Archaeology of Slavery in North America

I have been captivated by archaeology and I never thought I would. I say this because it never crossed my mind that I might be interested in this branch of Anthropology. It was first piqued back in 2009 when Dr. Stahl was just settling in here at UVIC and teaching her course on the Archaeology of Africa. I was simultaneously reading the Book of Negros and was stunned when I saw that the book was accurate in its depiction of it's time. I noticed the similarities in iron making and other metal works that Dr. Stalh had lectured about. This interest, however fervorant, dissipated as a I left school, went wandering in Barkley Sound for a few months and ended up in Kamloops selling Volkswagens, I all but forgot my sudden passion, until....

I ended up in Anth 392 and found once again a new interest in archaeology. While I took the course I fond a book in the book-exchenge in in the laundry room of my apartment. It was called "Roots". Now the point of this blog (you may be wondering) is that never before have I stumbled upon an interest that gets me so fired up! I think about research that i could do, what if there was an international NAGPRA of sorts? Would 1st generation slave (or 2nd or 3rd) remains be repatriated to Africa? Well of course not, just play the tape forward a little and you can see the major flaws. But this type of idea has me so engrossed in what excavation has been done in North America concerning those brought here on slave ships. Where are they buried? Have they been excavated? What did they find? How long before their cultural identity was stripped did they engrain their legacy when burying the dead? What was passed down??? I know these are questions that have most likely been answered but I still don't know them but I intend to find out. Just by reading these two books I realize how much I do not know about the dead and what it means to people. I don't even know what it means to me, to be honest. I intend on moving forward in my quest to find out what happened in a space and time where a new culture was formed by group under duress and oppression and without a language they were aloud to speak. For now I will finish that last pages of "Roots"

(links below are articles about African American slavery archaeology)

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2946825?uid=3739400&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=47698821244877

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/2155932?&Search=yes&searchText=archaeology&searchText=african&searchText=american&searchText=slavery&searchText=culture&searchText=material&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dthe%2Barchaeology%2Bof%2Bafrican%2Bamerican%2Bslavery%2Band%2Bmaterial%2Bculture%26Search.x%3D0%26Search.y%3D0%26wc%3Don&prevSearch=&item=1&ttl=3016&returnArticleService=showFullText

Sandra anderson and her bone sniffing dog Eagle a hoax

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/dogs/index.html

The dog is not at fault. He was just trying to be a good dog and a loyal pet...and he was. It was his handler Sandra Anderson that brought disgrace this 'eagle-eyed' canine and thus upon herself. Most notably Anderson and Eagle were commissioned to assist in a land dispute between American Indian bands concerning burial grounds. This is a massive responsibility where repatriation of sacred land to the right band was hinged on her findings. Archeologists that had previously done research on the area were suspicious of what Anderson and Eagle found. As is noted in the article, if Anderson's account of where Eagle had detected remains were in fact validated this would deem the area the largest Native American burial ground in the Upper Midwest. While her claim was never overturned due to land use regulations against excavation a small sample of what lay beneath was nothing more than bedrock.
This is one example of the many travesties caused by Anderson and her actions called into question the validity of dog scent detection, which has shown much promise in the recovery of human remains.

Eagle and Anderson worked on war crime evidence recovery in Panama and in Bosnia as well as in the rubble at the World Trade Centers. These are not small expeditions by any means and  Eagle was recalled as a very well trained and resourceful sniffer dog (http://truthinjustice.org/sandra-anderson.htm). The unfortunate part is that she brought a lot of pain and undeserved suffering to many families whom counted on law enforcement and their affiliates to bring peace to them in recovering remains.

Jamer gets skateable memorial

http://www.timescolonist.com/travel/City+agrees+memorial+skateboarder/6161833/story.html

Celebrated tattoo artist and legendary skateboarder will get the memorial he deserves! A skate-able feature at the Vic West Skate Park will memorialize Jamer and his efforts in skateboarding community. Not only that but I am so very sure it will be there to be decorated with graffiti.... This is a fine example of a community coming together to remember a person how THEY would want to be remembered.... We have been talking a lot about the context in which a body is found. If there are grave goods are they of the person or their family? I had a friend who was no doubt as prolific as Jamer (and also a friend of his) who died in the late nineties of suicide. He was an amazing graffiti artist and mentally suffered horribly from schitzophrenia.  The service was in a church and shrouded in religion. I don't think this is what Hanz would have wanted.... It was for his family and not for him. That does not make it wrong but brings up a lot of questions like who is the funeral for? The family deserves to grieve how they want and suffers as well.... But it was hard for the friends of Hanz that knew this is not what he would have wanted... or was it?

What are you going to do with that totem?

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Thieves+remove+totem+pole+marking+First+Nation+grave/6196364/story.html


This is a perplexing account of a family that have fallen victim to thieves that must have some motive other than financial gain. What could the thieves possibly want with the totem? Was is a personal attack on the family or sheer insensitive vandalism?

Death of a city

I know this class is about human death but I thought this was interesting. I thought about what would happen if these buildings were just left to decompose forever...what would future archaeologists think? War? Nuclear meltdown?

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/02/07/captured-the-ruins-of-detroit/2672/

EDITED: Monument's of Shame...Yes a sweeping declaration and fairly dramatic... I am aware

We chose the graves based on what we could state with clarity. The back of the cemetery has an area that is filled with Chineese and other graves that were either moved there for specific reasons sat in their original context. The graves we chose gave a good overall view of what was in the cemetery without having to document them all. Some were clearly marked and had been restored, others were clearly left to disintegrate but held a deep and rich history. We chose to look at the memorial monuments dedicated to war heroes and service men from Victoria as well as the some of the family graves from the late 1800's. SO in short I believe we chose a sample of graves to represent the entirely of the park/cemetery


Some of the questions that came up during our project were why were certain materials used for some and not for others? And why are some obviously taken care of, restored and re-headed and others left to natural decomposition? The main question that I became concerned with was why use sandstone at all?  It is notably used in cemeteries in Australia but it is clear it is not used as the primary material for the monuments:  “Sandstone was also used for headstones. However, most sandstone in cemeteries is used for kerbing or railing blocks or as plinths for marble headstones. Sandstone headstones are susceptible to weathering and erosion (http://jaunay.com/historic_graves.pdf)”. The climate here in Victoria is in obvious conflict with the use of such a material and the graves are a testament to that as in the Sutlej Obelisk: “ HMS Sutlej was a Royal Navy ship stationed at Esquimalt from 1863 to 1867. This obelisk was erected when the ship returned to England. The names have now crumbled away, but include those of many men who were buried at sea while serving here, plus the name of Maggie Sutlej, a First Nations orphan girl who was cared for by the wife of Admiral Denman aboard the ship (http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/cem_pn.htm).”

            Understandably the newer monuments, which were built with government dollars have no affliction to economic instability and would account for a possible reason for the sandstone being used during an earlier period. My main concern was the fact that graves are simply not cared for and as outlined in the article “Historic South Australian Graves and Cemeteries” it is plainly outlined that, “[c]emeteries and graves are important as both social and aesthetic elements of a community and they tell an important part of its story. Sometimes they are the only record of a group or settlement. Cemeteries therefore are commemorative landscapes of memory and history (http://jaunay.com/historic_graves.pdf)”. This is simply not the case in Pioneer Square. There is an overbearing, prominent feature that is the focal point of the space and, however kindly dedicated, to war heroes it is not impervious to the fact that the history is lost to the layman’s observation. Why are some memorials and gravesites so well tended to and the others lost in environmental obliteration? The one that bothered me the most was the Charles Rufus Robinson Grave: “Only the base of a much larger monument remains on Robson’s grave. While commander of the gunboat Forward in 1860 he rescued the crews of two ships off the west coast of Vancouver Island, but less than a year later he died after falling off his horse in Victoria. A carved broken mast, symbolizing a sailor’s life cut short, once stood above the pedestal

(http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/cem_pn.htm).” How wonderful would that be to have restored. Instead it is nothing more than misshapen block of sandstone covered in environmental debris.

            The questions left unanswered could be sought out by going to the Victoria Historical society to find out why there are so many graves left unattended and why the sandstone was used but I have a feeling that the answer is a financial one in both regards.

The context of the graves are left for the layman only to presuppose that the ones taken care of are important while the ones left to essentially rot are not. What about the people that are buried there that is not even represented? Unless one were to go to the Victoria archives one would not know what history lies beneath.

            And why? WHY?! Use sandstone….!? It makes no sense. Besides a financial benefit or a lack of understanding of the materials, this anthropology student is left perplexed!

http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?msid=216867271032167791830.0004b8a259463316b79f4&msa=0&ll=48.42392%2c-123.360015&spn=0.000913%2c0.001966&iwloc=0004b8b80e9d53eaea152

Works Cited

McDougall and Vines, 2004, Historic Southern Australian Graves and Cemeteries, Conservation Guidelines, Department for Environment and Heritage. http://jaunay.com/historic_graves.pdf. February 17th, 2012. 

Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria, Pioneer Square. http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/cem_pn.htm, February 12th, 2012.

Self Immoliation

http://www.voanews.com/tibetan-english/news/22nd-Tibetan-Self-Immolates-in-Anti-China-Protest-139158219.html

I know this is not a burial but in the context of death and burial I thought it was kind of relevant. I was thinking of how we try to put into context the circumstances of death when we excavate and with this I wonder how she will be buried or in-memorandum? Since it is such a politically significant death and will be met with a range of emotions it would be very interesting to see how the burial is carried out....

Love Linds