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Settlement Patterns And The Origins Of African Jamaican Society: Seville Plantation, St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, Douglas V. Armstrong, Kenneth G. Kelly

Faculty Publications

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-defined spatial order based upon economic and power relations that was imposed upon enslaved communities by planters and managers. Archaeological evidence is used to explore how enslaved Africans modified this imposed order and redefined boundaries in ways that correspond with the development of a distinct African Jamaican society. The rigidly defined linear housing arrangements initially established by the planter, and their relations to …