Sherds of History - by Myriam Arcangeli (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Ceramics serve as one of the best-known artifacts excavated by archaeologists. They are carefully described, classified, and dated, but rarely do scholars consider their many and varied uses. Breaking from this convention, Myriam Arcangeli examines potsherds from four colonial sites in the Antillean island of Guadeloupe to discover what these everyday items tell us about the people who used them. In the process, she reveals a wealth of information about the lives of the elite planters, the middle and lower classes, and enslaved Africans.

By analyzing how the people of Guadeloupe used ceramics--whether jugs for transporting and purifying water, pots for cooking, or pearlware for eating--Arcangeli spotlights the larger social history of Creole life. What emerges is a detail rich picture of water consumption habits, changing foodways, and concepts of health. Sherds of History offers a compelling and novel study of the material record and the "ceramic culture" it represents to broaden our understanding of race, class, and gender in French-colonial societies in the Caribbean and the United States.

Arcangeli's innovative interpretation of the material record will challenge the ways archaeologists analyze ceramics.

Review Quotes

"Arcangeli
uses her analyses to give insight into social and cultural aspects of the
society. . . . Recommended."--Choice

"An
invaluable source for both interpretive insight and comparative reference for
domestic ceramic signatures as varied by class, race, occupation, and economy."--Historical
Archaeology

"Sheds
new and interesting light on the daily lives of urban households in a Caribbean
island during the slavery era. It is an innovative and illuminating example of
the use of the methods of historic archaeology to study la vie quotidienne
in a colonial society."--Caribbean Quarterly

"A
richly textured and nuanced analysis of life in the French Caribbean colony of Guadeloupe
during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries from the point of view of
ceramic users, rather than from the perspective of producers, in the context of
daily use." --Cambridge
Archaeological Journal

"Readers
gain a strong sense of how ceramics were used in everyday eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century life and work, often by enslaved domestic workers gathering
water, setting tables, cooking food and promoting bodily health."--Antiquity

"Provides
scholars with a trove of insights into the variety of Guadeloupe's
ceramic-related practices . . . and their similarities and differences across
class and race divides and between colony and metropole that will resonate for
ceramic analyses, future studies of Guadeloupe, and broader comparative
analyses of colonial contexts across the globe."--American
Anthropologist