Materializing the Middle Passage

Abstract

Abstract This introductory chapter employs three material things—a portrait, of Dido Belle Lindsay, a punch bowl depicting the slave ship Swallow, and the components of a necklace from the cemetery at Newton Plantation, Barbados—to foreground the themes and issues central to Materializing the Middle Passage, and to outline the author’s practice as a historical archaeologist. Some of the scholarship that has informed the book is also introduced here, in discussing the entwined theoretical frameworks that underpin the analysis: creolization theory and postcolonial theory. Finally, the structure of the book is outlined, and brief summaries provided of the central themes of each of the following eleven chapters.