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U.S. Senator David Levy Yulee’s Margarita sugar plantation flourished from 1851 to 1864 in Homosassa, Citrus County, Florida. The plantation was abandoned in 1864 and memory of its precise location slowly faded, as the physical evidence of its existence deteriorated. Today, the only plantation structure known to be still standing is the sugar mill, preserved as part of the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park (CI124B). The remainder of the plantation, including its boundaries, remains unknown. Perhaps at least partly owing to this absence, the mill’s interpretive signage provides an unfortunate univocal historical interpretation of the site and lacking in both acknowledgement and understanding of the experiences of the enslaved laborers who lived at Margarita. This thesis research uses archaeological reconnaissance survey and historical research in an attempt to locate the slave quarters in order to shed light on the power structures that existed between planter and enslaved laborer at Margarita. Shovel tests on state, county, and private land surrounding the mill identified two new archaeological sites, including possible remnants of an additional plantation structure, and ruled out for several locations as the site of the former slave quarters. Historical research uncovered additional information about the names of the enslaved laborers and provided more insight into their experiences on the plantation. This work culminates with suggestions for updated State Park interpretive signage, and suggestions for future work.

In the final quarter of the 18th century, a planter's dwelling overlooking the Caribbean Sea at Little Bay on the northwest coast of Montserrat in the British Leeward Islands was destroyed by fire and never reoccupied. Archaeological excavations in 2010 and 2011 yielded fragments of personal adornment, dress, household furnishings, and the house containing them providing an intimate portrait of an anonymous white male and his domestic arrangements. We do not know much about the planter class, though its members were central to the structure of 18th-century West Indian society. I use this rich archaeological data alongside archival, pictorial, and comparative analyses to particularize a West Indian planter and investigate the construction of colonial Creole identity. Evidence from archaeological, architectural, and ethnographic sources allow a reconstruction of the plantation house as a single-pile, three-cell plan, wood-frame structure with a raised masonry foundation and front gallery. This form, adapted to the Caribbean environment, altered English understanding and use of private and public spaces. Through archival research, I linked Little Bay to the Piper family, documenting its transfer through generations of unmarried male relatives. At the time of the fire the inhabitant was a Montserratian born, third-generation white male of English descent, meaning a white Creole. Ceramic gaming disks and glass beads identical to examples found in enslaved contexts indicate a household comprised of domestic slaves and planter. The head of household was a wealthy male versed in 18th-century British aesthetics as shown by a fob seal, coat buttons, and flintlock pistol. Punch bowls, glassware, tea and tableware reflect refined British cultural sensibilities, but as first-person travelogues recount, such goods were redeployed in distinctive colonial form with Creole open-door sociability and shared domesticity with household enslaved. Taken together, the finds demonstrate how this colonial Creole used English material goods to craft a distinctive form of white masculine identity within the West Indian planter class. In this world of mixed classes, races, and heritages, such formulations required choices. My research highlights how British objects and local practice combined to create new meanings for plantation society in Montserrat and the West Indies.

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This dissertation focuses on the human experience during enslavement in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, one of the last three localities to outlaw the institution of slavery in the Americas. It reviews the history of slavery and the plantation economy in the Caribbean and how the different European regimes regulated slavery in the region. It also provides a literature review on archaeological research carried out in plantation contexts throughout the Caribbean and their findings. The case study for this investigation was Hacienda La Esperanza, a nineteenth-century sugar plantation in the municipality of Manatí, on the north coast of the island. The history of the Manatí Region is also presented. La Esperanza housed one of the largest enslaved populations in Puerto Rico as documented by the slave census of 1870 which registered 152 slaves. The examination of the plantation was accomplished through the implementation of an interdisciplinary approach that combined archival research, field archaeology, anthropological interpretations of ‘material culture’, and geochemical analyses (phosphates, magnetic susceptibility, and organic matter content as determined by loss on ignition). Historical documents were referenced to obtain information on the inhabitants of the site as well as to learn how they handled the path to abolition. Archaeological fieldwork focused on controlled excavations on four different loci on the site. The assemblages recovered during three field seasons of archaeological excavations served to examine the material culture of the enslaved and to document some of their unwritten experiences. The study of the material culture of Hacienda La Esperanza was conducted through the application of John C. Barrett’s understanding of Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, Douglas Armstrong’s cultural transformation model, and Paul R. Mullins’ notions of consumerism and identity. Research results showed that the enslaved individuals of Hacienda La Esperanza were active yet highly restricted participants and consumers of the local market economy. Their limited market participation is evidence of their successful efforts to exert their agency and bypass the administration’s control. As such, this dissertation demonstrates that material life, even under enslavement, provides a record of agency and resistance. The discussion also addressed the topics of social stratification and identity. / Anthropology