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Archaeology Lecture Series - Pirates, Protestants, Militia, and Miskitu, the Royalization of Roatan Island

 In 1742, on the heels of the golden age of ‘pirates of the Caribbean,’ a British military outpost was established on Roatan Island off the north coast of Honduras. The community, Augusta, housed a mix of British settlers and militia along with local indigenous Miskitu peoples. While the settlement was occupied for a brief span of only seven years, the archaeological record of the community provides an exciting glimpse into a world of complex interactions among Protestant settlers, English pirates, Spanish soldiers, enslaved Africans, and native Miskitu during early efforts by the British to royalize its colonies. In this presentation, I discuss the concept of royalization and then describe the results of our four field seasons of archaeological investigations at Augusta, which have unearthed mixed deposits of English and Miskitu material culture. I argue that such deposits indicate that Miskitu labor played a key role in the operation of the colony and, consequently, that Miskitu identity became entangled with English lifeways and lifestyles. These entanglements reveal some of the ways in which the process of royalization was adapted to the unique social and natural landscapes of the western Caribbean.

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