The central question underpinning this dissertation is a methodological one: how does one successfully incorporate the perspective of the enslaved in historical reconstructions? The dissertation uses Carriacou and its Big Drum ritual to identify African Diasporan rituals as sites of historical memory within which were embedded traces of the various ideational and cultural threads the enslaved wove to create new cultural fabrics. It contends that an excavation of the silent historical pasts from the perspective of the enslaved and their descendants would need to take this into account and would require the examination of ritual documents alongside archival and other evidence. Consequently, the dissertation "reads" Big Drum in addition to primary and published secondary material to write a socio-cultural history of Carriacou. This juxtaposition yields interesting insights into the perspectives of the historical actors being examined and their concept and use of history. This study argues that examining the silences in, and fissures between, the archival and ritual records indicates that the Carriacouan concept and use of "history" is closely tied to the matter of community.

Extending this analysis beyond Carriacou to other reconstructions and representations of African Diasporan histories, the dissertation suggests the criticality of examining the archival record (for the most part a record of the state) against the internal records of the Diasporan community under investigation, noting issues of perspective (ie. how what was remembered differed from the version of the dominant classes) and closely examining moments of "collective amnesia." What communities "forgot" and why could be equally instructive in indicating the concerns of Africans and their descendants in diaspora, highlighting the choices they made to create viable histories, communities, and identities.