history. Certainly the fact that the estate was acquired as a National Park, indicates that aspects of the historic significance of the area have been recognized. After acquiring the estate the eighteenth century Great House was partially restored, surveys and excavations were conducted to locate the Spanish and Amer-lndian sites, and international funding was sought to harold the Spanish period, the Great House and works, and even the Amer-lndian villages which might have had interactions with Columbus. Unfortunately, the Afro-Jamaican village was not afforded a significant place in the history of Seville. Despite the fact that a survey of the Afro-Jamaican settlement

344 was conducted in 1980 and its boundaries reconfirmed in 1981. I was appalled to find that the ruins of houses were being destroyed in 1982 in order that sod could be obtained for the grassy area in front of the Great House. For more than three hundred of its five hundred years of history Afro- Jamaicans made up the majority population of the estate, and their history should be included along with that of the occupants of the Great House, the sugar and pimento works, and the earlier Spanish and Native American settlers. The significance of excluding Afro-Jamaicans from the interpretation of Seville as made clear by the sod incident, and the significance of seeking and including information on the settlement was made poignant during a site walk over with Carpy Rose in 1982. Mr. Rose was born (circa 1890) in one of the last houses remaining on the estate. As I describe in the preface to a book forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press (Armstrong 1990), Mr. Rose had been interviewed by several scholars interested in what he knew about his class mate, Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican National Hero (Armstrong 1990). He was surprised that I was interested in him and the place where he was brought up, and not primarily in Mr. Garvey. When I asked him to show me his boyhood home he responded with a smile and said that he would show me where he grew up but that I would not find anything there; yet when we arrived he recognized a tree from the yard and as we were leaving he said that as a small boy he had lost a special toy, he wondered if archaeologists would find it. The mere fact that attention is paid to a subject, in this case an Afro-Jamaican settlement, alters the perception of the importance of the village. In the process history is broadened to acknowledge the contributions of all Jamaicans. It is this goal, of including the settlement in the interpretation of history at Seville, which drew me back to Jamaica in 1987. In the past my proposals for research have been defined in terms of significance to the study of cultural transformations. As such they are subject to the same set of evaluations, which led me to choose Drax Hall for initial inquiry. In other words, there are many places where these research questions can be addressed, however, the significance of this site is linked with a broader interpretation of history. If the Afro-Jamaican settlement at Seville National Historic Park is not studied the importance of Afro-Jamaicans would not be acknowledged by those who interpret the past to the people of the present. To date only a few of the many thousands of black settlements in the have been explored, this represents only a few hundred of the several million persons of African descent who lived in, and help create, the rich and diverse cultural landscape found today in the Americas. Within and in spite of the institution of slavery, blacks lived, worked, and died. Not only did they harvest the crops which were bring great wealth to the burgeoning empires of Europe, but they also created their own internal cultural systems and the cultural foundations for the modern peoples of the Caribbean.

BACKGROUND TO STUDIES IN PLANTATION ARCHAEOLOGY

In recent years there has been a réévaluation of the past by social scientists including both anthropologists and historians and a growing recognition that many sectors of the population throughout the America's had been overlooked. The most populous of these groups are the Afro-Americans. During the period of slavery (16th

345 through 19th centuries) some 12 million Africans were forcibly brought to the western hemisphere (Curtin 1969). In the Caribbean, as in the Southeastern United States, these blacks were forces into a system of chattel slavery with a significant proportion placed on colonial frontier plantations for the primary purpose of producing cash crops like sugar and tobacco for an export market. Evidence of internal social and cultural systems operating within and in spite of the external forces of colonial slave institutions is evident in surviving and revitalized oral traditions, music, and dance, clothing, and spoken dialects (Franklin 1969; Herskovits 1958 [1941]; Mintz 1974; Brathwaite 1978; Grahan and Knight 1979). Certainly their are descriptive accounts, which stress the importance of these traits within black settlements (Long 1774; Beckford 1790; Edwards 1793; Anonymous 1797). These accounts are extremely useful but they are not the only record available. For the period prior to the nineteenth century there is another major source of primary, first hand, information: the archaeological record. Materials that were used, broken, and discarded, along with the remains of the structures in which Afro-Jamaicans lived and the foods that they ate, have been persevered in the ground. This record, described by Deetz (1977) as the "many things forgotten", can be reconstructed through the study of artifacts and structures that survive (Otto 1985; Ferguson 1978; Kelso 1984; Handler and Lange 1978; Garrow 1981; Singleton 1985; Armstrong 1990). In the Caribbean an extensive literature on slaves and slavery has been generated by anthropologists and historians who have been keenly sensitive to the study of the institution of slavery and role of Afro-Americans in the formation of rich and diverse Caribbean cultures (Herskovits and Herskovits 1947; Craton 1978; Curtin 1969; Davenport 1961; Dunn 1973; Goveia 1965; Hall 1976; Handler 1974; Mintz 1955, 1974, 1985a, and 1985b; Mintz and Hall 1960; Mintz and R. Price 1976; Higman 1976, 1979, 1984; Crahan and Knight 1979; Kiple and King 1981; and Kiple 1984). The amount of archaeological work focusing on Afro-American populations in the Caribbean is quite small in contrast to the Southeastern United States, but it is growing. Mathewson (1972a, 1972b, 1973), hypothesized the presence of distinctive Afro-Caribbean ceramic and craft traditions, which have been substantiated by several scholars (Gartley 1979; Armstrong 1983, 1989; Heath 1989). In addition to Mathewson's study, research in Jamaica has included studies of New Montpelier (Riordan 1973; Higman 1974, 1976b; and Higman and Aarons 1978) and Drax Hall Plantations. In , Jerome Handler along with Frederick Lange and their associates have combined archaeological and historical interpretation of excavations at the slave cemetery at Newton Plantation (Handler and Lange 1978, 1979; and Handler et. al. 1979; Handler and Corruccini 1983, 1986). The Barbadian studies demonstrated the importance of using historical materials to understand the development of Afro-Caribbean living systems and thave provided considerable information on customs, diet, and mortality as derived from analyses of burials from Newton Plantation. Pulsipher and Goodwin (1982, 1988) along with Howson (1978) are in the process of undertaking an archaeological and ethnohistorical study of Galways Plantation on Montserrat Island in the Eastern Caribbean ethnohistorical data.

346 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SLAVE SETTLEMENT AT SEVILLE PLANTATION3

Archaeological and historical research associated with the current project at Seville were initiated in 1987. This research made use of preliminary data collected in 1980 and 1981 (Armstrong 1983)4. The research objectives at Seville include an examination of the emergence of an Afro-Jamaican community through the study of written and materials remains. The study uses archaeological methods to obtain information on the internal social organization within slave communities. Data are being gathered to illuminate patterns reflecting African retention, cultural transformation, assimilation, and syncretism. Research at Seville allows us to explore and explain the processes by which Afro-Jamaican cultural systems formed and the changes that took place within the community through time. In addition, as discussed in the rather lengthy preface, our goal is to insure that Afro-Jamaican history is represented in the interpretation of Seville National Historic Park. The existence of detailed estate plans and the relatively undisturbed nature of the Seville's slave village site allow us to address specific, "case study", questions. Two temporally and spatially distinct village loci are indicated on a 1721 map of the region and an estate plan dated 1791 (Figures 1-4). These loci were confirmed through archaeological field reconnaissance. Thus, the village at Seville was deemed an excellent site to compare early and late 18th century material use patterns, settlement arrangement, house-yard layout, and dietary practices. Written accounts provide clues to plantation management and the treatment of Afro-Jamaicans. Maps indicate that in the early years of the estate housing and the allocation of space was rigidly organized. Houses appear in strait ordered rows. In the late 1700's housing appears to be more loosely organized in a clustered arrangement. Moreover, soon after emancipation Charles Royes, the manager of Seville estate, established a policy of low rents and contracts guaranteeing to keep houses in good repair (Hall 1959:51; implications are discussed in detail by Kelly 1989). An intensive survey of the village site identified the location of 46 house-yard area features in two seemingly discrete loci (figure 5). The survey demonstrated the presence of foundations and building materials indicative of domestic house structures. Moreover, yellow bricks, probably borrowed form 16th century Spanish period structures, along with delfware, and saltglazed stoneware, were found at house-area features located behind (South) of the Great House (Locus A). House areas to the West and southwest of the Great House (Locus B) yielded primarily CC wares and red brick typical of 18th and 19th century structures. These data seemed to confirm the account of Carpy Rose, who identified the house in which he was bom and indicated that to his knowledge, no houses ever stood South of the road running behind the Great House. Prior to excavation the data indicated two discrete and temporally sensitive areas. We were particularly optimistic about recovering early 18th century house-areas in the locus South of the Great House. Excavating of house areas began in the summer of 1988. Priority was given to recovering materials from the early 18th century, and of recovering data from entire house-yard areas. The direct results of efforts towards these goals were mixed. However, the potential of the site to yield these data was clearly substantiated. Test units in Locus A yielded mixed information, early 18th century materials were present but so were 19th century CC wares and bottle glass. Further

347 excavation at House-area Feature 14 resulted in the identification of three independent structures, but the majority of artifacts can be dated to the mid- nineteenth century. A large post-emancipation house structure is present (figure 6) (see Kelly 1989, Kelly and Armstrong 1990). This house dates to the mid-nineteenth century and incorporates red brick, and limestone within its foundations. Two other structures within this area were excavated. Immediately down slope (north) and partially underlying the nineteenth century structure is a smaller Feature (F-48). The interior flooring of this foundation includes marl, limestone and yellow brick. The yellow brick at this feature is identical to that, which has been recovered from the Spanish period sugar mill at Seville. The limestone fragments are smaller than those found in the later house and show no evidence of having been cut and shaped. The second structure containing yellow brick (F-13) is located south of the 19th century house. This feature was only partially excavated, but appears to have a layout, which is similar to F-48. A double row of yellow brick is present along its down slope side. The proliferation of mid-nineteenth century artifacts from these shallow features are probably associated with the overlying house. Outside of the yellow brick no artifacts can be positively identified as associated with the early houses. The relative merit of several explanations for these features can be discussed. It is unlikely that they were outbuildings or animal pens associated with the nineteenth century structure given the fact that F-48 partially underlies F-14. Moreover, it seems unlikely that if red brick was available, as found in F-14, that it was not also used in F-48 and F-13. thus, stratigraphie position and content indicate an earlier age for F-48 and F-13. Reference has been made to the presence of yellow brick of the type used in the construction of the fifteenth century structures at Sevilla Nueva. One might suggest, particularly given the two rows of yellow brick at F-13, that these represent Spanish period housing, perhaps for Africans or Indian laborers on the Spanish period sugar plantation and cattle pens at Seville Nueva. While not entirely out of the question (such settlements have unfortunately been missed despite considerable excavation looking for the Spanish period at Sevilla Nueva), it is highly unlikely. The yellow bricks, are for the most part fragments used in combination with marl and limestone to fill in the floor. They probably represent secondary use of abandoned structures. Structures, which would have been likely targets for collection by late seventeenth and early eighteenth century slaves assigned to prepare fields for the planting of cane and to construct housing out of materials available from the plantation. The Spanish sugar works and probably much of the settlement of Sevilla Nueva were located in areas, which were put into cane by the British planters. Certainly the slaves would have had access to these materials for constructing their houses. By the nineteenth century abandoned, structures build of red brick were more readily available to the free tenants building anew on the site. The two "earlier" structures line up with one another and may represent part of the linear pattern of house yielded on the 1720 map.5 Moreover, a disturbance caused by the construction of a fence along the projected axis of the row of houses yielded dozens of. artifacts dating to the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Several possible house structures were identified along this axis (Features 12 through 17). In addition Features 2 to 11 form a parallel row of potentially early housing. In spite of the post emancipation construction at F-14, the earlier structures

348 survived. It is hoped that in the absence of immediate 19th century neighbors artifacts of the early eighteenth century will be found in association with houses in Locus A. A second feature excavated in 1988 dates to the early to mid-eighteenth century (Figure 7). This feature was identified as a surface scatter in 1987. Further examination in 1988 resulted in the recovery of several tin glazed sherds and coarse earthenware. Excavation at this feature indicates partial survival of structural remains and considerable amounts of eighteenth century materials along with yellow brick fragments. This feature is located north of the two rows of early houses. Coarse earthenware from this feature include Afro-Jamaican types similar to those recovered from F-14. However, the internal lead glazes have decomposed leaving only a powdery yellow trace instead of the typical green glaze found elsewhere at Seville and at Drax Hall. Detailed analysis of this feature will follow completion of excavation. The results of the first season at Seville confirm historical data suggesting a shift in the location of slave houses. Two temporally distinct loci are present. However, data from test units and horizontal excavations yield additional data compounding the problem of data recovery. While the area used to house slaves shifted down slope (north) during the late 18th century, the presence of a post emancipation house (circa 1850) within the early house loci indicate that the spatial separation between older and more recent housing is not complete. Test units suggest that foundations and artifacts associated with numerous houses dating between 1770 and 1890 survive at Seville and with excavation, can add to data that has been generated from F-14. Efforts to recover earlier housing (1690's -1770) resulted in the recovery of two exposed foundations sin-artifacts (or with artifact scatters obliterated by the shear numbers of items associated with the 19th century house in the area), and a third area in which artifacts are present but the house foundations have been disturbed (primarily due erosion and a foot path cross cutting the feature). The presence of the apparently early house structures (F- 48, F13) confirms the information on the 1720's map. Further testing of the 15 identified features within this area should result in the recovery of early data that is not compromised by later land use. Testing and excavation in 1989 will focus on the early houses. Test units will be placed at each of the identified features, and if necessary, randomly throughout the locus. Extensive excavation will be carried out on areas with evidence of early eighteenth century artifacts and foundations, and without nineteenth century materials. When houses dating to the earlier period have been excavated we will examine houses in the second loci to complete our study of change through time.

REFERENCES

Anonymous 1797 Characteristic Traits of the Creolian and African Negroes in Jamaica, etc., etc., Columbian Magazine or Monthly Miscellany. Kingston, Jamaica Armstrong, Douglas V. 1983 The "Old Village" at Drax Hall Plantation: An Archaeological examination of an Afro-Jamaican settlement. Ph.D. Dissertation in Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.

1985 An Afro-Jamaican slave settlement: Archaeological investigations at Drax Hall. In The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life. Theresa A. Singleton ed. San Diego: Academic Press.

1990 The Old Village and the Great House: An Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Beckford, William 1790 A descriptive account of the Island of Jamaica, Vols I and II. London: T. and J. Egerton.

Brathwaite, Edward 1978 The development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820. Oxford: Claredon Press.

Crahan, Margaret E. and Franklin W. Knigh eds. 1979 Africa and the Caribbean: The Legacies of a Link. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Craton, Michael 1978 Searching for the Invisible Man: Slaves and Plantation Life in Jamaica. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Curtin, Philip D.. 1969 The -A census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Davenport, William 1961 The family system in Jamaica. Social and Economic Studies 10(4) : 420-454.

Deetz, James 1977 In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press, Doubleday.

Dunn, Richard S. 1973 Sugar and Slaves-the rise of the planter class in the English West Indies 624-1713. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Edwards, Bryon 1793 The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies of the West Indies. Dublin: Luke White.

Fairbanks, Charles H. 1974 The Kingsley Salve Cabins in Duval County, Florida 1968, The Conference

350 on Historic Sites Archaeology Papers, 1972 7:62-93.

Ferguson, Leiand G. 1978 Looking For the "Afro" in Colono-lndian pottery. The Conference on Historic Site Archaeology Papers 12:68-86. Columbia: Institute of Archaeology, University of South Carolina.

Franklin, John Hope 1969 The Free negro in the economic life of Ante-Bellum South Carolina. In The Making of Black America, edited by August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, pp. 218-219. New York.

Gartley, Richard T. 1979 Afro-Cruzan Pottery-A New STyle of Colonial Earthenware from St. Croix. Journal of the Virgin Islands Archaeological Society, 8:47-61.

Garrow, Patrick H. 1981 Investigations of Yaughan and Curriboo Plantations, Paper presented at the 14th Annual Meetings of the Society of Historical Archaeology Conference, New Orleans, January 1981.

Goveia, Eisa 1965 Slave society in the British Leeward Island at the end of the Eighteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hall, Douglas 1976 Free Jamaica 1838-1865: An Economic History. Aylesbury, Bucks, England: Caribbean University Press, Ginn and Company.

Handler, Jerome S. 1974 The Unappropriated People: Freedom in the Slave Society of Barbados.. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Handler, Jerome S. and Frederick W. Lange 1978 Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

1979 Plantation Slavery on Barbados, West Indies. Archaeology July/August 1979:45-52.

Handler, Jerome S., Frederick Lange and Charles E. Orser 1979 Camelian beads in necklaces from a slave cemetery in Barbados, West Indies. Ornament 4(2):15-18.

Handler, Jerome S. and Robert S. Crruccini 1983 Plantation Slave Life in Barbados: *a physical anthropological analysis. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14(1):65-90.

351 1986 Weaning among West Indian Slaves: Historical and Bioanthropological Evidence from Barbados. The William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Series Vol XUII:111- 117.

Heath, Barbara 1989 Afro-Caribbean pottery from St. Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles. Paper: S.H.A. January 1989.

Herskovits, Melville J. 1958 The Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper and Brothers. [1941]

Herskovits, Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits 1947 Trinidad Village. New York: Knopf.

Higman, Barry W. 1974 A Report on Excavations at Montpeliier and Roehampton. Jamaica Journal 8(1-2):4(M5.

Higman, Barry W. 1976a Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834. London: Cambridge University Press.

1976b Report on Excavations at New Montpelier, St. James, Jamaica, 28 December 1975 to 10 January 1976. History Department, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Mimeographed manuscript (1976).

1979 Growth in Afro-Caribbean Slave Populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 50(3):373-385.

1984 Slave Populations of the British Caribbean 19-807-1834. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Higman, Barry W. and Aarons, G. Anthony 1978 A Report to the University of then West Indies, Mona, and the Jamaican National Trust Commission.m on archaeological work carried out at the slave village site, New Montpelier, St. James. Manuscript dated January 12, 1978.

Kelly, Kenneth 1989 Slaves no more: An archaeological comparison of two post emancipation house sites on Drax Hall and Seville Estate, St. Ann's, Jamaica. Unpublished M.A. Thesis, College of William and Mary.

Kelly, Kenneth, and Douglas V. Armstrong 1990 Archaeological Investigations of a 19th Century Free Laborer House, Seville Estate, St. Ann's, Jamaica. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Caribbean Archaeology, Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, (this volume)

352 Kelso, William 1984 KingsmiH Plantation, 1619-18000: archaeology of country life in colonial Virginia. Orlando: Academic Press.

Kiple, Kenneth F. 1984 The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kiple, Kenneth F. and Virginia H. King 1981 Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora: Diet, Disease, and Racism. New York:

Long, Edward 1774 History of Jamaica,Vol. 1-3.. London: T. Lowndes.

Mathewson, Duncan R. 1972a Jamaican Ceramics: An introduction to 18th century folk pottery in West African tradition. Jamaica Journal, 6:54-56.

1972b History from the Earth: Archaeological excavations at Old King's House. Jamaica Journal 6:3-11.

1973 Archaeological analysis of material culture was a reflection of sub-cultural differentiation in 18th century Jamaica. Jamaica Journal 7(1-2):25-29, Kingston.

Mintz, Sidney W. 1955 The Jamaican internal Marketing Pattern. Social and Economic Studies 4(1):95-103.

1974 Caribbean Transformations. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

1985a Sweetness and Pair: The place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Viking.

1985b from Plantation to Peasantries in the Caribbean. In Caribbean Contours. Sidney W. Mintz and Sally Price eds. Pp 127-153. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkin University Press.

Mintz, Sidney W. and Douglas Hall 1960 The Origins of the Jamaican Internal Marketing System. Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 57, Yale University, New Haven.

Mintz, Sidney W. and Richard Price 1976 An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective. Institue for the Study of Human Issues, Occasional Papers Number 2. Philadelphia.

353 Otto, John S. 1985 Cannon's Point Plantation 1794-1860: Living Conditions and Status Patterns in the Old South. New York: Academic Press.

Posnansky, Merrick 1983 Towards the ARchaeology of the Black Diaspora. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress for the Study of Pre-Columbian of Cultures of the Lesser Antilles, Pp. 444-450. Santo domingo, Dominican Republic, August 1981. Centre de Recherches Caraïbes, University de Montreal.

Pulsipher, Lydia M. and Conrad M. Goodwin 1982 Galways: a Caribbean Sugar Plantation. A report on the 1981 Field Season. Department of Geography, University of Tennessee.

Riordan, Robert V. 1973 Report on excavations at New Montpelier Estate, St. James, 8-12 January 1973. Manuscript on file, Port Royal Project, Institute of Jamaica.

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NOTES:

1 .Archaeological research at Seville Plantation is still in progress. Data presented here represent information from documents searches and historical research, a survey of the Afro-Jamaican settlement, and one seasons excavation at selected house-yard areas. This study, coupled with recently completed archaeological studies of villages on large sugar plantations at Drax Hall (Armstrong 1983, 1985, 1990) and New Montpelier (Higman 1976b) will help to create a baseline of archaeological data on the material aspects of Afro-Jamaican life which will be useful as a comparative data base for future studies aimed at examining the diversity of the Afro-Jamaican experience during the period of slavery.

2. New data recovered during the 1989 excavation season confirm an even earlier, late seventeenth century, date for initial occupation of the slave village at Seville.

3. Initial research was funded through a Faculty Senate Research Grant from Syracuse University.

4. The site was observed by Professor Merrick Posnansky and other visitors to the Seville Great House and Spanish ruins on a field trip to the estate in 1977. It was one of six slave villages explored in 1980 prior to excavating Drax Hall estate. Initial archival research on Seville Plantation was carried out in 1980. The principal investigator spent two weeks in the archives of Jamaica in 1987, and a researcher

354 under the direction of Professor Barry Higman, History Department, University of the West Indies compiled documented pertaining to the estate throughout the summer.

5. This report is limited to data from the 1988 excavation season. In 1989 a house and surrounding yard area dating 1670-1730 was fully excavated in locus A, and additional early house-area features, which have not been disturbed by later use and occupation of the site were identified. The house excavated in 1989 (Feature 16) falls in line with thee two early houses, which underlie Feature 14. The location of houses confirms spatial arrangements suggested on the 1720 map. Data from the 1989 season are currently being analyzed and will be reported at a later date.

355 Fig. 1. Map of Ann's Bay, 1721 - Showing the layout of slave villages at Seville Estate and other plan- tations in the region (Jamaican National Library MS St. Ann 176). s

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Fig. 2. Close up of the slave settlement at Seville circa 1721. Note the linear and clo­ sely spaced arrangement of slave houses.

357 ¿.( "7~"T

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^ fig. 3. A plan of Seville Sugar Estate dated 1792. 1 .'V f - -LXM

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Fig. 4. Close up of the slave settlement at Seville circa 1792. Note the cluste­ red arrangement of slave houses.

359 Pig. 5 Iht tllTsTr^jT^r^T, S?vi^- MaP °f house-yard areas identified during ^ 5S-"TL- -fi^" ^ndic^ed "S E discrete'loci. survey and excavation confirmed the presence of the two

360 SEVILLE AFRO-JAMAICA SETTLEMENT HOUSE AREA Nos. 14; 13 a

d&U LIMESTONE BLOCKS AND C

RED BRICK • "BRITISH- 18th • 19th century manu

YELLOW-ORANGE BRICK - Borrowed Irom 16th cent Spanish sites at Seville

MORTAR

TREE ROOTS (Pimento)

BALK

OLDER FOUNDATIONS

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Fig. 6. Seville Afro-Jamaican Settlement. House-yard area Nos. 14; 13 and 48. w CD SEVILLE AFRO-JAMAICAN SETTLEMENT HOUSE AREA47 June-July 1988 Syracuse University

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 2 i i i i I I

C55?. LIMESTONE BLOCKS AND COBBLES m"jk RED BRICK - 'BRITISH' 18th - 19th century manufacture MARL YELLOW-ORANGE BRICK - TREE ROOTS (Pimento) ^ Borrowed from 16th century Spanish sites at Seville * BALK

Fig. 7. Seville Afro-Jamaican Settlement. House-yard area No. 47.