The FGSJ is delighted that our friend, Ke Vaughn Harding, designer and architecture conservator, was able to give us a talk about the explorations at Good Hope, Trelawny, that led to the construction of a slave dwelling house there. Through the archaeological findings, Ke Vaughn helps us understand the lives of enslaved people and the wider plantation community.
Ke Vaughn has served as the director of Falmouth Heritage Renewal, sat on the national council of the Georgian Society of Jamaica, and acted as Jamaica National Heritage Trust’s representative in Trelawny.
Following his first degree in Architectural Studies from the University of Technology, Jamaica, he completed a Master of Architecture degree and a Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation and Regionalism at the University of New Mexico.
Practical experience and leadership of the rehabilitation of historic dwellings in his hometown of Falmouth, Jamaica, as well as his academic studies have provided Ke Vaughn with an in depth knowledge of architectural conservation best practices. He is also skilled in interpreting the cultural values represented by the historic built environment.
In the summers of 2014 and 2015, archaeological investigations began to provide greater insight into the domestic lives of slaves at the Good Hope Estate in Trelawny, Jamaica. During these studies, reconstructive illustrations were employed in the process of re-imagining the largely vanished contexts of the archaeological findings. Also expressed in these depictions are hypotheses surrounding the ways of life that shaped the physical environment of this location. This talk explores how reconstructive illustrations served not only as end products of the archaeological investigations, but also as active tools in the processes of analysing and interpreting the data collected.
