NYAS @ Wenner-Gren: 1/28
2012 has given way to 2013, and we continue on with our lecture series this month with a talk from Syracuse University Professor of Anthropology Douglas V. Armstrong. Dr. Armstrong has spent the last two decades writing on cultural transformation and the emergence of African-Caribbean communities in the early modern Atlantic world, and on January 28th we welcome him to discuss his recent work on the continuities linking historical slave-economy sugar production on Barbados and the modern-day late capitalist global order.
Archaeological and historical research in Barbados is exploring the transition from smaller scale farming to the capital and labor intensive agro-industrial complex that emerged by the end of the seventeenth-century. The system of slavery that emerged on agro-industrial sugar plantations in Barbados in the mid-17th century set in motion the large scale exploitive system of plantation slavery in the British Caribbean and dramatically impacted social systems on a global scale, with particular impacts throughout the Americas and Africa. This paper focuses on a combination of material and spatial data, including plantation maps and material culture recovered from early plantations in Barbados, to explore an emerging landscape of power, indenture, enslavement, colonialism, and capitalism.
Dr. Armstrong’s talk will be followed by a discussion headed by Christopher Matthews of Montclair State University.
The 7:00 PM lecture will be held at the Wenner-Gren office on Park Avenue and will be preceded by a reception at 6:00 PM. Refreshments will be provided. It is free to attend this and all other events in this series, but registration is required in advance; please visit the NYAS website or call 212-298-8600.