Slave Community Foodways on a French Colonial Plantation: Zooarchaeology at Habitation Crève Cœur, Martinique (original) (raw)

2014, Bitasion: Lesser Antilles Plantation Archaeology, Ken Kelly and Benoit Bérard, Editors. Leiden: The Netherlands: Sidestone Press Academic.

This research explores how a slave community on a French colonial plantation learned, adjusted, formulated, and expressed a distinct conception of their material needs through everyday subsistence practices, despite the extreme constraints of slavery. To address this objective, I critically integrate archaeologically recovered faunal remains and historical data from 18th and 19th century slave and postemancipation Afro-Caribbean household deposits on the plantation site of Habitation Crève Coeur. Crève Coeur is situated in the commune of St. Anne on the island of Martinique in the Lesser Antilles. Since 2005, Dr. Kenneth Kelly from the University of South Carolina and his team have completed four seasons of archaeological research at Crève Coeur to examine the material vestiges of slave life. This work has delineated discrete and largely undisturbed slave occupations on the terraced slopes of the hill located above and behind the maison de maître, including well-preserved faunal remains. My project relies on an environmental archaeology methodology, specifically zooarchaeology, coupled with historical data to investigate the system of food procurement, processing/preparation, distribution, preservation, consumption, and discard. Laboratory analyses included identification, age and size assessment, quantification and taphonomic evaluation of the assemblage of faunal