Newton Slave Burial Ground

Newton Slave Burial Ground is an industrial heritage site and informal cemetery in Barbados. It was used by people enslaved at the adjacent Newton Plantation.[1][2][3][4] The site has been owned by the Barbados Museum & Historical Society since 1993.[1] It has been subject to excavations since the 1970s,[5][4][3][2] which have produced information regarding slave lifeways including resistance,[4][6][7] health,[3][4] and culture.[3][4][8][9]

History

Main article: History of Barbados

Officially colonized by the British in 1627,[4] Barbados was by the end of the seventeenth century the richest possession of Britain's Caribbean empire.[4] The Bajan economy was driven by, and dependent on, slave labor,[4][3][2] which played out on cash-crop plantations throughout the island.[4][2] One such site was the Newton Plantation, roughly 9.2 km (5.7 mi) east of the port of Bridgetown in the parish of Christ Church.[10] The adjacent Newton Slave Burial Ground became the final resting place of over 570 African, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Bajan persons enslaved there from c. 1670-1833.[2][10] Established by Derbyshire native Samuel Newton in the 1660s,[10][11] the plantation grew sugarcane and produced rum and molasses,[12][10] and its height of production coincided with Barbados' prominence in the British empirical economy during the seventeenth century.[10] The plantation held slaves at least as recently as 1828,[13] six years before slavery was abolished on the island in 1834.

Until the last quarter of the 17th century, the Newton Plantation was a major source of Maroon communities on the island.[4] Increasingly draconian preventative tactics were implemented at the site to dissuade potential escapees, including slaves being branded with an "N" to indicate their status as property of the Newton Plantation.[6] Slaves continued to escape in spite of these measures,[6] settling in Barbados and acquiring fraudulent documents attesting to their freedom or escaping the island completely.[6] Barbados was subject to such an extreme influx of slaves,[7] though, that the plantation's authority did not always invest in pursuing escapees, and even manumitted elderly slaves no longer able to work in the cane fields.[6] Indeed, people of African descent made up three-quarters of the island's population by 1700,[7] and enslaved Black Africans made up between 70 and 90 percent of migration to the island between 1670 and 1720.[7]

Excavation

The site was initially excavated in the 1970s by American archaeologists Drs. Jerome Handler and Frederick Lange, who worked to elucidate colonial-era slave lifeways on Barbados.[5] The Barbados Museum and Historical Society presides over the site's preservation.[10]

Osteology has shed light on the quality of slave life and their cultural lifeways at the plantation. Examination of skeletal remains at the Newton burial ground suggests a life expectancy of 29 years, a figure in conflict with historical records indicating a life expectancy of 20 years.[3] Despite the slightly longer lifespan, skeletal remains also yields evidence of periodic starvation among Newton's slave population.[3] Moreover, osteological analysis suggests a low infant mortality rate, again in contrast with a historical demography that reports high rates of death among infants.[3] Tooth analysis indicates slaves regularly smoked tobacco and exhibited incisor mutilations,[3] the latter of which may have been a performative practice retained from the African continent or adopted by indigenous Caribbeans.[8] Human remains at Newton were buried in a deliberate, non-arbitrary manner, possibly indicating the maintenance of systems of kinship among the site's slaves.[3]

Retention of indigenous culture

Dated to the late 17th or early 18th centuries, archaeologists have been intrigued by the remains of a young adult woman enslaved at the site.[9] The circumstances of her burial are abnormal, as she was interned in the largest artificial mound at the site without a coffin or other grave goods.[9] Osteological analysis detected extremely high levels of lead in her body, which may have contributed to her death as she appears to have been otherwise healthy.[9] The positioning of her body, too, is inconsistent with the rest of the remains at the burial ground, being the only person positioned face-down.[9] This is characteristic of West African mortuary practices,[9] and suggests that the slaves at Newton retained and maintained Indigenous cultural practices at the site.[4][3][9]

References

1. "Barbados Museum and Historical Society". Slavery and Remembrance. Retrieved 2022-02-28.
2. Shuler, K. A. (2011). "Life and death on a Barbadian sugar plantation: historic and bioarchaeological views of infection and mortality at Newton Plantation". International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 21 (1): 66–81. doi:10.1002/oa.1108. ISSN 1099-1212.
3. Corruccini, Robert S.; Handler, Jerome S.; Mutaw, Robert J.; Lange, Frederick W. (1982). "Osteology of a slave burial population from Barbados, West Indies". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 59 (4): 443–459. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330590414. ISSN 1096-8644. PMID 6762099.
4. Handler, Jerome S.; Corruccini, Robert S. (1983). "Plantation Slave Life in Barbados: A Physical Anthropological Analysis". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 14 (1): 65–90. doi:10.2307/203517. ISSN 0022-1953. JSTOR 203517. PMID 11617355.
5. Handler, Jerome S.; Lange, Frederick W. (April 26, 1978). Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674332362.^[page needed]
6. Handler, Jerome S. (1997-01-01). "Escaping slavery in a Caribbean plantation society : marronage in Barbados, 1650s-1830s". New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. 71 (3–4): 183–225. doi:10.1163/13822373-90002605. ISSN 1382-2373.
7. Galenson, David W. (1982). "The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Barbados Market, 1673-1723". The Journal of Economic History. 42 (3): 491–511. doi:10.1017/S0022050700027935. ISSN 0022-0507. JSTOR 2120603. S2CID 154220595.
8. Roksandic, Mirjana; Alarie, Kaitlynn; Suárez, Roberto Rodríguez; Huebner, Erwin; Roksandic, Ivan (2016-04-12). "Not of African Descent: Dental Modification among Indigenous Caribbean People from Canímar Abajo, Cuba". PLOS ONE. 11 (4): e0153536. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1153536R. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0153536. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 4829177. PMID 27071012.
9. Handler, Jerome S. (1996-09-01). "A prone burial from a plantation slave cemetery in Barbados, West Indies: Possible evidence for an African-type witch or other negatively viewed person". Historical Archaeology. 30 (3): 76–86. doi:10.1007/BF03374222. ISSN 2328-1103. S2CID 163299265.
10. "Newton Plantation Collection". Lowcountry Digital Library. Retrieved 2022-02-04.
11. Papers of the Newton Family. 1680–1920.
12. "Newton Plantation Sugar Book 1849". Lowcountry Digital Library. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
13. "Newton Plantation Slave List 1828". Lowcountry Digital Library. Retrieved 2022-02-22.

13.08713°N 59.53379°W / 13.08713; -59.53379