Afro Diasporic Objects - Blog Posts

In the 1970s, excavations at the Newton Slave Burial Ground uncovered the grave of a man believed to be a healer or spiritual figure. He was buried with powerful objects: metal jewelry, an iron knife, and a short-stemmed clay pipe likely made in Ghana.

Among his burial items was a necklace made from a mix of beads, some with fascinating origins.

One glass bead, made with European powder glass, was probably crafted in Ghana.

Another, a cylindrical carnelian bead, came from Cambay, India ; a region known for carnelian bead production since the first millennium. These beads were traded through East Africa, across the Sahara, and into West Africa.

Other elements of the necklace could have been acquired in Barbados, but together they reflect a deep continuity of African cultural traditions in the Caribbean.

Scholar Jerome Handler used ethnographic sources from West Africa to interpret the necklace, and strongly argued that the man was likely seen as an obeah or healer by the enslaved community at Newton.

This burial is one of the most powerful archaeological cases for the survival of African spiritual identity through the horrors of the Middle Passage and slavery.

Figure animalière sur une production culturelle du groupe Aluku, en Guyane. Le serpent est animal privilégié dans la cosmogonie des peuples Marons et Amérindiens de Guyane. Le serpent se retrouve régulièrement dans les productions artisanales et artistiques. Chez les Aluku, il est à la fois le symbole du féminin et du masculin. Plus largement dans les traditions afro-diasporique, comme dans le sèvi Ginen (vodoun ayitien), il peut être associé a des esprits ou des divinités. On retrouve aussi le symbole du serpent sur des productions matérielles du peuple Akan (Ghana).