The archaeology of transatlantic slavery Archaeologist Katie
Hedley recording a test pit in New River on Nevis The
archaeological record of slave sites consists of physical traces
that include, but are not limited to, pottery and glass vessels
used in cooking and dining, bones from the animals they ate,
buttons and beads from the clothing they wore, and architectural
materials from the houses in which they lived. Since there was
no rubbish collection, these objects were discarded in areas
where people lived and were the inevitable and unintended result
of everyday life. The archaeological record represents peoples’
daily lives in a way that documents cannot because its creation
does not depend on the presence of a literate observer. In the
case of slavery, that literate observer was most often a slave
owner, an overseer, or European traveller. These individuals all
had different motivations for recording their inevitably biased
observations in writing. With a few famous exceptions, few
enslaved individuals le