Slaves to sailors: the archaeology of traditional Caribbean shore whaling c. 1850-2000.

The archaeology of post-Emancipation periods in the Caribbean (i.e. after c. 1807 in the British Caribbean) remains relatively understudied. The collapse of the industrial-scale sugar plantation systems of the islands in the early 19th century saw a radical re-organisation of social and economic life. A new corpus of consumers was created, eking out a living on the margins of island society as sharecroppers or artisans, but never quite economically or culturally liberated. The archaeological implications for the study of this period, in terms of vernacular housing, material culture and ritual behaviour inter alia should be considerable. A major development within this trajectory sees the emergence, on many islands, of a strong Afro-Caribbean maritime culture focused upon ship building, fishing and whaling. The archaeology of whaling communities, highly distinctive functionally specific settlements, is relatively well understood from the perspective of north America, Australasia and Europe, but less so in the Caribbean. Using two case studies based upon recent excavation and survey work by the author, this paper attempts to shed light on a very distinctive maritime cultural response in the post-Emancipation Caribbean world and one which deserves wider consideration