Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:19:32.637Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cist graves on Saba: funerary traditions in the colonial Caribbean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2019

Ryan Espersen Open the ORCID record for Ryan Espersen [Opens in a new window]  and
Jay Haviser
Ryan Espersen*
Affiliation:
Saba Archaeological Center, 3 Fort Street, Windwardside, 00000, Saba, Dutch Caribbean
Jay Haviser
Affiliation:
St Maarten Archaeological Center, 33 Welgelegen Road, Unit 1, Cay Hill, Sint Maarten, Dutch Caribbean
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Stone cist graves dating to the Bronze Age through to the late medieval period are well attested across Western Europe. In the Americas, such cist graves are found only on the island of Saba in the Dutch Caribbean. First starting in the colonial period, this funerary practice continues on Saba to the present day, representing a cultural continuity with rural seventeenth-century populations—probably settlers from the British Isles. This article discusses the recent excavation of several cist burials on Saba, their structural forms and their relevance for understanding cultural continuity in the Caribbean of the historical period.

Keywords

CaribbeanSababurial practiceshistorical archaeologycolonialismslavery
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 93 , Issue 371 , October 2019 , pp. 1322 - 1338
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anonymous. 1773. Letter from Saban heads of households to the Dutch West Indies Company. Dutch National Archives 1.05.06.13 #1151. The Hague: Dutch National Archives.Google Scholar
Armstrong, D. & Fleischmann, M.L.. 2003. House-yard burials of enslaved laborers in eighteenth-century Jamaica. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7: 33–65. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023227303302Google Scholar
Blouet, H.C. 2013. Interpretations of burial and commemoration in Moravian and African diasporas on St John, Virgin Islands. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 17: 731–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-013-0241-2Google Scholar
Brown, V. 2010. The reaper's garden: death and power in the world of Atlantic slavery. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cherryson, A., Crossland, Z. & Tarlow, S.. 2012. A fine and private place: the archaeology of death and burial in post-medieval Britain and Ireland. Leicester: University of Leicester Press.Google Scholar
Courtaud, P. 2013. Le cimetière, comme miroir de l'esclavage: approche archéologique. Le cimetière d'Anse Sainte-Marguerite (Guadeloupe). In Situ: Revue des Patrimoines 20(2013). https://doi.org/10.4000/insitu.10092Google Scholar
Courtaud, P., Delpuech, A. & Romon, T.. 1999. Archeological investigations at colonial cemeteries on Guadeloupe: African slave burial sites or not?, in Haviser, J. (ed.) African sites: archeology in the Carribbean: 277–90. Princeton (NJ): Markus Wiener.Google Scholar
Crane, J. 1971. Educated to emigrate: the social organization of Saba. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Crane, J. 1989. Statia silhouettes. New York: Vantage.Google Scholar
Espersen, R. 2017. ‘Better than we’: landscapes and materialities of race, class, and gender in pre-emancipation colonial Saba, Dutch Caribbean. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Leiden University.Google Scholar
Espersen, R. 2018. From Hell's gate to the Promised Land: perspectives of poverty on Saba, Dutch Caribbean, 1780 to mid 20th-century. Historical Archaeology 53: 773–97.10.1007/s41636-018-0147-2Google Scholar
Espersen, R. & Haviser, J.. 2018. SB 037, the Fort Gut Ridge site: an archaeological survey and limited excavations. Unpublished Saba Archaeological Center site report.Google Scholar
France, J. 1846. La vérité et les faits de l'esclavage à nu: dans ses rapports avec les maîtres et les agents de l'autorité, avec pièces justificatives. Paris: Chez Moreau.Google Scholar
Fricke, F. 2016. Skeletal report: the Fort Bay Ridge site (SB 037), BF1 (individuals 1 and 2). Unpublished Saba Archaeological Center site report.Google Scholar
Fricke, F. 2019. The lifeways of enslaved people in Curacao, St. Eustatius, and St. Maarten/St. Martin: a thematic analysis of archaeological, osteological, and oral historical data. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Kent.Google Scholar
Gilmore, J.K. 2008. Leprosy at the Lazaretto on St Eustatius, Netherlands Antilles. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 18: 72–84. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.929Google Scholar
Handler, J.S. 1997. An African-type healer/diviner and his grave goods: a burial from a plantation slave cemetery in Barbados, West Indies. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1: 91–130. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1027355822317Google Scholar
Handler, J.S. & Lange, F.W.. 1978. Plantation slavery in Barbados: an archaeological and historical investigation. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674332362Google Scholar
Hartog, J. 1975. History of Saba. Curaçao: Van Guilder.Google Scholar
Hassell, H. 1873. Bill of sale of land from William James Benjamin Hassell to Lt Governor Moses Leverock, in Saba Vendue Book, 1816–1873: 204. Saba: Saba Planning Bureau.Google Scholar
Haviser, J. 2006. Archaeological excavations of a 19th century Dutch priest of the Dominican Order, buried on St Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. Unpublished site report. St Maarten: St Maarten Archaeological Center.Google Scholar
Haviser, J. 2017. White burials at Emilio Wilson Estate, St Maarten, Dutch Caribbean. Unpublished site report. St Maarten: St Maarten Archaeological Center.Google Scholar
Johnson, W. 2014. Saban lore: tales from my grandmother's pipe. Self published.Google Scholar
Laffoon, J., Rojas, R. Varácel & Hofman, C.. 2012. Oxygen and carbon isotope analysis of human dental enamel from the Caribbean: implications for investigating individual origins. Archaeometry 55: 742–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2012.00698.xGoogle Scholar
Laffoon, J., Espersen, R. & Mickleburgh, H.. 2018a. Life history of an enslaved African: multiple isotope evidence for forced childhood migration from Africa to the Caribbean and associated dietary change. Archaeometry 60: 350–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12354Google Scholar
Laffoon, J., Fricke, F., Espersen, R. & Hoogland, M.L.P. 2018b. Unforgotten: osteobiography of an enslaved woman from eighteenth century Saba. Unpublished research paper, Caribbean Research Group. Leiden: Leiden University.Google Scholar
Lenik, S. 2004. Historical archaeological approaches to Afro-Cruzan identity at Estate Lower Bethlehem, St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Unpublished MA dissertation, Columbia, University of South Carolina.Google Scholar
Miller, G., Samford, P., Shasko, E. & Madsen, A.. 2000. Telling time for archaeologists. Northeast Historical Archaeology 29(2): 2–22. https://doi.org/10.22191/neha/vol29/iss1/2Google Scholar
Ó’Carragáin, T. 2010. Churches in early medieval Ireland: architecture, ritual and memory. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ogundiran, A. & Saunders, P.. 2014. Materialities of ritual in the Black Atlantic. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.Google Scholar
Riordan, T.B. & Mitchell, R.M.. 2011. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century brick-lined graves: their construction and chronology. Historical Archaeology 45: 91–101. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377307Google Scholar
Rogers, D. 2015. Voix d'esclaves: Antilles, Guyane et Louisiane françaises, xviiie–xixe siècles. Paris: Éditions Karthala.Google Scholar
Rojas, R.V. 2016. Archaeology of early colonial interaction at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.10.2307/j.ctvx1htjmGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, H., Haviser, J. & Price, T.D.. 2012. The Zoutsteeg three: three new cases of African types of dental modification from Saint Martin, Dutch Caribbean. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 24: 668–96. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.2253Google Scholar
Turner, G. 2018. Honoring ancestors in sacred space. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9781683400202.001.0001Google Scholar
Watters, D.R. 1994. Mortuary patterns at the Harney Site slave cemetery, Montserrat, in Caribbean perspective. Historical Archaeology 28: 56–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374190Google Scholar