Negotiating memory: funerary commemoration as social change in emancipation-era Barbados

ABSTRACT

Anglican church commemoration in Barbados is traditionally viewed as reflecting a wholly white, British history; however, beginning in the late eighteenth century, these spaces were circumvented as places of memory for the freed black community. As abolition and emancipation triggered greater integration of previously racially segregated groups on the island, funerary monuments provided the opportunity to negotiate memory, social structure, and community relationships, subverting dominant power hierarchies and tensions stimulated by race, religion, and marginalization. This paper will reconstruct narratives and counter-narratives in burial practice and monument use against the backdrop of abolition and emancipation to contribute to historical and archaeological understandings of historical processes of colonization and decolonization, relevant to Barbados and other colonies dependent on slave labour.

KEYWORDS:

• Commemoration
• emancipation
• Barbados
• memory

Acknowledgements

This work is based on a doctoral thesis completed under the supervision of Dr Jonathan Finch, with advisors Dr Stephanie Wynn-Jones, Dr Paul Lane, and Dr Steve Roskams at the University of York. Thank you to Meghan Burchell (Memorial University of Newfoundland) and to the reviewers for their suggestions in developing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Ethnohistory has suggested that slaves were left to their own devices for burial, beyond restrictions of time of day, music, singing, and Obeah (Handler and Bilby 2001; Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert 2011, 155; although these laws were rarely enforced Newton 2008, 89). Archaeological investigations in Barbados have sought to fill in the gaps in the historical record, primarily through the excavation of Newton plantation’s slave cemetery (Handler 1999, 13). Burials here involved shallow graves dug into uncultivated land and limestone bedrock, occasionally including the natural or artificial mounding of soil. Some burials included wooden coffins and grave goods, but this was not universal. Grave goods included food and drink, pottery, containers, cloth and mats, gold dust, beads and shells, jewelry, including rings and bracelets, knives, pipes, and tobacco, bearing similarities to grave goods common in West African cultures (Handler 1997, 102) but also British objects (Brown 2016).

2 This however was not universal in colonial slave communities; rather, ‘by refusing to admit slaves into their churches, the English planters differed markedly from contemporary French, Spanish and Portuguese slave owners’ (Dunn 1972, 249). Spanish slave owners, for instance, encouraged slaves to be converted to the Catholic faith prior to their departure from Africa and even British Virginia and South Carolina allowed modest missionary activities (Bennett 2003; Brown 2006, 75).

3 Similar to many slave labour-based society at this time, this status was granted by Acts of Legislature for ‘good conduct’ at times of rebellions; by will/deed as a gift by their owners for good service; to the old and infirm that plantation owners no longer wanted to support; to illegitimate offspring with enslaved women; and finally, to the children of free mothers (Beckles 1990, 85–86; Dunn 1972, 252–255).

4 Lawrence-Archer (1875) selectively recorded monument inscriptions, descriptions and genealogical annotations throughout the British West Indies, including 190 monuments from 11 churches and 3 plantations in Barbados, targeting the highest ranking families or most interesting inscriptions, and therefore ignoring monuments commemorating African-Barbadians. Oliver (1915) focussed exclusively on Barbados, resulting in a much larger and more complete record of monuments on the island. Oliver includes 1,472 monuments in his publication, from Anglican churches and plantations with known commemorative monuments.

5 These data are available as an open access, digital database, including photographs, inscriptions, monument records, and maps (Cook 2016b).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Research Award and the Department of Archaeology at the University of York’s Department Research Fund.