Comparing Age-at-Death Profiles from Cemeteries on Sint Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Exploring Globalization and Colonialism through Archaeology and Bioarchaeology: An NSF REU Sponsored Site on the Caribbean’s Golden Rock (Sint Eustatius)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

On the Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius (Statia), there are several cemeteries dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily utilized during a time of colonization and trade by the European colonial powers, Netherlands, Great Britain and France. Cemeteries with gravestones denoting the names and ages of those buried are all associated with the European inhabitants, while an unmarked cemetery dating to the 18th century investigated during 2018 likely contains the burials of enslaved Africans from a nearby plantation. This project investigates whether differences in social status and ancestry between individuals interred in these cemeteries is reflected in the respective age-at-death profiles. Furthermore, data from a contemporaneous plantation cemetery for enslaved Africans on Barbados is used to expand the comparison to a different cultural context. Comparing the resultant graphs and trends for the ages-at-death across the cemeteries, it appears that there are not significant differences across the cemeteries on Statia and Barbados.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Exploring Globalization and Colonialism through Archaeology and Bioarchaeology: An NSF REU Sponsored Site on the Caribbean’s Golden Rock (Sint Eustatius)   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25808