Research: Metallurgy of the slave trade
For some 300 years between c.1550 and 1850, Africans were carried forcibly into slavery across the Atlantic. The commodification of these individuals, and the chain of thought and actions by which they passed from Africa to the Americas, and from personhood to chattel status, is well understood. Far less attention has been paid to the commodities for which Africans were themselves exchanged, and to the role of manufactured goods in shaping and sustaining the slave trade. This project will focus on the ‘life histories’ of metal trade goods produced for the British slave trade (1680-1807). Employing an archaeological methodology drawing on both chaîne opératoire analysis and the concept of artefact biography, it will ask what information exploration of the life histories of artefacts manufactured specifically for the trade might potentially shed on the chain of human actions and interactions which sustained the business of slaving, and enabled Britain to dominate the transatlantic slave trade between c.1720 and 1807.
Project leader: Michael Smith
Project supervisors: Jane Webster and Andrea Dolfini
