University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Faculty Publications Anthropology, Department of Spring 2000 Settlement Patterns and the Origins of African Jamaican Society: Seville Plantation, St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica Douglas V. Armstrong Kenneth G. Kelly University of South Carolina - Columbia,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/anth_facpub Part of the Anthropology Commons Publication Info Published in Ethnohistory, Volume 47, Issue 2, Spring 2000, pages 369-397. © Ethnohistory 2000, the American Society for Ethnohistory and Duke University Press. This Article is brought to you by the Anthropology, Department of at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Settlement Patterns and the Origins of African Jamaican Society: Seville Plantation, St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica Douglas V. Armstrong, Syracuse University Kenneth G. Kelly, University of South Carolina Abstract. Archaeological and historical research at Seville Plantation, Jamaica, are used to explain changes in settlement patterns within the estate's African Jamai- can community between 1670 and the late nineteenth century. Sugar plantations, such as Seville, are marked by well-defined spatial order hased upon economic and power relations that was imposed upon enslaved communities by planters and man- agers. Archaeological evidence is used to explore how enslaved Africans modified this imposed order and redefined boundaries in ways that correspond with the de- velopment of a distinct African Jamaican society. The rigidly defined linear housing arrangements initially established hy the planter, and their relations to the Great House, sugar works, and fields, were reinterpreted by the enslaved residents of the village to create a degree of autonomy and freedom from constant surveillance that was at odds with the motives of the planter class.