Osteobiographies of British Prisoners from the Old Convict Burial Ground on Watford Island, Bermuda

Summary

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The unexpected discovery of human remains from an unmarked cemetery for convicts located on Watford Island, Bermuda provides a unique opportunity to reconstruct the lives of these forgotten builders of the British Royal Naval Dockyard, now a major tourist destination. Buried in the early 1850s, the remains of at least seven men represent more than 9,000 British and Irish prisoners forcibly transported to Bermuda between 1823 and 1863 to serve their sentences. Incarcerated initially in prison hulks moored at Bermuda’s western and eastern ends and later in a shore prison, more than 2,000 of the prisoners died as the result of hard labor, accidents, epidemics, nationalistic mob violence, and mutinies. This paper describes the bioarchaeological analysis of the men’s remains and presents the osteological evidence of their health status, disease markers, causes of death, and the personal activities that reflect their lives as prisoners in Bermuda’s penal colony in paradise.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2020 SHA General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 411