The year 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the nominal abolition of slavery. To commemorate this anniversary the North West Region of the Council for British Archaeology held a one day conference at the Maritime Museum in Liverpool. This conference coincided with the opening of the International Slavery Museum. A Transatlantic Slavery Gallery had been open at the Maritime Museum since 1994, however, David Fleming, the director of National Museums Liverpool had proposed a complete restructuring and relocation of the Gallery into an internationally recognised Museum (Reference FlemingFleming 2007).

William Prescott, a former slave, wrote in 1932 that: 'They will remember that we were sold but not that we were strong. They will remember that we were bought but not that we were brave.'

The International Slavery Museum takes the visitor on a journey to the darkest era of human history when millions of Africans were enslaved and shipped across the Atlantic to work the plantations of the West Indies and the southern United States of America. Using a combination of traditional static displays, interactive models and multimedia the visitor is given an insight into the life of a Transatlantic slave. The final destination of the exhibition is the legacy of the music, literature, art and politics that has 'benefitted' humanity as a result of this tragic era. This new museum opened to the public on 23rd August 2007, the date now set aside as 'International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.'

The conference drew together scholars from a wide variety of studies into the Archaeology of Slavery from the known slavery of the classical and Egyptian world through the colonial and Afro-Caribbean eras of the seventeeth to nineteenth centuries to the present day institutional enslavement of peoples that occurs in, for example, the use of migrant labour in the agricultural industry of the east of England.

Figure 1.

White's plantation, windmill C viewed from the west. Photo © Rob Philpott, National Museums Liverpool.

Peter Carrington (Chester Archaeology and Chair of CBA(NW)) chaired the conference and gave the opening lecture on Slavery in the Roman World in which he outlined the five principal states involved in the Slave Trade throughout the course of history, namely, Greece, Rome, Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States of America. Well over 100 million people had been enslaved over the course of human history and, of these, 11 million were Africans transported to the Caribbean and southern United States. Several major cities throughout the Roman Empire, for example Delos, Byzantium, Ephesus, Rome and Pompei have clear evidence for their involvement in slavery. Other archaeological evidence for slavery includes the tombstone of a slave trader. Slavery was an intrinsic part of Graeco-Roman civilisation and was inseparable from the growth of democracy.

The second lecture was given by Rob Philpott from National Museums Liverpool who has recently been working out in Nevis and St Kitts surveying and excavating slave plantations in the St Mary Cayon parish as well as other areas of these islands looking for the architecture associated with plantations especially the mill (such as the one in Figure 1), processing plant, conduits feeding the boiling house and domestic buildings where the slaves were housed. Several early nineteenth-century maps, especially those by William McMahon of around 1828, show individual plantations and include such details as 'negro houses.' Many of these plantations had grand houses for the owners to live in such as the one below which belonged to Ottley (see Figure 2).

Of course, it is the transatlantic slave trade that is uppermost in most people's mind and Ben Kankpeyeng from Ghana who is working as a visiting British Academy Fellow at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne addressed the conference on both the history of slavery in his country which dates back to around the turn of the first millennium AD and includes trans-Saharan slavery and the transatlantic slavery that Ghana and the West Coast was directly involved with. Slavery was still an accepted part of society in Ghana up until as recently as June 1998 when it was finally made illegal. Documentary evidence for Ghanaian slavery in the Middle Ages comes from Ibn Battuta in the ninth century, however, it was the Portugese who were the first Europeans to enslaven Ghanaian citizens in the seventeenth century. There are over 60 coastal forts and castles along Ghana's Atlantic coast which were built to house captured slaves prior to shipment across to the Caribbean and USA. One of these castles, Elmina Castle, (http://www.ghanaembassy.or.jp/travel/forts-castles.html) has been excavated by Diog Simmonds. The Danish also enslaved Ghanaians to work on tobacco plantations within Ghana.

At the conference lunch interval delegates had the opportunity to visit the new International Slavery Museum.

Figure 2.

Photo © Rob Philpott, National Museums Liverpool.

The afternoon session began with a talk by Jane Webster, also from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne on an area of Slavery Archaeology that is not often appreciated, the Archaeology of the Middle Passage, that is, the ships which transported the slaves across the Atlantic and were unfortunately lost at sea. Marine Archaeology in the Caribbean and off the coast of the United States tends to focus on the treasure hunting of Spanish Galleons hopefully laden with gold but some marine archaeologists are now turning their attention to other shipping and include Slave ships in their research. Some of these ships were lost at the time they were transporting slaves and others began life as slave ships but were then captured by pirates. There is also the case of a ship, 'The Troubadour,' wrecked off the Turks and Caicos Island in the Caribbean. All 193 African slaves on board survived the wreck and settled on the island and the genealogy of the inhabitants of this island can be traced back directly to this ship. Jane also highlighted the fact that the whole of continental Africa had been affected by slavery and brought to our attention a project looking at East African slavery which can be found at http://www.jmr.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/ConJmrArticle.209. There is also a Transatlantic Slave Trade Database now available on CD-Rom.

David Wyatt from Cardiff University looked at slavery in the Irish Sea Region during the immediate post-Conquest era looking at how slavery marginalises certain members of society thus reinforcing certain élite. Many English chroniclers suggested that battles against the Welsh and the Scots were 'crusades' and were justifiable whereas Welsh, Scottish and Irish chronicles refer to the 'heathen vagabonds!'

The final talk was given by Miranda Aldhouse-Green, also from Cardiff University and looked at the ritualisation and restraint of slaves especially the humiliation and denial of identity which can often be seen in iconography from Egypt. Classical authors such as Strabo and Tacitus also refer to the treatment of slaves. There is also archaeological evidence for slavery such as slaves being buried in unorthodox graves without grave goods and often bound such as a burial in Olcroghan, Eire which dates to around 300 BC in which the body is bound with leather straps but has Le Tène style ringlets.

This conference, then, covered a very diverse approach to the archaeology of slavery and demonstrates that there is a lot of crucial research being carried out and still needed to be done.