136 JAMES A. DELLE The Landscapes of Class Negotiation on Coffee Plantations in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica: 1790- 1850 ABSTRACT Analyzing the material elements of class negotiation should be a focus of historical archaeology. One of the most promising forms of material culture with which to conduct such analysis is landscape. To examine how landscapes shaped the nego- tiation of class relations in 19th century Jamaica, the material remains of three coffee plantations-Sherwood Forest, Clydes- dale, and Chesterfield- are described and analyzed. The archaeological analysis of the landscapes of 19th century class negotiation can shed light on the historical development of capitalist social processes, many of which still impact the ne- gotiation of class relations today. -Free negroes are found to act differently from other free men; not because they differ from others in char- acter, but because their circumstances are different; and just in proportion as they are brought within the reach of those motives by which Europeans are governed, will their conduct resemble that of the natives of Europe (Henry George Grey to the Deputation of the Standing Committee of West India Planters, 1833). Introduction In recent years historical archaeologists have begun to seriously consider how material culture functions in the negotiation of the social relations of production. While such endeavors have tradi- tionally focused on the various ways in which capitalist society has historically been stratified through the construction of hierarchies of "status" or "ethnicity" (Otto 1977; Schuyler 1980) only a few historical archaeologists have, to date, risked the challenging task of analyzing the material processes through which class relations are con- structed and negotiated (Paynter and McGuire 1991 ; Wurs t 1991; Scott 1994 ; Hood 1996; Johnson 1996 ; Mullin s 1996 ; Or ser 1996; Historical Archaeology, 1999, 33(1):136-158. Permission to reprint required. Shackel 1996). Given that class is one of the most important organizing structures of capitalist society and that most historical archaeologists study material culture produced and consumed within the capitalist system, it would seem to follow that historical archaeologists are logically situated to analyze the relationships that exist between material culture and the dynamics of class negotiation. The analysis of class relations remains rare in historical archaeology, however . This may in part be related to the general difficulty archaeolo- gists still have in interpreting dynamic social phenomena from the static archaeological record. Class relations are such dynamic phenomena; al- though class relations are constructed with mate- rial culture, it is the negotiation of the social relations expressed by such material culture, and not the material culture itself, that defines social class. An added barrier to class analysis results from the typical research design which tends to focus on individual sites or even subareas within sites. Interpretations are made on sites in isola- tion, not in relation to other sites. Such an ap- proach limits what can be said about class dy- namics. To convincingly interpret class dynam- ics from the material record, historical archaeolo- gists must reach beyond traditional methodologies which more often than not fetishize portable ar- tifacts from isolated sites. While quantification and classification of portable artifacts recovered from excavations may reveal the kinds of posses- sions typical (or atypical) of members of specific social classes , it remains difficult to interpret anything meaningful about the relationships nego- tiated between members of different classes from such exercises. Class exists within these relation- ships; a class is only truly meaningful in relation to other classes and to the political economy which shaped them. While such social relations can be interpreted through the analysis of many types of historical material culture , landscapes may be among the most fruitful avenues of re- search as they materially serve as the arenas in which people negotiate class relations. It thus follows that the emerging specialization of land-