2 Materializing Memory and Building Community: Contemporary Landscape Archaeology of a Nineteenth-Century Bahamian Plantation

Abstract

The Millars Plantation on Eleuthera, Bahamas was first established in 1803 as a cotton plantation and remained in operation through the 1830s. After emancipation, the formerly enslaved community continued to live on and work the plantation acreage and surrounding areas, until 1871 when Ann Millar formally left the 2000 acre-property to the descendants of her former slaves and servants. That descendant community still upholds their right to this land today, despite a series of legal challenges by Bahamian and foreign investors who seek to develop new tourism-based economies in the area. In the process of documenting the historical landscape of the Millars Plantation through oral histories, ethnographic interviews, and landscape survey, the research revealed ways that residents today have materialized memory—piecing together object, story, and space—on a living landscape that has too often been framed as empty or relegated to the past. This chapter investigates the ways in which memory becomes rooted in the materiality of the South Eleuthera landscape. When read side-by-side, the archaeological and contemporary social stratigraphy of South Eleuthera illustrate this historical landscape's ongoing site formation and the ways in which community members use the memoryscape as a tool for community building and local advocacy.