The Nineteenth-Century British Plantation Settlement at Lamanai, Belize (1837 – 1868)

Abstract

The following dissertation outlines historical-archaeological research focused on the nineteenth-century, British plantation settlement at Lamanai, Belize. Archaeological data presented here include recent archaeological excavations (2014) and a study of previously excavated archaeological materials recovered at the site over the past 30 years (2009), conducted by this author. The study's archaeological data are synthesized in tandem with historical and documentary sources, comparative site data, and oral histories. Even though the study data span more than thirty years of recovery, it must be noted that very little research has focused on the late-colonial period at Lamanai to date. The most recent phase of archaeology is a foundational effort, which aims to set the stage for future late-colonial period, historical-archaeological studies. To this end, a great deal of effort has been spent here outlining the project's core theoretical and methodological foundations with which frame the current study and inform future research endeavors. Little is known about the eighteenth- and nineteenth- centuries at Lamanai, and to this end, the project aimed to answer questions regarding how life (residential, industrial, and administrative) was structured. While the archaeological and historical records have elucidated much about the plantation settlement at Lamanai to date, that data have also been frustratingly oblique and obfuscating with regard to intra-site variability among known British colonial activity and habitation areas.