Contexts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Chenoweth
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
Caribbean Islands ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
Agricultural Potential ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
History Of

Chapter 2 provides a history of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) themselves and how their unusual place in the colonial process produced a more isolated, poorer set of white colonists than many other Caribbean islands. The marginal agricultural potential of the BVI left them uncolonized longer than most islands and European settlement began there in a haphazard way, with no formal government, church, or other institutions. This left the settlers free to experiment with new social forms, such as Quakerism, the arrival of which is also recounted here. But this isolation also posed challenges and left them in precarious positions. This chapter also introduces the Lettsom family who will be the focus for the study along with their island of Little Jost van Dyke, before describing the archaeological work undertaken to address the project’s questions. The remainder of the volume takes up the themes of simplicity, equality, and peace, shifting between written and archaeological evidence to understand how BVI Quakers understood and enacted these ideas differently than Quakers elsewhere.

Discipline, Community, and Conformity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Chenoweth
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
The Way

Every group has standards of action which are enforced through various social mechanisms. Quakerism’s greatest punishment was “disownment” or the expelling of a member from the group, but this was the result of a sometimes long process of “treating” with errant members. While this structure was common, the particular crimes which occasioned such procedures and the way they were prosecuted were very much local. Alcohol and tobacco are frequently understood as “sinful” in historical archaeological works but chapter 6 complicates this picture, exploring the roles of these substances in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The chapter also considers the way the “discipline” was and was not applied in the BVI, and continues to trace a series of fault lines within the BVI Quaker community arising from disagreements over priorities and perspectives. The written record is evaluated here, and it is argued that it must be seen as the product of only part of this community which is, in part, countered by archaeological evidence.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Chenoweth
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Background Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter sketches the questions and goals of the overall project and the needed background information about Quakerism. It introduces the Tortola Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (“Quakers”) which formed in the British Virgin Islands about 1740 and addresses how archaeology can approach the study of religion and religious communities. This chapter also serves as an introduction to Quakerism itself, including its ideology based on individual, un-mediated communion with God, and a brief history of the group from its foundation in the political and economic turmoil of mid-seventeenth-century England, to the “Quietism” of wealthy “Quaker Grandees” in Philadelphia, to a nineteenth and twentieth century history of schism and reunion around pacifism. The Quaker structure of Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly meetings is introduced, and connected to both community oversight and support structures. Finally, this chapter introduces three main Quaker ideals—simplicity, equality, and peace—which will be interrogated throughout the work as they change in their interactions with Caribbean slavery and geography.

Mass stranding of pygmy killer whales (Feresa attenuata) in the British Virgin Islands

2000 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio A. Mignucci-Giannoni ◽  
Gian M. Toyos-González ◽  
Janice Pérez-Padilla ◽  
Marta A. Rodríguez-López ◽  
Julie Overing
Keyword(s):  
New Record ◽  
Killer Whale ◽  
Caribbean Sea ◽  
First Record ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Killer Whales ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Mass Stranding

The pygmy killer whale (Feresa attenuata) is an offshore, tropical and subtropical delphinid found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. The species has only recently been studied, mostly from specimens collected from strandings. While over 52 reports exist for the Atlantic Ocean, only one record exists for the Caribbean Sea. A new record of a mass stranding of pygmy killer whales from the British Virgin Islands is documented and the pathology and life history of the specimens is described, associating the stranding process with the meteorological and oceanographic disturbance of Hurricane Marilyn, which devastated the Virgin Islands a day prior to the stranding. This stranding event constitutes the sixth known mass stranding for the species worldwide, the first record for pygmy killer whales for the northeastern Caribbean and the second for the entire Caribbean Sea.

Equality, Race, and Slavery in BVI Communities

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Chenoweth
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Islands ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 7 examines the question of equality in British Virgin Islands (BVI) Quakerism in two distinct but intertwined ways. The fact that members of the Tortola meeting held Africans enslaved is a defining feature of this community and has attracted much modern attention. Although discordant to modern readers, Chapter Seven traces the complex and equivocal history of slavery and Quakerism. To explore how these complexities manifested in the BVI, it examines what can be said about the relationship between the Lettsoms of Little Jost van Dyke and the enslaved Africans they held there. Instead of the usual emphasis on oversight and control, the layout of the complex made for a distinction of free and enslaved at the expense of direct oversight. Chapter 7 also examines the relations and concern for connections with non-Quaker planters. In particular, it suggests that some of the markers which performed and created Quakerism had to be moderated so as not to threaten ties beyond the group. Performances of Quakerism were more private, whereas the most public statements of the Lettsoms would have been compatible with the planter community at large. Quakerism was mapped onto existing racial and legal distinctions between white and black, free and enslaved.

scholarly journals Reparative histories: tracing narratives of black resistance and white entitlement

Race & Class ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Bergin ◽  
Anita Rupprecht
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
Race Politics ◽  
The Us ◽  
Black Resistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Agency

The reinvigoration of forms of white supremacy in the US and Europe has sharply delineated the connections between occluded racialised pasts and contemporary race politics in ways which make reparative history an urgent concern. This article argues that contemporary struggles over the politics of memorialisation telegraph more than a debate over contested histories. They are also signs of how the liberal narrative of ‘trauma’ and healing no longer suffices as a way of marginalising the history of radical black agency. Building on the research by the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, the article focuses on the incendiary year of 1831 and on a moment of collision – between black resistance and white entitlement. It situates a hitherto overlooked aborted slave uprising in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, within its multiple radical Caribbean, Atlantic and British contexts as a way of disrupting the distance between histories confined to ‘there’ and those confined to ‘here’. The article explores how the link between slavery and capitalism can be connected concretely to the black claim made on the nature of that emancipation as a way of further developing the concept of reparative history.

Climate and human influence on late Holocene fire regimes in the British Virgin Islands

2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 679-690
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Mueller ◽  
Mitchell J. Power ◽  
Colin J. Long
Keyword(s):  
Fire Regime ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Fire Disturbance ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
Landscape Modification ◽  
Anthropogenic Landscape ◽  
European Settlement

AbstractGlobal climate change poses significant threats to the Caribbean islands. Yet, little is known about the long-term disturbance regimes in island ecosystems. This research investigates 2000 yr of natural and anthropogenic fire disturbance through the analysis of a latitudinal transect of sediment records from coastal salt ponds in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The two research objectives in this study are (1) to determine the fire regime history for the BVI over the last 2000 yr and (2) to explore ecological impacts from anthropogenic landscape modification pre- and post-European settlement. The magnitude of anthropogenic landscape modification, including the introduction of agriculture, was investigated through a multiproxy approach using sedimentary records of fossil pollen and charcoal. Our results suggest fire regimes from Belmont Pond, Thatch Island, and Skeleton Pond have been influenced by human activity, particularly during the postsettlement era, from 500 cal yr BP to modern. Our results suggest that fire regimes during the Medieval Climate Anomaly were responding to changes in climate via dominant atmospheric drivers. The presettlement fire regimes from these islands suggest that fires occurred every 90 to 120 yr. This research represents a significant data contribution to a region with little disturbance and vegetation data available.

The Archaeology of a Postemancipation Smallholder in the British Virgin Islands

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Chenoweth
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
Personal Effort ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Creation ◽  
British Colonies

In some ways, little except a legal status changed for many enslaved Africans when slavery ended in the British Colonies of the Caribbean, as land and capital were held by their former enslavers. In the British Virgin Islands, however, personal effort and a series of historical events led to the creation of many small, freehold farms held by the newly free. This chapter considers initial archaeological work at one of these, highlighting the creative negotiation of these women and men who held their own land despite living in an oppressive empire.

Mass stranding of pygmy killer whales (Feresa attenuata) in the British Virgin Islands

2000 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio A. Mignucci-Giannoni ◽  
Gian M. Toyos-González ◽  
Janice Pérez-Padilla ◽  
Marta A. Rodríguez-López ◽  
Julie Overing
Keyword(s):  
New Record ◽  
Killer Whale ◽  
Caribbean Sea ◽  
First Record ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
Killer Whales ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Mass Stranding

The pygmy killer whale (Feresa attenuata) is an offshore, tropical and subtropical delphinid found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. The species has only recently been studied, mostly from specimens collected from strandings. While over 52 reports exist for the Atlantic Ocean, only one record exists for the Caribbean Sea. A new record of a mass stranding of pygmy killer whales from the British Virgin Islands is documented and the pathology and life history of the specimens is described, associating the stranding process with the meteorological and oceanographic disturbance of Hurricane Marilyn, which devastated the Virgin Islands a day prior to the stranding. This stranding event constitutes the sixth known mass stranding for the species worldwide, the first record for pygmy killer whales for the northeastern Caribbean and the second for the entire Caribbean Sea.

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