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Overview
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| Map showing location of House 14 within the slave
village.
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House 14 was the second domestic site excavated at New Montpelier, House
26 being the first. The House 14 site was chosen because before excavation it
suggested a rectangular shape consistent with the other potential house sites,
though only partially identified in the grassy surface and not revealing all of
its corners. This site was located towards the northern boundary of the village
area and immediately beside the stone wall shown on a plan of 1821 that
separated the village from a pasture. Extensive excavation in 1975 and 1976
exposed a complete stone foundation with evidence of occupation during the
final decades of slavery and beyond abolition down to about 1850.
Documentary evidence
Detailed documentary data for the houses standing at New Montpelier in
1825, published in British Parliamentary Papers in 1832, includes information
on 24 stone houses. These made up only 27 percent of the total village housing
stock at that date, the other houses being wattled (wattle-and-daub) or
Spanish-walled (timber frames infilled with stone and mortar). Although the
houses of 1825 are described in some detail in the surviving documents, and
associated with family household groups, it has not been possible to relate
these specific descriptions to particular house foundations at the village
site. Only houses with stone foundations were visible by surface survey and
only these stone foundations were excavated. Within the village a total of 42
complete stone foundations were identified and traces found at least another
ten. House 14 is one of the former, with a complete foundation. Probably it is
also one of the houses described in 1825. The precise boundaries of the village
are known from a plan of the plantation surveyed in 1821. By 1975 the stone
wall that enclosed two sides of the village in 1821, immediately beside House
14, had been levelled to allow free grazing of livestock but the aqueduct that
marked the other two sides remained and was supplemented by a barbed wire
fence. Generalized documentary evidence of objects that might survive in the
archaeological record (such as iron cooking pots and thimbles) can be found for
Montpelier, specifically Old Montpelier, in the early nineteenth century, but
none of this evidence can be attributed directly to House 14 or any other house
site. The list of houses from 1825 did enumerate the cattle, hogs and poultry
belonging to each household but again it is impossible to link this evidence
specifically to House 14. Descriptive accounts of plantation life at Montpelier
exist from scattered points in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, making
the broad context well known.
Excavation history, procedure and methods
Surface surveys commenced in 1973 and excavation of House 14 was
undertaken in 1975 and 1976 by students from the University of the West Indies,
staff from the Port Royal Archaeological Project, and volunteers, led by Barry
Higman and Tony Aarons. Elevations were taken using the plane table and tied to
a local datum, and a north-south grid established, for the entire village site.
Excavation was principally by levels of varied depth and excavation units or
quadrats linked to the site grid, though construction trenches and other
special features were treated separately. Most of the excavation was achieved
using hand tools, generally trowels and brushes. Occasionally, the tools used
were inappropriate to the task, as was the wielding of the pick that chipped
the top of the unique blacking bottle in House 14. Screening was used
throughout most of House 14, using a 1/8 inch screen, but no flotation.
Ceramics were mended to enable a Minimum Vessel Count (MVC), and the bores of
clay smoking pipes measured using drill bits. Specialized analysis of the beads
was carried out by Karlis Karklins. The faunal remains were studied by
Elizabeth J. Reitz, assisted by Thomas Pluckhan and Philip Cannon, using the
comparative skeletal collection at the Zooarchaeological Laboratory, Department
of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens. In estimating the Minimum
Number of Individuals (MNI), each house was regarded as a discrete analytical
unit.
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| House 14 foundation exposed during excavation.
Photograph taken January 1976.
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Excavation proved House 14 to have
a foundation completely constructed of stone with external dimensions 27 by 18
feet, matching exactly House 26 that lay 50 yards away. Whereas the foundation
of House 26 was uniform at 18 inches width, that of House 14 varied from 24
inches in its western wall to 30 inches in the south. House 14 also contained
less regular cut stone. Perhaps this difference reflected the somewhat more
sloping site of House 14, with larger stones typically making up the downslope
foundation. The corner stones were less massive than those of House 26. The
stone was all limestone, blocks readily found within the site itself or
transported short distances from quarries on the property.
All of the evidence derived from excavation suggests that House 14 was
not merely a house with a stone foundation, perhaps topped by a Spanish-wall or
wattle-and-daub, but rather a structure in which stone constituted the walls
all the way up to the eaves. The walls above the foundation level appear to
have been a consistent 18 inches thick, as found in House 26. No construction
trench could be identified at House 14, perhaps because of the difference in
the dimensions of the foundation. The roof of House 14 was probably shingled,
as suggested by the documentary report of 1825. Large quantities of nails were
excavated in a fairly even scatter that suggests they secured the rafters,
laths and shingles. The weight of construction using stone probably meant that
the walls narrowed towards the eaves and that they were low, perhaps not more
than 7 feet in height.
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| Packed marl floor and west foundation wall of
House 14. Photograph taken January 1976.
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The floor of House 14 was
composed of packed marl and small stones, mixed with soil and tamped to a
smooth surface. This layer averaged 3 inches in depth and extended throughout
all areas of the house. There is no evidence of floor boards. It is possible
that House 14 was divided into two rooms but the traces are less certain than
at House 26, and the identification of doorways is equally difficult. House 14
did yield some door hinges but no door keys.
Summary of research and analysis
The orientation of House 14 suggests that it was one of a series of
houses laid out in parallel lines (as in the case of House 26) and therefore
perhaps built in 1819 when enslaved people were moved from Shettlewood to New
Montpelier and had houses prepared for them. That this was the approximate year
of construction of House 14 finds support in the evidence of the artifacts. The
Mean Ceramic Date is 1837, the Binford Pipe-stem Formula gives an average of
1767, and the house contained a coin dated 1841. Thus it may be argued with
confidence that House 14 was built under supervision of the plantation
management, in terms of precise layout and dimensions, and that resources of
labour and materials (including stone, lime, timber, shingles and nails) were
made available. The actual work of construction would have been performed by
the enslaved masons and carpenters of New Montpelier. It may have been occupied
for a longer period than House 26.
Interpretation of the occupations of the persons occupying House 14 come
most directly from the tool-related artifacts. During slavery, and beyond,
annual distributions were made of various imported metal agricultural tools,
notably cutlass or machete, bill
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| Bill hook recovered from House
14.
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and hoe, but other tools emerged from the excavations.
Significantly, no hoe heads were found in House 14 but the site did yield a
bill hook blade and a cutlass. Other artifacts found in House 14, related to
tools not distributed directly by the planters, included a pickax, a pair of
pincers and a soldering iron. This pattern suggests that House 14 may have been
occupied by at least one person engaged in metalworking, perhaps producing
items for sale in local markets or for use in the village, as well as other
people who performed agricultural labour.
Of the domestic life that was lived within the walls of House 14, little
can be established, with items of furniture and methods of lighting hard to
identify.
The food history of the household can be reconstructed more successfully,
at least in some of its aspects. The documentary record for Montpelier
describes the annual distribution, in the 1820s, of imported iron cooking pots
and knives. These are present among the excavated artifacts but House 14 also
yielded two metal spoons, one eating fork, and fragments of a metal grater,
used for the preparation of cassava, coconut or spices. Wear marks on stones
may indicate that they had been used to grind corn or other grain. It is known,
however, that vessels and utensils crafted from organic materials, such as
wood, calabash and bamboo, were in common use, and these items were not
recovered archaeologically.
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| Blacking bottle recovered from House
14.
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Most of the many ceramics found at House 14 related to the
preparation and consumption of food, and most of these items were imported
(British-made) goods, purchased in the local markets or obtained from the
plantation’s resources. It is surprising that so little locally made
pottery was found, in light of the vigorous African tradition that survived in
the island. House 14 was unusual in having not even a small representation of
locally made ceramics or yabbas. Once again, it is difficult to assess the
extent to which the ceramics, whether local or imported, were balanced by
objects of organic materials. Of the excavated ceramics, the MVC showed House
14 to have 50 unique vessels, significantly fewer than House 26 (84 vessels)
and House 37 (76 vessels). In terms of shape and type, the vessels of House 14
included large proportions of jars, bowls and plates, and it was unusual in
having a teapot and two jugs. House 14 had a relatively high ratio of plates to
bowls. Compared to the other house sites, House 14 also had a relatively high
proportion of stoneware items (reflecting the role of the jars), and a low
proportion of pearlware. The proportions of creamware and whiteware were closer
to the average for the village at large.
Direct evidence of the food consumed at House 14 is confined to animal
sources and the data obtained from the vertebrate faunal analysis carried out
by Elizabeth J. Reitz. House 14 is interesting because it yielded by far the
largest MNI (21), more than twice as many individuals than in any of the other
house sites. The most common species were unidentified rodents (5), pig (3),
horse/donkey (3), chicken (2) and dog (2), along with sheep/goat, cow and cat.
Contemporary descriptive accounts refer to the use of all these as potential
food but whether the individuals found in House 14 were actually eaten is less
certain as is the question which parts were used as human food. Some of the
bones had been sawed or cut, indicating butchering. Fish, distributed in the
largest quantities in pickled and salted form to the enslaved people of New
Montpelier, left little trace.
Clothing and costume is known archaeologically principally through its
technologies and accessories, whereas the documentary record specific to
Montpelier emphasizes the kinds and amounts of cloth distributed by the
planters during slavery along with caps and hats, and general descriptive
accounts focus on style and fashion. The point of overlap is found in the
needles, thimbles and scissors, that occur in both contexts. House 14 yielded
two thimbles. It was also the only house site to produce a needle, the most
common sewing artifact by far, handed out in the thousands each year, but the
hardest to find. Outside the documentary record specific to Montpelier, House
14 yielded 17 buttons, most of them attributable to the later stages of
occupation as indicated by the text on one of them dating it to 1841. This
dated button was found in an excavation unit immediately beside the unit that
contained the English shilling of 1841. House 14 also held a belt buckle, with
its tongue intact, and a blacking bottle. The imagined metal worker of the
house can be pictured stepping out on a Sunday morning, around 1845, dressed in
buttoned shirt, belted trousers and blacked boots.
House 14 produced a relatively large number of beads, 22 of the 64
excavated from the village sites. House 14 contained a relatively large
proportion of the beads excavated at New Montpelier, 22 of the 64 overall.
Analysis by Karlis Karklins has identified 22 bead types represented in the New
Montpelier collection. House 14 had representatives from eight of these types,
and also contained two of the three carnelian beads found in the village. Most
common were drawn glass beads, particularly tubular, undecorated blue
beads.
Karklins argues that the evidence from the beads suggests that all four
of Houses 14, 24, 26 and 37 were occupied at about the same time. This
interpretation fits closely the conclusions drawn from the other datable
artifacts as well as documentary record for New Montpelier, that the houses
were occupied in the later decades of slavery and for perhaps two decades
beyond abolition. The people who lived in House 14 experienced the brutality
and hardships of slavery, the rebellion of 1831/32, and the apprenticeship, but
remained on the estate after 1838 (or, less probably, were replaced by like
individuals) to endure the immediate post-slavery period at least down to the
abandonment of sugar production.
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| Barry Higman |
| Australia National University |
| October 2006 |
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