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Settlement Patterns and the Origins of African Jamaican Society: Seville Plantation, St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica

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 Jamaican community between 1670 and the late nineteenth century. Sugar plantations, such as Seville, are marked by well-de.ned spatial order based upon economic and power relations that was imposed upon enslaved communities by planters andmanagers. Archaeological evidence is used to explore how enslaved Africans modified this imposed order and rede.ned boundaries in ways that correspond with the development of a distinct African Jamaican society. The rigidly de.ned linear housing arrangements initially established by the planter, and their relations to the Great House, sugar works, and .elds, 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 themotives of the planter class.These changes occurred within the spatial parameters established by the planter, yet they re.ect dynamic and creative social processes that resulted in the emergence of an African Jamaican community.