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Historical Archaeology on Antigua

In Search of African Material Culture.

Archaeology is the study of human history through the analysis of excavated artifacts and features, material culture of past human activities. It can involve both field work and intense analyses to answer the following questions. What were their origins, how they were made, how did they get to the site where they were recovered, how were they used, and what do they tell us about the past people, their culture, economy, technology, activities and much more?

Photo: Archaeology at Betty’s Hope Estate Kitchen. 

Research and excavations at historical period sites on Antigua and Barbuda over the years, have uncovered large quantities of artifacts that have provided insights into many of these questions, whilst presenting others and new lines of research.  One of the questions that remains at the forefront of our archaeological work on Antigua is finding, recognizing, and interpreting African material culture within the archaeological materials and landscapes. Thus, for the past 25 years we have been focused on sites that have documented records, and archaeological potential that have not been too badly disturbed by development.  These include, Betty’s Hope Estate, Shirley’s Heights, Clarence House, Great George Fort, Middle Ground, and the Warner Estate to mention a few.

Clarence House (Nelson’s Dockyard): Georgian/Palladian architecture adapted to the tropical environment and built by enslaved African labour.

Historical archaeological artifacts on Antigua consists of 17th to 20th century British material culture. Despite being on an island where the population has been predominantly African for several hundred years, with a comparatively small British population, the primary archaeological materials found at all sites are British imports. Excavations have been conducted at sugar estates or military compounds, and yield large varieties and quantities of earthenware, stoneware, porcelain, tin-enameled pottery along with bottles, clay smoking pipes, and iron objects at both the great houses, and the areas where enslaved people resided.

Only occasionally are artifacts associated with the African population found among the British/European materials, and these are predominantly small ornamental glass beads and fragments of locally made pottery. This is not surprising as enslaved people were forcibly brought to the Americas with no material goods, yet a few retained beads and even fewer, manillas which were bracelets of copper or bronze. These ornaments are rare finds of significance, but of far greater importance to archaeologists, are the artifacts and features that were made on the island.

What the enslaved peoples brought was knowledge and traditions; memories that reflected their culture and origins. During the restoration at Clarence House, excavations beneath the ground floor uncovered three pieces of pottery that had angular geometric patterns incised into the exterior of the vessel.  A few other fragments have been found on sugar estates and analysis and consultations with colleagues working in West Africa confirmed the design as common to northern Ghana and Nigeria in the late 18th century.

Pottery is an ideal medium for it carries “information” on many levels, such as its intended use, the maker’s technological skills and knowledge, and stylistic additions that are common to one’s culture.  These stylistic and technological features of pottery have therefore enabled us to follow the origins and development of Afro-Antiguan pottery from its West African traditions to the modern popular cooking and ornamental vessels from Sea View Farm

Also recognized are grinding hollows at Middle Ground and Block House.  These oval shaped holes are smooth and polished from use as they were used to process grain and food is areas where wooden mortars were not available.

These grinding hollows are located at barracks where the West Indian Regiments of African soldiers were stationed. Comparative research with archaeologists working in West Africa noted remarkable similarities to those of the Sukur Region of Northern Ghana and Nigeria, West Africa.

This is important as it provides insights into the life of the enslaved Africans as they were able to utilize their past traditions and culture to survive and adapt to a vastly different environment.  Thus, it is no surprise to find African ceramics at a Georgian Style Great House for senior naval officers, Bright Floral bowls and Feathered edge plates, Delft tin-enameled bowls, Annular creamware, and clay smoking pipes at the enslaved barracks. Many of these products were available for purchase or barter at the “slave-market”, or from soldiers and sailors who were in constant need of fresh produces and rum.  We do not see the wooden bowls, the gourds, or their “houses” as these are all perishable artifacts, but additional insights can be found in the numerous diaries and records of the period.

Many lessons can be learned from the study of material culture of historical sites on Antigua and on other islands. Here, historical archaeology is still in its infancy and most colonial period sites have never been excavated or even surveyed, yet this line of research is providing insights into the development of our unique Antiguan and Caribbean culture. From a “material perspective”, Antiguan material culture is predominantly British with small but significant tangible elements of African culture.  New directions in archaeological sciences are now moving far beyond the frontiers of basic analyses to include bone chemistry, DNA, and more. But while these new 21st century methods will provide answers to some of our older questions, they too will without a doubt, present newer questions about our collective past and history.

Historical Snapshot

The West India Regiments and the Middle Ground


Figure 1. ‘A Private of the 5th West India Regiment’ in Charles Hamilton Smith, Costumes of the Army of the British Empire, According to the Last Regulations 1812 (Colnaghi and Company, 1815). Courtesy of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library.

The West India Regiments (WIR) were raised by the British Crown in 1795 in an effort to solve their manpower issues in the West Indies during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.  Disease ran rampant through the European ranks in the Army and Royal Navy, killing thousands of soldiers and sailors.  Citing examples of African soldiers serving as irregulars during the American Revolution and the long practice of using enslaved African men as pioneers supporting the British military during campaigns in the West Indies, the government under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger made provisions to purchase and enslave 12,400 African men to serve as soldiers. Prior to 1795, efforts to raise slave soldiers in the British West Indies were met with stiff resistance by the white plantation elite.  Even though arming the enslaved during crises was common, resistance against a permanent force was strong.  Planters stated fears were that enslaved men would run away to the regiments, depriving the plantations of their labour.

Other complaints included the threat of an armed insurrection to topple the slave societies in the West Indies.  To alleviate these concerns, the British government agreed on several limits in their “recruitment,” policy.  First, the only population from which soldiers could be pulled from were the recently enslaved arriving from African in the West Indies.  Individuals who were already in the West Indies were not considered for the regiments.  Second, the regiments would be officered by white British officers and noncommissioned officers to oversee training and discipline.  Leadership rolls would not be attainable for the enslaved soldiers. Starting in 1795, twelve regiments were raised, and a total of approximately 13,000 men were enslaved by the British government to serve in the West India Regiments across the region. 

Trained in the same way as British soldiers, with the same styles of uniforms and weapons, the soldiers served throughout the Napoleonic Wars, participating in invasions of French, Dutch, and Spanish islands, and acting as garrison troops in British islands.  Under the British Army rules, the WIR soldiers received the same rations and were officially treated the same as their white counterparts.  But, they were enslaved, and unlike European soldiers, the African men served for life. In 1808, with the ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the change in politics in Britain, the WIR soldiers were quietly freed, no longer held in bondage, but still had to serve for life.  Also, with the official recruiting source, the transatlantic slavers, ending, the British military needed a new source of conscripts.  Carved into the law ending the Transatlantic Slave Trade was a clause which stated that if a slaver was interdicted in the eastern half of the Atlantic, the vessel would be sent back to Africa and the newly freed people released.  If the vessel, however, was met in the western half of the Atlantic, the vessel would continue and the newly freed people disembarked in the West Indies.  There, the freed people would be given apprenticeships to “help” them adjust to their new life.  One “option” was conscription into the WIR as a soldier. 

As war in the West Indies came to an end, the WIR were reduced from twelve regiments to two regiments.  Companies from these regiments were stationed across the region.  During the WIR occupation of Antigua, the 1st, 4th, 8th, and 11th WIR Regiments served here, garrisoned around English Harbour.  Archaeologically, buttons, badges, and shako plates from these regiments have been recovered across Middle Ground, Shirley Heights, and Monk’s Hill. Soldiers from the 1st West India Regiment was stationed at the Middle Ground Barracks from 1816 to 1833 before moving to the old Naval Hospital on Hospital Hill.  During this occupation, the soldiers also formed relationships and attachments with the Middle Ground community while keeping many of their African lifeways alive.  When they died, they were buried in the Middle Ground cemetery: the only known West India Regiment Cemetery in Antigua and Barbuda. The West India Regiments served continuously through the nineteenth century, with elements sent to Sierra Leone and other parts of West Africa to fight for Britain.  In the 20th Century, the WIR fought in World War I before the unit was disbanded in 1927.  The last years were spent mainly in Jamaica and West Africa.