An Archaeological History of Montserrat in the West Indies

1. Introduction: Montserrat’s island setting

Montserrat stands at a most unusual moment in its history, one that—as we now know, from recent discoveries (presented in Chapter 3)—extends back nearly 5,000 years. The ongoing volcanic crisis that began in July 1995 has changed everything. The resident population has been reduced to one-third its previous size. More than half the island lies out of bounds in the Exclusion Zone, with formerly lively villages now abandoned and swamped by ash and the all-engulfing vegetation. Very many archaeological sites and other places of significance for cultural heritage have been destroyed or obscured in the south of the island (see Chapter 10). This book draws on the results of what archaeological work had taken place before the current eruptions, but it also relies quite heavily on information collected in the course of the present authors’ Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project. This project ran from 2010 to 2019, under the difficult conditions that currently govern life on the island.

Where Montserrat stands at the current moment needs to be placed within a much longer-term perspective. We provide here, by way of introduction, a brief account of various aspects of the geographical, environmental, and volcanic setting in which the archaeological history of Montserrat has unfolded over the past several millennia. Perhaps we can summarize this by saying that Montserrat is best characterized as a small, mountainous, volcanic, semi-tropical island. Each word in that description is important, and we try to explain why that is so.¹

In British hands for all but two years since its European colonization in 1632, Montserrat is today a British Overseas Territory. It is the southernmost of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean (Fig. 1). The Leeward Islands’ distinctive configuration—a convex volcanic arc—hints at the process of their formation: it outlines the boundary along which the oceanic crust of the South American Plate is being subducted under the Caribbean Plate, forming a number of volcanic islands in the process. No less than seventeen volcanoes are currently active along this plate boundary. One of them, the most devastating of the later 20th century, is the Soufrière Hills volcano on Montserrat.

Fig. 1. Topography and place-names on Montserrat. (Map by Miriam Rothenberg; base map from Wadge 1988, provided by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory.)

Montserrat has an outline that could be described as pear- or teardrop-shaped, about 16 km north–south and 11 km east–west (Fig. 1). Like everything else on Montserrat, even its size has been affected by the eruptions since July 1995 of the Soufrière Hills volcano in the south. While the island’s area currently measures about 102.5 sq. km, it is expanding and its surface area is growing, as a result of pyroclastic and laharic flows down the volcano’s slopes and along various rivers and watercourses (known locally as ghauts) out to the ocean (see Fig. 27, Radio Antilles).² The most serious recent volcanic event, in February 2010, actually extended the shoreline at Trants on the eastern, windward side of the island by 650 m.³ Utterly dwarfed by comparison with the large islands of the Greater Antilles such as Cuba and Hispaniola, Montserrat is also considerably smaller than either of its two closest inhabited neighbors, Antigua and Guadeloupe, each less than 50 km distant.

Whether one approaches the island by sea or air (Fig. 2), the features that stand out immediately are its several steep and rugged mountains, and its sea-cliffs. Montserrat consists of a series of north–south trending volcanic cones whose lower slopes descend below the sea, but at sea level itself they have been severely eroded to create cliffs, in places massive, that front much of the coastline. This is especially the case around the south and southeast coasts, along the northeast and northern tip of the island from Trants to Northwest Bluff, and from Carr’s Bay southward to Old Road Bluff. Embayments or beaches forming viable anchorages scarcely exist along the windward side of the island, and they are only sporadic on the leeward side. So it is no coincidence that the chief towns of the island in early historical times were located at Stapletown in Old Road Bay and at Kinsale/Plymouth in Sugar Bay; or that the British in the 18th century constructed a system of defensive cannon batteries and forts along the leeward coast, since this was the only side of the island that enemy warships could be expected to approach.⁴

Fig. 2. Montserrat’s profile as seen from the northeast. (Photo: Gregory Scott.)

Volcanic geology

It was Montserrat’s distinctive saw-tooth profile, as seen from both the east and west sides, that reminded Columbus, sailing by in 1493, of the jagged peaks of Montserrat (meaning serrated mountain in Catalan) above the Benedictine Abbey of Santa Maria de Montserrat near Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. This visual effect is created by the three main volcanic complexes of the island—Silver Hills, Centre Hills, and Soufrière Hills—which are progressively younger in geological age and taller in height from north to south (Fig. 2).⁵ Because their ages are so diverse—Silver Hills (active 2.6–1.2 million years ago), Centre Hills (active 954–550 thousand years ago), and Soufrière Hills (active from at least 250 thousand years ago, until the present), they have experienced very different degrees of erosion, affecting their relative altitudes and the amount of moisture they receive, and consequently their vegetation cover.

For example, although the summit of Silver Hills reaches only 403 m, it has a well-developed submarine shelf around it. It represents the very worn down remnant of what was once a more substantial volcanic massif, perhaps equivalent in size to Centre Hills or even the way Soufrière Hills looks today. Because the volcanic cone is so eroded, with poorly developed soils and little orographic rainfall, this northern part of Montserrat has throughout the colonial era always been characterized by a hard-scrabble way of life, with poor agriculture and far fewer residents than elsewhere on the island. On the other hand, the appropriately named interior mountains of Centre Hills present a very different aspect (Fig. 3). Being substantially higher (its summit at Katy Hill rises to 741 m), its upper reaches are often under cloud and mist, resulting not only in the development there of distinctive vegetational communities of Elfin Forest, but abundant rainfall that flows down the numerous watercourses to supply the modern-day settlements at lower elevations along its western and northern sides.

Fig. 3. Montserrat’s Centre Hills, seen from the northwest. (Photo: John Cherry.)

Good soils, plentiful water, and generally moderate slopes encouraged European planters to clear the native vegetation for their sugar cane fields a substantial distance up the slopes of Centre Hills (to elevations of 400 m or more), but these have now disappeared beneath regrowth of the neotropical forest. An area of about 12 sq. km of the Centre Hills is now maintained as a well-studied forest preserve.⁶

Although there are other, geologically recent, but now extinct volcanic features that contribute to Montserrat’s landscape configuration (such as the fairly low St George’s Hill and Garibaldi Hill, immediately north and northwest of Plymouth), all eyes are now on the Soufrière Hills volcano, the only one that is currently, and catastrophically, active (Fig. 4). The curiosity of 18th- and 19th-century visitors to the island was stimulated by its various fumaroles, soufrières, sulphur springs, and hot pools, about which they wrote brief accounts.⁷ Premonitory warnings of future activity came in the form of severe earthquakes that began in 1897 and continued for several years, as well as earthquake swarms in the mid-1930s, and again in the 1960s.⁸ But since Soufrière Hills had not seen any major eruption during the colonial era, its coming to life so abruptly on 18 July 1995 took the island’s people and their government by surprise. At the time of this eruption, this volcanic complex comprised five steep-sided andesitic lava domes, named Gage’s (the oldest), Chance’s, Galway’s, Perche’s, and Castle Peak. Their appearance has now been totally transformed by volcanic activity over the past two decades or more. Castle Peak was buried early in the 1995 eruptions, and the old domes that remain are now flanked by pyroclastic and laharic flows resulting from dome collapses, along with a variety of deposits arising from debris avalanches, pumice flows, tephra fallout, and other such processes.

Fig. 4. The Soufrière Hills volcano in June 2018. (Photo: Krysta Ryzewski.)

Should this latest eruptive activity have come as a surprise? For how long had Soufrière Hills been dormant? We now have fairly good answers, as a result of scientific research that the recent eruption itself has prompted. Geological study of the stratigraphy of the volcanic deposits visible in the island’s southeastern sea-cliffs, along with more than 40 radiocarbon dates, has allowed reconstruction of the eruptive history over the past 31,000 years.⁹ In brief, the volcano was active until about 16,000 years ago, producing several distinctive types of deposits indicative of various kinds of eruptions, but seems then to have had a long period of dormancy that lasted until roughly 4,000 years ago. At that time, Soufrière Hills produced a dense andesite ash flow deposit up to 3.6 m thick; since this occurred centuries later than our first evidence of people on Montserrat (Chapter 3), this episode would have been devastating to anyone who might have been living there at the time (or perhaps may have discouraged settlement). Most recently, there occurred a phase of smaller eruptions, well dated—from 770 to 200 years ago—by radiocarbon dates on abundant charcoal (including logs up to 3 m long). This date range of course overlaps with the early years of European colonization of Montserrat, but no surviving records mention volcanic activity, perhaps because it was fairly insignificant in scale. With the possible exception of Trants, no volcanic episodes have been encountered in archaeological deposits at any excavated site on the island.¹⁰

The modern cataclysm of the Soufrière Hills eruption unfolded with great speed.¹¹ A major dome collapse that sent a pyroclastic flow down Fort Ghaut and through the center of Plymouth on 3 August 1997 spelled the end for the already abandoned capital town (Fig. 5). And a massive pyroclastic surge on Boxing Day that same year devastated about one-tenth of the entire island in the south. The evacuations that took place during the early stages of the crisis hardened into an enforced and closely policed Exclusion Zone, still in place today. Its northern land boundary (there is also a maritime Exclusion Zone) has, at various times, extended from Trants on the east coast to as far north as Old Town, Olveston, and Salem on the west, although this northern limit has been subject to numerous modifications over the years, in response to changing risk assessments for the settled areas of the island (Fig. 1). At present (2020), with the volcano having been relatively quiet since 2011 and volcanic threat set at its lowest level, the boundary of the Exclusion Zone lies immediately north of Plymouth, and some residents are beginning to return to their properties in communities such as Cork Hill and Richmond Hill that have been off limits for many years. Tourist visits to a small part of Plymouth, in order to witness the spectacular devastation on display, have begun under strictly supervised conditions, and the town’s jetty is again in use for the shipment of sand and ash.

Fig. 5. Devastation in downtown Plymouth caused by the Soufrière Hills volcano. (Photo: John Cherry, June 2018.)

A great deal is known about the Soufrière Hills volcano as a result of the establishment, immediately after eruptions began in 1995, of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) which, since 2003, has occupied a purpose-built facility at Flemming’s, in full view of the volcano. It conducts round-the-clock observations using seismic, deformation, gas emission, visual, and environmental monitoring methods. These data are used to set the level of threat (on a scale of 1 to 5), to define the boundaries of the terrestrial and maritime Exclusion Zones, and to provide scientific advice concerning the safety of its residents to the government of Montserrat.¹² Because the volcanic crisis has been so protracted and because rotating teams of scientists have continuously been collecting such a wide variety of data over so many years, it is probably the case that the Soufrière Hills is today the most intensively studied volcano in the world.

The impacts of Montserrat’s volcanic crisis—geological, ecological, environmental, economic, demographic, social, political—have been well documented in numerous academic publications, TV documentaries, and now coverage on social media.¹³ While of course less tragic than the nineteen deaths and massive disruptions to personal lives that the volcano has caused, the cultural heritage of Montserrat has also suffered greatly, in ways that will be apparent in all of the chapters that follow, and particularly in Chapter 10.

Climate and natural environment

Montserrat is situated at latitude 16o45’N and longitude 62o10’W. Its climate, therefore, is essentially tropical, driven mainly by the North Atlantic High-Pressure System and the Intertropical Convergence Zone. This means that the weather is warm year-round, with an average temperature of 26°C that varies during the year only within a 5°C range (although with considerable altitudinal variation). Humidity hovers around 75%. Atlantic currents flow westwards, passing through the gaps between the islands of the Lesser Antilles almost like a weir; these strong currents affecting the passages between the various islands almost certainly posed challenges for early Amerindian voyagers in canoes and may have had some impact on the patterns and processes of initial island colonization, as we discuss later. Winds too (the Northeast Trade Winds) blow predominantly from the east.

Unlike the relatively flat and low-lying uplifted limestone islands of the outer volcanic arc of the Lesser Antilles (such as Antigua, Barbuda, and Anguilla) that lack a mountainous topography to generate orographic rainfall, Montserrat is fairly well watered. Annual rainfall has varied from about 95 to 178 cm, with a mean of about 135 cm. It has a seasonal character, with the wettest period of the year generally falling in the months between October and January, and the driest in February through April. These figures, however, ignore the major impact that topography has on the distribution of rainfall, with the higher elevations receiving by far the most abundant precipitation. The upper reaches of the Centre Hills and Soufrière Hills average almost three times the rainfall that falls in the island’s extreme north or along the south and southeast areas of the windward coast.

These normal conditions of course overlook the vulnerability of many of the islands of the Lesser and Greater Antilles to tropical storms and hurricanes (the official season for which starts at the beginning of June, although most hurricane events are later in the year). Montserrat has always been subject to these natural forces, and the chapters that follow enumerate many instances in recent centuries of the great damage caused by storms to buildings and livelihoods, as well as crops, livestock, vegetation, and wildlife. Modern, long-range weather forecasting and storm-tracking now provide fairly accurate predictions of a hurricane’s severity and likely arrival time, allowing some measure of preparedness; but no such luxury existed for the inhabitants of Montserrat in Amerindian and colonial times, and levels of devastation were correspondingly greater. The last truly major hurricane to affect Montserrat was Hurricane Hugo in 1989, which destroyed or very seriously damaged as much as 98% of all the structures on the island, leaving most of its population at least temporarily without shelter or homes.¹⁴ It was a double tragedy that the current volcanic crisis should begin only half a dozen years later, while hurricane recovery efforts were not yet fully completed.

Adequate rainfall, equable temperatures, and (in places) rich volcanic soils have resulted in a natural environment—at least aboriginally and prior to recent volcanic depredations—dominated by jungle, or, more technically, by wet and dry neotropical forest. There have been some not insignificant changes in climate in the region, even during the later stages of the Holocene, an epoch which encompasses the entirety of human life on Montserrat. Unfortunately, there currently exist no palaeo-environmental or palaeo-climatological data from the island of Montserrat itself and we can only generalize from evidence collected elsewhere. It is known, for example, that periods of drought and high hurricane frequency characterized the Archaic Age from 4300 BC onwards, with generally wetter and less stormy conditions throughout the past 2,500 years, but also considerable variability (wetter periods ca. AD 100, 400–600, and 1000–1400; drier intervals ca. AD 200–400, 700–900, and around 1600).¹⁵

Despite these variations, the likelihood is that the first visitors to Montserrat nearly 5,000 years ago would have been greeted by a landscape cloaked in green. One reason for this is that Montserrat is a small island. As with most such environments, it is depauperate (i.e. it has fewer species than a similar area of comparable size on a mainland landmass), particularly with regard to invertebrates whose swimming skills are limited or non-existent, making it difficult for them to cross the substantial water passages that have always separated Montserrat from neighboring lands (themselves also small islands). In particular, until introductions by both Amerindians and (especially) Europeans, there were no native grazing mammals to suppress plant and tree growth.¹⁶ Things are very different today, not only because of several centuries of heavy exploitation of the landscape by colonial farmers, but also because of the severe effects of feral livestock on natural vegetation in what is now the Exclusion