Military Material Life in the British Caribbean
Military Material Life in the British Caribbean
Historical Archaeology of Fort Rocky, Kingston Harbor, Jamaica (ca. 1880–1945)
Previous research in British Caribbean colonies investigates the lives of free and enslaved military personnel during the period of Atlantic slavery, within the context of each outpost’s strategic significance. Less well known are militia infantry and artillery that were stationed at military sites from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. In Jamaica, Rocky Point Battery, later Fort Rocky, defended Kingston Harbor from the 1880s until the Second World War. Jamaican volunteer militia and enlisted men as well as European officers and engineers stationed at this battery chose a British military life that dictated a regime of rigid spatial and temporal segregation whereby imperial thinking was deployed as military strategy. This paper examines ceramics, tobacco pipes, and uniform parts as objects that reflect institutional material culture which strove for homogeneity, while simultaneously leaving room for asserting a complex set of affiliations and individuality in a setting structured by British imperialism and geographic isolation.
Keywords: material culture, Jamaica, British Caribbean
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