Sherds of history : domestic life in colonial Guadeloupe /

Archaeologist Arcangeli offers a social history of ceramics, including tableware, cooking utensils, chamber pots, and other items used in the 17th-19th centuries on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, a French colony during that time. Combining the analysis of pottery fragments from four archaeological sites with information in probate inventories, the author addresses ways people belonging to the three legally defined castes--white, free person of color, and slave--used ceramics. In chapters 1 and 2, she provides an overview of her approach to studying pottery, the information used in the analysis, and the history of Guadeloupe. In four chapters, she addresses the use of ceramics in water transport and storage, cooking and food preparation, food service, and personal hygiene. As Mary Beaudry does in Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing (2007), Arcangeli uses her analyses to give insight into social and cultural aspects of the society, including the development of a distinctive Creole cuisine, views on cleanliness and health, and the role of women, especially enslaved ones, in the running of daily life. The figures are mostly of the ceramic fragments. Some additional illustrations of the setting or the time would have been helpful for orientating readers. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Julia A. Hendon, Gettysburg College