Twenty-nine skeletons from the first cemetery in New Orleans provide significant new information about urban slavery in America. Dating as early as 1720 and used perhaps as late as 1810, the cemetery provided an identifiable sample of two whites, 13 blacks, one individual of possible Indian-white ancestry, and two possibly mulatto individuals. Numerous skeletal and dental lesions were noted in the series, and historical information was used in conjunction with the physical data to draw conclusions about rates and patterns of mortality. Pathological changes indicate that the cemetery contained individuals representing two slave occupational groups, house servants and laborers. This research provides information in the expanding area of Afro-American biohistorical research.
Archaeologists currently studying the African diaspora generally examine three broad issues, in decreasing order of prominence: the material identification of African identity, the archaeology of freedom at maroon sites, and race and racism. While conducting this research, several scholars have learned that many nonarchaeologists are deeply interested in their interpretations. At the present time, the archaeology of the African diaspora is not a truly global pursuit and the New World is overrepresented. This situation should change as archaeologists around the world discover post-Columbian archaeology and take up diasporic investigations.
Historical archaeologists should be leaders in examining the archaeological dimensions of race and racism in the United States. With few exceptions, though, this has not been the case, as most archaeologists have conflated race and ethnicity. American historical archaeologists have a great opportunity to provide new insights to the anthropological investigation of race and racism if they choose to take this course of action,
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