Morne Patate Locus 1: Estate House and Dependencies

Overview

(Locus 1) The Estate House was used as a residential space throughout the colonial history of Morne Patate. A 1784 source states that the estate house was 55 feet by 40 feet with a masonry foundation and wooden frame. It was composed of six chambers, a store, hall, and two galleries, suggesting that it had been rebuilt. In addition to the estate house, the documentation lists a pounding mill, a flour house, a wooden building, a boucan, a horse stable, a manager’s house, a cistern, a boiling house, and a cattle mill. Additionally, there were 120 enslaved people that lived in 36 houses. By 1817, records indicate that the number of enslaved individuals had increased to 166, and that a boiling house and glacee had been constructed, demonstrating the continued investment in both coffee and sugar production.

Documentary Evidence

There ais no documentation related to Nicholas Belligny’s land use practices between 1745 and 1763, however, it is likely that enslaved laborers on the estate worked to produce provisions, coffee, and cacao for Martinique. After 1763, when the island was annexed by Great Britain, there are several documents that record land use and labor on the plantation. A 1777 indenture between Belligny and his heirs valued the estate at 707,973 French livres, or 35,396 British pounds, and included a 200-acre Lower Soufriere Estate and 88-acre Upper Soufriere Estate, which would become Morne Patate. The lack of a boiling house on Upper Soufriere Estate at this point indicates that it was likely used for provisions or coffee. Additionally, it indicates that there was one stone house that was 60 by 20 ft long with galleries on three sides, as well as a stone grating house, boucan, a house in the pasture, and two sheds (Murphy and Hauser 2020:44).

Belligny divided the estate in 1784, and his son received the portion that would become Morne Patate (Murphy and Hauser 2020:45). Between the 1777 indenture and the updated 1784 probate, the estate house was altered to 55 ft by 40 ft. It was described as having a masonry foundation, wooden frame, and six chambers that included a store, a hall, and two galleries. These significant differences suggest that the house had been rebuilt. The 1784 documentation additionally includes a pounding mill, flour house, stable, manager’s house, cistern, and bousan as part of the estate. A final change during this period was the construction o a cattle mill and boiling house, indicating a shift to sugar agriculture. An 1816 probate records the building of a boiling house and glacee, suggesting that the landowners invested in both coffee and sugar production. The estate continued to produce both crops during tis colonial history rather than fully investing in sugar, and an 1827register indicates that Morne Patate had 121 enslaved people that produced 25,075 pounds of coffee and 21,000 pounds of sugar, making it the second largest producer of sugar in the parish and largest producer of coffee (ibid.:46).

People continued to live and work at Morne Patate after the abolition of slavery in 1833. The production of coffee declined during this period due to a coffee blight in the 1830’s, however sugar continued to be produced. Beginning in the late 19th century, however, corporations in Soufriere began a market for limes, and workers began cultivating lime trees in fields that once produced sugar (Murphy and Hauser 2020:47).

Excavation history, procedure, and methods

Locus 1 consists of the domestic complex that was inhabited by the plantation’s owners and managers. It included three excavation blocks: the Estate, the Stables, and House Area E. All three areas have evidence of multiple phases of architectural construction. Excavation took place in blocks, although no one of the yards were excavated to their fullest extent so that the sample size was not sacrificed. Architecture was identified through the alignment of postholes, stone, foundations, or floors in each excavated area, and all identified structures had material or dietary evidence of everyday life, including storage pits and cooking hearths. Locus 1 was identified during field seasons in 2015 and 2016. Initial excavation consisted of shovel test pits (STPs), which utilized natural stratigraphy. Each level within an STP was assigned its own Field Specimen Number (FS). STPs were excavated until reaching sub soil, obstruction by rocks, or the excavation integrity was compromised due to depth, usually at approximately 1 m. Soils were screened through ¼ inch mesh, and all identified materials were recovered. Artifacts and their associated context records were subsequently entered into DAACS.

In 2015-2016 71 2×2 m units were also excavated. Soil was sifted and both micro and macro artifacts recovered. Features identified by project members were recorded, mapped, and excavated at each level, and soil from features, including middens, post holes, floors, and heaths, were collected for flotation. Four 2×2 m units were also excavated; two of these were used to further identify a garden during mapping, while the second two expanded a kitchen midden during the first phase of research. Volunteers working with William Keegan from the Florida Museum of Natural History additionally excavated 1×1 m test units in order to better situate the primary settlements, defined as the Estate House and Dependencies (Locus 1), the Village (Locus 2), and the Provision Grounds (Locus 3) (Hauser 2020a).

Estate House
The estate house, or maison de maître, was excavated as House Area H (HA H). HA H is where the planter’s resided, and archaeological evidence suggests that it was both rebuilt and reoriented over time. Two units were placed in what was identified as the estate kitchen and midden, while four units were opened in the estate house (Harris 2020:102). Excavation revealed three houses superimposed over each other, which roughly corresponded with three phases of site occupations. From Phase 1 (pre-1770) there were postholes and a cooking hearth identified. Phase 2 (1770-1830) included a masonry foundation and cobble floor, and Phase 3 (1830-188) included a second masonry foundation (Harris 2020:106). The 1816 probate inventory discussed previously states that it was 55 feet by 40 feet with a masonry foundation and wooden frame, which is confirmed by the visible foundations from the excavation.

House Area E
House area E (HA E) is one of the blocks that only contained one phase of occupation. Domestic features from this area dated to Phase 1 occupation (pre-1770). HA E was excavated in 2016 and is located near the estate house and six meters north of the stables (Harris 2020:106). It predates the stable and may have been a laborer’s house that was built and occupied during the plantation’s earliest European occupation. HA E was excavated as a combination to two blocks, and was situated on top of fill that ranged from 15cm to 1.2 m. There was evidence of architecture in the form of postholes in each block (9 in one and 5 in the other), situated less than 20 m from each other, suggesting pilons were sunk into the underlying subsoil. Block E is also located adjacent to the glacee, which was used for coffee drying (Harris 2020:106). Archaeological evidence for this includes postholes and small architectural features, which date to Phase 1 (pre-1770).

Stables
The stables are located 6 m south of HA E and are visible today as a dry-stone structure in ruins. The extant structure likely dates to the early 19th century, and oral histories indicate that it was converted into an overseer’s residence in the mid-19th century. This structure was built on top of a previous 18th century habitation, although there is a lack of evidence for occupation between c. 1770-1880 (Harris 2020:103). Human occupation resumed c. 1880, however, which supports the oral history regarding the overseer’s residence in the 19th century.

Summary of Research

Research at Locus 1 has focused on how French and English plantation owners, managers, and enslaved laborers used and defined space (Harris 2020, Hauser 2020a, 2020b), subsistence practices and landscape use (Wallman and Oas 2020), on sourcing coarse earthenware ceramics (Bloch and Bollwerk 2020), and on carved ceramic disc manufacture and use (Galle and Bates 2017, Bates, Galle, and Harris 2017).

DAACS has developed detailed chronologies for Locus 1 (see Locus 1 Chronology page), and for the entire estate that allows for comparison among the three Morne Patate loci and other archaeological sites in DAACS (Bates, Galle, Neiman 2020). Archaeology in Dominica: Everyday Ecologies and Economies at Morne Patate, edited by Mark W. Hauser and Dianne Wallman, contain these articles as well as broad historical and archaeological review of the estate. Hauser’s forthcoming book,  Mapping Water on Dominica: Environment and Enslavement under Colonialism Culture, Place and Nature, places the role of water and water use at Morne Patate into the broader context of Colonial Dominica (2021).

DAACS Plantation-wide Chronology

Establishing a robust chronology is critical to tracking changes in occupation intensity, and household complexity through time and space at Morne Patate. Lynsey Bates, Fraser Neiman, and Jillian Galle developed the archaeological chronology for Morne Patate, and their methods are described in detail in Bates, Galle, and Neiman 2020. The data, R code, preprint, and supplementary figures that goes along this article are freely available here through the Center for Open Science.

Here we provide a brief look at how Locus 1 fits into the plantation-wide chronology.

At Locus 1, the presumed location of the household of the estate’s owners or overseers, DAACS’s plantation-wide chronology uncovered evidence for a steep decline in occupational intensity or perhaps a hiatus in the last decade of the eighteenth century (Phase 3), corresponding to the shift to sugar production on the island and associated transition on Morne Patate after British annexation.  As outlined above, Locus 1 is composed of three excavation blocks, the Stable Block, the Estate Block, and Block E. All three have architectural evidence for multiple episodes of construction. Documentary evidence also suggests that the estate house had been rebuilt several times. An early-nineteenth-century foundation remains visible at the Estate Block, while excavators encountered postholes below overlying layers, which hint at earlier, eighteenth-century construction at the site. The phased bar chart for the Estate Block offers evidence for late-eighteenth-century (Phases 1 and 2) occupation, an occupational or depositional hiatus in Phase 3, and then a resumption of deposition in Phases 4 and 5. The extant stable is thought to date to the early nineteenth century. Oral history suggests that the stable was turned into an overseer’s residence in the mid-nineteenth century. The phased bar chart of ceramics by phase by block (Figure 1) reveals that the stable was built on top of an earlier eighteenth-century occupation. The lack of assemblages from Phases 2–4 is striking. Occupation—by people—resumed in Phase 5, confirming the oral history about the arrival of an overseer in the post-emancipation period.

Bates et al. also analyzed the discard of various artifact types by phase, demonstrating that in Plantation Phases 1 and 2, the Locus 1 household has much higher wealth levels than the Locus 2 households (Figure 2). After Phase 3, Locus 1 wealth drops precipitously, leading to our inference that hired overseers replaced owners in the early nineteenth century (after Phase 3).

In Locus 2, the presumed site of the slave village,  a sharp increase in occupational intensity in Phase 2 was detected, followed by further increases in Phases 3 and 4, and then a sharp decline with emancipation in Phase 5. These trends likely reflect an increase in the size of the enslaved population from the start of British control in 1763 until emancipation. Emancipation was followed by dispersal of many enslaved households. But significant numbers remained. There are subtle hints that enslaved people managed to achieve marginal increases in economic opportunities starting in the late eighteenth century and extending through the early nineteenth century (Phases 2, 3, and 4). This trend continued after emancipation. Finally, Bates et al. discovered evidence for deteriorating living conditions during Phase 2, with declining discard rates for material culture recovered from this period. These features demonstrate the changing ownership and land uses of Morne Patate, ranging from a provisioning estate to a sugar plantation, as it grew and diminished from the 18th through 20th centuries.