INTRODUCTION

The writer first had the opportunity to examine ceramics from Nevis in 1998, when Channel 4's Time Team TV programme undertook excavations at Mountravers and test pitting at Jamestown. An initial report on the ceramics was prepared for the resulting report, with a more detailed report compiled following analysis of the ceramics under more favourable conditions back in the UK. Subsequent excavations at Mountravers, together with field survey at the nearby site of a slave village, directed by Roger Leech and Bruce Williams, have yielded a much larger and more varied artefact assemblage which offers fresh insights into the material culture of a plantation house, while further fieldwork and test pitting at Jamestown in 2000, 2002, and 2003 yielded further evidence for the early settlement and later activity on that site.

In addition to ceramics from Mountravers and Jamestown, material has been examined from the 2000–1 excavations in Charlestown; plantation sites at Fenton Hill, Upper Rawlins, and Low Ground; and a post-emancipation village, Nugent’s. Other ceramics have been found in the island's fields during field-walking and as casual finds by local people. All seem to provide a consistent picture of the range of ceramics used on Nevis, and one which corresponds closely to that formed from the archaeological finds.

POTENTIAL OF THE CERAMIC EVIDENCE

The role of ceramics in historical archaeology is well-known and needs no reiteration here.