> I am pleased to announce that archaeological data for Stewart Castle,
> located in Trelawney Parish, Jamaica, are now available on the DAACS
> website. Background information, site maps, Harris matrices, artifact
> and excavation images and data on over 11,000 artifacts from the
> Stewart Castle slave village and main house are now accessible at
> www.daacs.org. DAACS now contains standardized, downloadable data for
> 32 slave quarter sites from around the Atlantic Region.  They include
> 19 Virginia sites, two Maryland sites, nine Jamaica sites, and two
> sites on Nevis. 
> 
> In May, the DAACS Caribbean Initiative (DCI) initiated excavations at
> the Stewart Castle, a late-eighteenth-century sugar plantation on the
> north coast of Jamaica. Located just east of Falmouth Jamaica, in
> Trelawney Parish, Stewart Castle was patented in 1754. By 1799, the
> sugar plantation had grown to well over 1200 acres, with approximately
> 500 acres planted in sugar cane. During the second decade of the 19th
> century, an average of 332 enslaved Africans lived and worked on the
> property. A 1799 plat by the surveyors Munro, Stevenson, and Innes
> captures the scope of the 1200 acre sugar plantation in detail,
> showing the location of the slave village, the fortified main house,
> sugar works, and slave provision grounds. 
> The goal of the 2007 DCI excavation was to assess the temporal and
> spatial occupations at the slave village and main house. With the help
> of students from the University of the West Indies and the University
> of Virginia, 176 shovel-test-pits (STPs) were excavated across a 7000
> square meter area at the village. Thirty-six STPs were excavated at
> the main house. Three 1-x-1 meter units were also excavated at the
> village, one placed near an early nogged house, one on the interior of
> a cut limestone foundation, and the third on an earthen terrace. Over
> 11,000 artifacts were recovered from these pits and quadrats.  Both
> the village and main house have mean ceramic dates of 1800.
> Architectural and landscape features in the village, such as stone
> walls, foundations and limestone nog piles, and landscape terraces,
> were selectively mapped with a total station. 
> 
> This research was conducted as part of a Digital Archaeological
> Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS)/University of Virginia
> archaeological field school.  All artifacts, context records, site
> maps, and photographs from these excavations are available through the
> DAACS website (http://www.daacs.org). Prior to 2007, no archaeological
> work relating to the historic period occupations at Stewart Castle had
> been conducted.  
> 
> Link to Stewart Castle Village:
> http://www.daacs.org/resources/sites/StewartCastleVillage/index.html
> Link to Stewart Castle Main House:
> http://www.daacs.org/resources/sites/StewartCastleMainHouse/index.html
> 
> In 2008, The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery-UVA
> Field School in Historical Archaeology, The Archaeology of Sugar and
> Slavery in Colonial Jamaica (UVA ANTH  382), will be held at the
> Papine and Mona villages, located on the University of the West
> Indies, Mona campus. 
> 
> For more information on the 2008 UVA field school, please contact
> Jillian Galle at [log in to unmask] or 434-984-9873.
> 
> 
> Jillian Galle
> Project Manager, 
> Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
> Monticello
> 434-984-9873
> www.daacs.org
>