Abstract
In 1984, archaeologist Bruce Trigger published his tripartite framework for understanding the history of archaeology, citing three main research modes: colonialist, imperialist and nationalist. This article uses Trigger’s framework to examine the history of archaeology in Jamaica, as an example of a recently independent former slave colony. The author finds that while archaeology on the island worked to reinforce first colonialist, and later imperialist epistemologies until at least the mid-twentieth century, the development of a nationalist archaeology in Jamaica has faltered since then, in favor of foreign-backed research. Furthermore, the legacy of the hierarchical British racial system in Jamaica, together with the exceptional marginalization of Indigenous Taíno culture on the island (compared to other nearby islands in the Caribbean), has resulted in relatively little domestic investment into the island’s pre-colonial archaeology. Instead, much of the highest-profile domestic archeology in Jamaica in the six decades since the country’s independence has tended to focus on the origins of the island’s maroon communities.