Abstract
The organisation of space within urban house compounds in the Kongens Quarter of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, reflects complex social relations in this nineteenth-century port town environment. Residential structures and outbuildings were constructed within a matrix of walls, gates and stairs and levelled earthen terraces. These features created physical and socioeconomic separations, which are reflected in the material culture recovered from each terrace. These features reconfigured steep hillsides into spaces divided according to the class and social structures of Danish West Indian mercantile society. This study compares the layout and material record found within two compounds, the Magens House and the Bankhus, and emphasise elements of Danish colonial life correlating with these specific urban port town merchant residences. The spatial relations identified reflect specific patterns of Danish colonialism, with its emphasis on open trade and interactions. These relationships are further defined by the broad spectrum of locally and globally produced goods, and the presence of specific goods made in Denmark or accessed through a diverse, but distinct, array of local and global trading partners.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Armstrong, A. D. (2011). Archaeology, historic preservation, and tourism in the Kongens Quarter, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas (formerly Danish West Indies). In Proceedings, 23rd International Association of Caribbean Archaeologists (pp. 185–199). Antigua.
Armstrong, D. V., Hauser, M., Knight, D., & Lenik, S. (2009). Variation in venues of slavery and freedom: Interpreting the Late Eighteenth-Century Cultural Landscape of St. John, Danish West Indies Using an Archaeological GIS. In International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13(1), 94–111.
Armstrong, D. V., & Williamson, C. H. (2011). The Magens house, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Danish West Indies: Archaeology of an urban house compound and its relationship to local interactions and global trade. In L. A. Curet & M. W. Hauser (Eds.), Islands at the crossroads: Migration, seafaring, and interaction in the Caribbean (pp. 137–163). Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.
Armstrong, D. V., Knight, D. & Hauser M. (2005). The early shoreline settlement at Cinnamon Bay, St. John, USVI: Before formal colonization to the slave rebellion of 1733. In Proceedings of the XX Congreso International de Arqueologia del Caribe, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Museo del Hombre 38(2), 743–750.
Ascher, R., & Fairbanks, C. H. (1971). Excavation of a slave cabin: Georgia, USA. Historical Archaeology, 5(1), 3–17.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1979). Algeria 1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boyer, W. (1983). America’s Virgin Islands: A history of human rights and wrongs. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Brown, K. L., & Cooper, D. C. (1990). Structural continuity in an African-American slave and tenant community. Historical Archaeology, 24(4), 7–19.
Dahl, T., & de Fine Licht, K. (2004). Surveys in 1961 on St. Thomas and St. Croix. Copenhagen: Royal Parish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Publishers.
Dookhan, I. (1994). History of the Virgin Islands. Kingston: Canoe Press.
Dyhr, S. A. (2001). Joachim Melchoir Magens, f.4/3-1715, St. Thomas, Dansk Vestindien, Denmark. http://www.home6.inet.tele.dk/sadyhr/magens.html.
Freiesleben, B. (2001). The history of Haagensen’s house on St. Thomas. Ball: Forlaget ACER.
Gjessing, F. C., & Maclean, W. P. (1987). Historic buildings of St. Thomas and St. John. London: Macmillan.
Gøbel, E. (1990). The volume and structure of Danish shipping to the Caribbean and Guinea, 1671–1838. International Journal of Maritime History, 2(2), 103–131.
Gøbel, E. (1997). Management of the port of Saint Thomas, Danish West Indies, during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Northern Mariner, 7(4), 45–63.
Green-Pedersen, S. E. (1971). The scope and structure of the Danish Negro slave trade. Scandinavian Economic History Review, 19, 149–197.
Hall, N. A. T. (1985). Maritime Maroons: “Grand Marronage” from the Danish West Indies. The William and Mary Quarterly, 42(4), 476–498.
Hall, N. A. T. (Ed.). (1992). Slave society in the Danish West Indies: St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hall, N. A. T. (1997a). Anna Heegaard—Enigma. In G. F. Tyson (Ed.), Bondmen and Freedmen in the Danish West Indies: Scholarly perspectives (pp. 170–179). St. Thomas, USVI: Virgin Islands Humanities Council.
Hall, N. A. T. (1997b). Apollo Miller, freedman: His life and times. In G. F. Tyson (Ed.), Bondmen and freedmen in the Danish West Indies: Scholarly perspectives (pp. 180–192). St. Thomas, USVI: Virgin Islands Humanities Council.
Hamilton, D. L. (2006). Pirates and merchants: Port Royal, Jamaica. In C. R. Ewen (Ed.), X marks the spot: The archaeology of piracy (pp. 13–30). Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Harrigan, N., & Varlack, P. I. (1977). The US Virgin Islands and the black experience. Journal of Black Studies, 7(4), 387–410.
Hauser Mark, W., & Kenneth, G. Kelly. (Eds.). (2009). Scale, locality and the historical archaeology of the caribbean. Special Issue Of The International Journal Of Historical Archaeology.
Herman, B. L. (1999). Slave and servant housing in Charleston, 1770–1820. Historical Archaeology, 33(3), 88–101.
Highfield, A. R. (Ed.). (1997). J.L. Carstens’ St. Thomas in early Danish times: A general description of all the Danish, American or West Indian Islands. St. Thomas, USVI: Virgin Islands Humanities Council.
Hingleberg, C. H. (1837). Charlotte Amalie Town survey, Danish colonial survey plan no. 25: 78
Hurst, R. (1996). The golden rock: An episode of the American War of Independence 1775–1783. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
Kelly, K., Hauser, M., DesCantes, C., & Glascock, M. (2008). Cabotage or contraband: Compositional analysis of French colonial ceramics. Journal of Caribbean Archaeology, 8, 1–23.
Keller, A. G. (1903). Notes on the Danish West Indies. American Academy of Political and Social Science, 22(1), 99–110.
Klippel, W. E., & Schroedl, G. (1999). African slave craftsmen and single-hole bone discs from Brimstone Hill, St. Kitts, West Indies. Post-Medieval Archaeology, 33, 222–232.
Knight, D. W., Prime de T. L., (1999). St. Thomas 1803: Crossroads of the diaspora. St. Thomas: Little Nordside Press.
Lenik, S. & Armstrong D. V. (2010). Interpreting the presence of Moravian produced slipware pottery at Cinnamon Bay, St. John, U. S. Virgin Islands. In Proceedings of the XX Congress of the International Association of Caribbean Archaeology (pp. 508–523). Kingston: Jamaica National Heritage Trust.
Larsen, J. (1954). Virgin Islands story. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
Lawaetz, H. C. J. (1999). Peter von Scholten: West Indian period images from the days of the last governor general. (Anne-Louise Knudsen, Trans.). Herning: The Poul Kristensen Publishing Company.
Low, S. (1993). Cultural meaning of the plaza: The history of the Spanish-American Gridplan-plaza urban design. In R. Rotenberg & G. McDonogh (Eds.), The cultural meaning of urban space (pp. 75–94). Gainesville: Bergin and Garvey.
Moolenaar, R. M. (2005). Legacies of upstreet: The transformation of a Virgin Islands neighborhood. St. Thomas, USVI: WeFromUpstreet, Inc.
National Historic Landmark Nomination. (1994). Skytsborg Tower, St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands. National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov/nhl/designations/samples/vi/Skytsborg.pdf.
Ober, F. A. (1908). A guide to the West Indies and Bermudas. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.
Ragster, L. E. (1986). The impacts of development on the St. Thomas Harbor. In G. Tyson (Ed.), The St. Thomas Harbor: A historical perspective (pp. 44–56). St. Thomas Historical Trust.
Sonesson, B. (2004). Corsican traders at Saint Thomas, crossroads of the Caribbean. The Journal of Caribbean History, 38(1), 49–74.
Taylor, C. H. E. (1888). Leaflets from the Danish West Indies: Descriptive of the social, political, and commercial condition of these islands. London: Dawson & Sons.
Tyson, G. F. (1986). Socio-economic history of the St. Thomas Harbor. In G. Tyson (Ed.), The St. Thomas Harbor: A historical perspective (pp. 11–29). St. Thomas, USVI: St. Thomas Historical Trust.
Tyson, G. (Ed.). (1991). The St. Thomas Harbor: A historical perspective. St. Thomas, USVI: The St. Thomas Historical Trust.
Vom Vruck, G. (1997). A house turned inside out: Inhabiting space in a Yemeni city. Journal of Material Culture, 2(2), 139–172.
Welch, P. L. V. (2003). Slave society in the city: Bridgetown, Barbados 1680–1834. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.
Williamson, C. H. (2009). A merchant of old main street. Destinations U.S. Virgin Islands, 9, 70.
Williamson, C. H., & Armstrong, D. V. (2011). 19th century urban port town Merchant’s residence in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Danish West Indies. In Proceedings of the XXIII Congress of the International Association of Caribbean Archaeology, Antigua (pp. 276–291).
Williamson, C. H., & Armstrong, D. V. (2009). Sundries in the sun: Unearthing urban history from a Merchant house compound in the Port of St. Thomas. Unpublished paper presented at Society for Historical Archaeology 2009 Conference, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Westergaard, W. C. H. (1917). The Danish West Indies under company rule (1671–1754) with a supplementary chapter, 1755–1917. New York: Macmillan.
Woods, E. Jongh, de. (1992). The royal quarters of the town of Charlotte Amalie. St. Thomas: MAPes MONDe, Ltd.
Zabriskie, L. K. (1918). The Virgin Islands of the United States of America: Historical and descriptive, commercial and industrial facts, figures, and resources. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Zierden, M. (1999). A trans-atlantic merchant’s house in Charleston: Archaeological exploration of refinement and subsistence in an urban setting. Historical Archaeology, 33(3), 73–87.
Zierden, M., & Calhoun, J. (1986). Urban adaptation in Charleston, South Carolina, 1730–1820. Historical Archaeology, 20(1), 29–43.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Armstrong, D.V., Williamson, C., Armstrong, A.D. (2013). Networked Interaction: Archaeological Exploration of Walled and Terraced House Compounds in the Danish Colonial Port Town of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. In: Naum, M., Nordin, J. (eds) Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology, vol 37. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6201-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6202-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)