Things in a Landscape. Douglas Armstrong, Material Culture and the Domestic Economy

Abstract

Abstract

Drawing on archaeological investigations in Jamaica and Martinique, the article revisist two complimentary studies: the production and circulation of local coarse earthenware and the provisioning practices of enslaved households. While these materials differ, both illuminate the domestic economy as a multi-scalar system linking households, plantations, island markets, and global economies. Documentary sources, colonial laws, and travel accounts describe the regulations of plantation provisioning and market exchange. Archaeological evidence in the form of compositional analasys of earthewnare and faunal analysis of zooarchaeological materials reveal how enslaved communities transformed these constraints through everyday practices of craft production, gardening, animal husbandry, fishing, and trade. By integrating archaeological and documentary evidence across scales, the article highlights how everyday practices of production, exchange, and consumption sustained African-descended communities and shaped the material foundations of life under and beyond plantation slavery.