Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Bioarchaeological Investigation of Patterns of Health and Stress Among Enslaved Africans

The transatlantic slave trade was an economic system designed to minimize labor costs and maximize output, which had extreme adverse impacts on the health of enslaved Africans. The impact of these practices on their overall health and stress are also reflected in pathological indicators that can be observed in the skeleton. This doctoral dissertation research advances knowledge about the health of Africans sold through the transatlantic slave trades, within the larger context of world history and using theoretical frameworks of is a bioarchaeology and structural violence.

More broadly, the project helps to identify the origins of inequality and its biological impacts in the past, present, and future. The project supports the training of a first-generation student from a historically underrepresented minority in STEM as well as the development of a database for the meta-analysis of health and stress in the past.

This project evaluates the prevalence of macroscopic manifestations of stress and poor health for skeletal remains of Africans who were enslaved on a sugar plantation. Skeletal indicators for these individuals are compared to a growing collection of meta-data on health and stress. The database for the meta-analysis includes information on dental health, skeletal infection, degenerative joint disease, trauma, and nutritional deficiency from populations representing different adaptive strategies and socio-economic status worldwide throughout history.

The project aims to address two major questions. (1) How did the process of harvesting and refining sugar impact the physiological health of enslaved Africans? (2) How does the severity and prevalence of skeletal indicators of stress observable on enslaved Africans compare to those indicators on other marginalized populations throughout history? The PIs make several predictions about expected levels of stress, including with reference to subsistence strategies and gender roles.

The comparative data used in the project are from both dominant and marginalized populations throughout world history, which will assist in quantifying the biological effects of slavery practices in multiple locations and time periods.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.