Jerome S. Handler

An African-Type Healer/Diviner and His Grave Goods: A Burial from a Plantation Slave Cemetery in Barbados, West Indies

An adult male buried in the late 1600s or early 1700s and excavated from a plantation slave cemetery in Barbados had the cemeterys richest assortment of grave goods: an iron knife, several types of metal jewelry, an earthenware pipe, and a necklace of money cowries, fish vertebrae, dog canine teeth, European glass beads, and a large carnelian bead probably from India. Most of these artifacts are unique to New World African descendant sites. The individual was probably an African-type diviner/healer whose high status in the slave community is reflected in his relatively elaborate artifact inventory.

Plantation slave life in Barbados: a physical anthropological analysis.

Plantation Slave Life in Barbados: A Physical Anthropological Analysis Research on slave life in the New World has depended largely on written and, to some extent, on oral sources. To a much lesser degree, albeit with increasing frequency in recent years, scholars interested in New World slavery and Afro-American culture have conducted archaeological field research in plantation slave sites. Although these archaeological investigations are still in their relative infancy, particularly in the Caribbean, such studies have shown how an archaeological approach, when combined with information derived from historical sources, can provide useful data and raise new questions and perspectives on various aspects of slavery and the sociocultural life of slaves.1

Determining African birth from skeletal remains: A note on tooth mutilation

Tooth mutilation existed in sub-Saharan Africa, and was found among slaves transported to the New World. A small number of mutilation cases have been identified in early New World “Negro” skeletons from the Caribbean and Florida. The skeletal evidence alone precludes determining if the individuals were African- or American-born, but limited ethnohistorical data suggested the former. This hypothesis is considerably strengthened by evidence from 18th-century runaway slave advertisements found in the newspapers of five mainland British colonies. Analysis of these ads shows that every runaway who is identified with tooth mutilation came from Africa. This ethnohistorical evidence supports other sets of bioarchaeological and ethnohistorical data that the African custom of tooth mutilation was not generally practiced by Caribbean or North American slaves. Where filed or chipped teeth appear on skeletons “racially” identified as African in New World sites, there is an excellent chance that the individuals were African-born.

Tooth mutilation in the Caribbean: Evidence from a slave burial population in barbados

Dental mutilation on slave burials excavated from a sugar plantation cemetery on the Caribbean island of Barbados reflects on the question of African slaves and their New World born slave descendants perpetuating this widespread African practice in the New World. Physical anthropological and ethnohistorical evidence from Barbados and other areas leads to the tentative conclusion that dental mutilation (and body scarification) disappeared among New World Black slaves. Reasons relating to adaptive responses to the institution of slavery, and changes in esthetic values as a result of the creolization process, are offered to help account for this disappearance.

Slave medicine and Obeah in Barbados, circa 1650 to 1834

Describes the medical beliefs and practices of Barbadian slaves. Author discusses the role of supernatural forces in slave medicine, the range of beliefs and practices encompassed by the term Obeah, and how the meaning of this term changed over time. He emphasizes the importance of African beliefs and practices on which Barbadian slave medicine fundamentally rested. In the appendix, the author discusses the early use of the term Obeah in Barbados and the Anglophone Caribbean.

A prone burial from a plantation slave cemetery in Barbados, West Indies: Possible evidence for an African-type witch or other negatively viewed person

Dating to the late 1600s or early 1700s, a burial excavated from a slave cemetery at Newton Plantation in Barbados had several unique characteristics. Buried in the largest artificial earthen mound in the cemetery without grave goods or a coffin, this young adult woman was the solitary interment in the mound and the cemetery’s only prone burial. Her skeleton showed no signs of unusual death although analysis of lead in her bones suggests she suffered from severe lead poisoning. Documentary evidence on Barbados slave culture in general and ethnographic/ethnohistorical evidence on West African mortuary practices suggest interpretations for this burial: She may have been a witch or some other negatively viewed person with supernatural powers who, following African custom, was feared or socially ostracized.

Temporomandibular Joint Size Decrease in American Blacks: Evidence from Barbados

Hinton and Carlson (Am J Phys Anthrop 50: 325, 1979) have demonstrated a temporal trend of decreasing temporomandibular joint size in Nubian skeletons. Spanning a time range from 3400 B.C. to 1100 A.D., these populations show no evidence of genetic evolution, yet the size of the mandibular fossa of the cranium decreased by 5%. Hinton and Carlson attribute this decrease to gradual reduction of chewing stress, resulting from a change toward softer agriculturally-based dietary substances. We have similarly analyzed mandibular fossa size in a sample of slave skeletons excavated from a burial ground at Newton sugar plantation on Barbados. The burial population spans the period from about 1660 to 1820. Historical records indicate that it represents a broad mixture of various populations imported from the west African coast and possibly a small number from southeast Africa; records also suggest that, by the mid 1700s, the majority was born in Barbados and that, by the late 1700s and early 1800s, between 10 and 15% showed some European

The Middle Passage and the Material Culture of Captive Africans

Scholars of the Atlantic slave trade have not systematically addressed the question of what material objects or personal belongings captive Africans took aboard the slave ships and what goods they may have acquired on the Middle Passage. This topic has implications for the archaeology of African descendant sites in the New World and the transmission of African material culture. This paper reviews the evidence for clothing, metal, bead, and other jewelry, amulets, tobacco pipes, musical instruments, and gaming materials. In so doing, the paper provides an empirical foundation for the severe limitations placed upon enslaved Africans in transporting their material culture to the New World.

Slave revolts and conspiracies in seventeenth-century Barbados

For the somewhat more than two centuries that constituted the slave period in Barbados, the island experienced only one actual slave uprising. This erupted on the night of Easter Sunday on April 14, 1 8 1 6, but it lasted no more than a day or two. Prior to the 1 8 1 6 uprising, the last recorded serious alarm of Barbadoss whites concerning the possibility of an insurrection occurred in late 1 70 1 . During the latter half of the 1 7th century, however, white fears of possible rebellion were common, several serious alarms occurred, and in 1675 and 1692 major insurrectionary plots were discovered before the plans could be realized. Some or most of these plots and alleged plots are often noted in modern works of scholarship treating the early history of the British West Indies or its slave revolts, but they are usually only briefly mentioned or, at best, only cursorily described. Moreover, with occasional major exceptions, scholars who have written at length about slave resistance and rebellion in the British Caribbean have tended to emphasize actual uprisings, rather than aborted plots or conspiracies, and the 17th century has generally

Identifying pictorial images of Atlantic slavery: Three case studies

During the last several decades, the number of publications on New World slavery and the Atlantic slave trade has increased tremendously, including specialized scholarly studies, websites, and books for the general reader. Sometimes these works, particularly those for the general reader, are lavishly illustrated. But the illustrations are usually not taken directly from the primary sources. Rather, they are purchased from commercial photo libraries/houses, such as the Mary Evans Picture Gallery, Corbis (Corbis-Bettmann), Hulton Archive (Radio Times Hulton Picture Library), the Bridgeman Art Library, or Getty Images. Alternatively, illustrations are taken from secondary works which themselves have depended on commercial houses or the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. To construct a website database of pictorial images of New World slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, Handler has consulted hundreds of volumes and collections. His general impression is that authors, especially of books or encyclopedias destined for a commercial market and wide general readership, pay insufficient attention (or no attention) to the historical and bibliographic contexts of the illustrations they use, often relying on publishers and photo researchers to acquire images for them. Commercial photo libraries that sell images of slavery and the slave trade rarely give bibliographic information on their images, and if they do, the information is often inadequate and misleading at best and inaccurate at worst. Even the Library of Congress attributions to primary sources are occasionally imprecise or incorrect. Moreover, the commercial libraries often provide misleading historical contexts, if they offer a historical context at all. Authors or their agents who use illustrations from these houses frequently (unwittingly) perpetuate the bibliographic and historical errors. Unsuspecting users of these works, including the authors of websites, compound the errors even further. Slavery and Abolition Vol. 27, No. 1, April 2006, pp. 51–71