by Dr Edson Burton
With a doctoral, post doctoral research background and teaching experience on various slavery related courses I was intrigued as to what more I could learn and what I could bring to the table. It was a pleasant surprise to find that I was returned to the status of novice by my introduction to the archaeology of slavery.
Archaeology and bioarchaeology offers an accuracy which primary and secondary sources cannot. Contemporary sources by white and black commentators are often skewed in favour of pro and anti slavery agendas. Surviving plantation logs such as those that still exist on estates such as Newtown and Codrington perhaps provide a more objective picture. But archaeology adds science to the observations recorded in such primary sources. Dental records among other skeletal samples provide a detailed scrutiny of the (ill) health of the enslaved.
It is hard not to feel uniquely appalled by what the literature reveals. Here are overworked, stunted, starved populations generating phenomenal wealth for a class visible and invisible, yet out of reach. Literary depictions of slavery and their on screen counterparts have focussed upon flashpoints of suffering or cruelty. Archaeology reveals a more chilling picture of a more protracted, dare one say more mundane portrait of suffering.
Perhaps most disturbing is recognising the survival of certain dietary patterns within my own Caribbean family, dietary patterns that have increased the risk of hypertension amongst other aliments. As I begin to reconstruct something of the lives of the enslaved then new questions arise, some will have be answered by conjecture I'm sure. But I feel closer to the integrity of an alternate historical world thanks to this research.