Edited by Roger Leech and Pamela Leech, the excellently illustrated The Colonial Landscape of the British Caribbean provides several useful and innovative contributions to the growing field of Caribbean historical archaeology, including detailed data-heavy, synthetic, and more theoretical works. Two pieces share the results from landscape surveys. Robert Philpott and Jon Brett's work in two parishes of St. Kitts makes use of a detailed map record along with field survey to trace the development of the landscape from small farms to consolidated sugar estates. Co-editor Roger Leech's own contribution, which closes out the volume, surveys an area surrounding one plantation on the northwest parish of Nevis. Both offer a particular focus on the main houses of these estates and the sugar works, bringing together documentary work and observations on the landscape that may be useful to guide future projects in these areas. Both pieces also end with important calls to action for the preservation of the historic fabric of the respective islands, under threat from development as on many islands of the Caribbean.
Louis P. Nelson makes an important contribution with his synthetic look at the role of the environment in colonial-era architectural choices. His chapter, “Come Hell or High Water,” looks across the Caribbean and convincingly develops the argument that building choices were not guided only by the often-cited heat and ventilation but by the varying frequency of hurricanes and earthquakes. The data he assembles shows a clear correlation between the number of these events and architectural adaptations to them. These vary across the Caribbean, with islands such as Barbados—where neither event was common—frequently having tall masonry structures with simple plans, while those with higher frequencies of these disasters exhibiting complex plans allowing for reinforcing, with structures built low and replacing stone with wood higher up for safety. This insight has broad applicability and is a useful reminder that the Caribbean environment structured colonial lives in complex ways.
Other chapters are more data-heavy, such as Gerald F. Schroedl and Todd M. Ahlman's thorough reporting on the important site of Brimstone Hill, St. Kitts, which provides highly detailed, primary archaeological data from several projects as well as information from archival sources. Philippe Oszuścik's chapter provides numerous examples from architectural plans and maps from the brief British period of occupation in Florida, and traces influences from Spanish and French sources as well as the intertwining of military and domestic contexts. It is an important reminder that many elements of the colonial Caribbean world have complex origins drawing from multiple groups. Another data-rich contribution is that by Carter L. Hudgins, Eric Klingelhofer, Roger Leech, and David Higgins, which brings together several previous studies and provides new light on the site of Jamestown, Nevis. This early settlement has been the subject of much discussion and even an episode of the Time Team television program, and the present study clarifies previous work and traces the rise, fall in a 1690 tsunami, and early nineteenth-century reoccupation of the site.
Still other chapters are more theoretically informed, as when Marco Meniketti builds a broader argument about the role of the Caribbean in the rise of modern industrialism and capitalist world systems. He places Nevis in the context of a broader world while not losing sight of individual artifacts and the choices that led to their acquisition, use, and discard on that island, all the while tracing the broader impact of the Caribbean transition from feudalism to proto-capitalism.
The contribution by the late and much-missed Geoff Egan (with a foreword by Nigel Jeffries) is up to his usual high standard, detailing finds from London related to trade, but it might be said that it is somewhat out of place as it made almost no reference to the Caribbean, focusing more on products imported from and exported to other parts of the British trade empire. Phil Dunning provides a concise overview of the process of sugar production, which may prove useful to introduce students to this important topic, although it generally replicates other descriptions in the literature. A similarly useful summary of ceramics frequently found across the Caribbean is provided by David Barker, who discusses those recovered from Nevis. Gillian Hutchinson provides an important reminder that “maps were not simply passive representations of landscape but were instrumental in creating it” (10) in her contribution, which provides thought-provoking examples of the kinds of analyses which might be applied in particular studies, such as place-name analysis. Incorporating some of the historical or archaeological sources or studies that conduct such analyses might have kept this from being a rather general discussion, but it provides excellent food for thought.
If, in the tradition of book reviews, I search for some elements of critique for the volume as a whole, I might comment on its title, for it implies a somewhat larger scope than what is inside, which is an array of studies focusing primarily on Nevis and St. Kitts and only some of which engage in landscape studies. The preface does not claim to provide a complete overview of the field of Caribbean historical archaeology, but I do think the suggestion that the story of the Leeward Islands has been “scarcely at all [explored] through its archaeology” (xxi) seems a bit of an overstatement, and greater reference to the many high quality archaeological projects of the last four decades might have provided useful context.
Some pieces could also be strengthened by reference to some of the current scholarship on the archaeology of enslavement and the African Diaspora more generally, particularly those works that consider the use of the term slave as opposed to enslaved person and places this group in the foreground rather than focusing on the agency, goals, and identities of whites. (Some chapters, notably those by Schroedl and Ahlman, do have a stronger focus on the enslaved Africans who made up the vast majority of the population.) This is touched on by a timely foreword, added in 2020 by the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, but such consideration might have guided this work more throughout, since a focus on traditionally excluded people, unable to write their own histories under colonialism, has been one of the strengths and goals of historical archaeology for the past half century.
These issues aside, this volume provides several useful studies and innovative arguments, as well as some excellent primary data that will be useful to other archaeologists, and it is a welcome addition to the historical archaeology of the Caribbean.
