Production Activities in the Household Economies of Plantation Slaves: Barbados and Martinique, Mid-1600s to Mid-1800s Jerome Handler & Diane Wallman # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract Formerly British and French colonies, the eastern Caribbean islands of Barbados and Martinique were major players in the early development of European overseas empires dependent on African slave labor and the large-scale production of sugar. Utilizing documentary and archaeological data we discuss and compare the independent production activities or household economies of plantation slaves on these two islands. The household economy was one of the more prominent aspects of plantation slave life throughout the Caribbean, and in this paper we examine the multiple adaptive production strategies slaves employed to ameliorate the poverty of their material and economic lives. Keywords Slavery . Household economy . Plantations . Barbados . Martinique Introduction Countless thousands of captive Africans and their descendants lived and died on Caribbean sugar plantations during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centu- ries. Sugar plantations and slavery have been the focus of many studies by Caribbean historians and historical anthropologists/archaeologists, but relatively few specifically and exclusively address the cultural or social life of the enslaved and the more mundane aspects of their daily lives. But the enslaved, regardless of the severe restrictions placed on their lives and the impoverished material conditions in which they lived, engaged in behaviors or practices outside of the labor they were compelled to perform for the slave masters. For example, they developed kinship groups and friendship ties, buried their Int J Histor Archaeol DOI 10.1007/s10761-014-0265-2 J. Handler (*) Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 145 Ednam Drive, Charlottesville, VA 22901, USA e-mail: jh3v@virginia.edu D. Wallman Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1512 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA e-mail: dianewallman@gmail.com