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

‘A free prospect to the sea:’ Framing an urban archaeological biography of Speightstown (St Peter Parish)

In comparison with research on plantation sites related in the foregoing chapters, archaeological projects within urban environments in the Caribbean have tended to be more limited and for the most part have mainly taken the form of rescue excava- tions. In this chapter three writers from very different intellectual and methodological backgrounds bring together the work they have been undertaking at Speightstown (St Peter Parish) over the last ten years. Drawing together oral and documentary history, archaeological excavation, maritime archaeology and survey and buildings recording we present a biography of social and cultural change in a small Barbadian urban setting over a three-hundred-year period

Place, Space and Memory in the Old Jewish East End of London: an Archaeological Biography of Sandys Row Synagogue, Spitalfields and its Wider Context

Sandys Row (London E1) is the only functioning Ashkenazi (Eastern European Jewish) Synagogue in Spitalfields and the oldest still functioning Ashkenazi synagogue in London. Located in an area, which from the mid­late nineteenth century until WWII was the centre of London’s Jewish population, it is one of the last surviving witnesses to a once vibrant and dynamic heritage that has now virtually disappeared. This area has been the first port of call for refugees for centuries, starting with French Protestant Huguenots in the eighteenth century, then Jews fleeing economic hardship and pogroms in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century followed by Bangladeshi Muslims in the twentieth century. Using a broadly archaeological analysis based very closely on the sort of practice widely used in church archaeology, the authors argue that much can be inferred about wider social and cultural patterns from a study of architectural space at Sandys Row and its associated material culture. This is the first such archaeological study undertaken of a synagogue in Britain and offers a new perspective on wider issues regarding the archaeological definition of religious practice and religious material culture

Beside the Seaside. The archaeology of the twentieth-century English seaside holiday experience: a phenomenological context.

A recent survey commissioned by English Heritage highlights the rich cultural history of the traditional English seaside resort (Brodie and Winter 2007). Emerging in the eighteenth century, these towns grew in significance before the advent of cheaper continental holidays in the 1960s signalled their demise. Nevertheless they retain an affectionate place within English social memory, and are in their own right distinctive maritime communities. Using an archaeological case study and a broadly phenomenological approach this contribution analyses the experience of the resort holiday through reference to place, space and materiality. Further, it seeks to situate the English seaside resort, as a functionally distinctive post-medieval urban and maritime phenomenon, within a global context of the archaeology of tourism