Born into Captivity: Bioarchaeological Perspectives toward Enslaved Children and Childhood in Colonial Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Afro-Latin American Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Children and childhood have emerged as important topics for understanding the history of African slavery in the Americas. In historical archaeology, analyses of subadult skeletal remains have provided valuable information about the biological and social conditions of captivity. However, in spite of these contributions, children are still infrequently posited as primary subjects of study in African diaspora bioarchaeology. Recent research at Hacienda La Quebrada, a late colonial sugar plantation in central Peru, brings new data to bear on these subjects. Drawing on five years of archaeological, bioarchaeological, and historical research at the site, this presentation explores how the environmental and social landscapes of plantation slavery impacted the lives of enslaved children in Peru’s coastal sugar economy during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. How were the social identities of enslaved children of African descent defined in this particular sociocultural context? In what ways did these perspectives shape their treatment in the plantation community? Finally, what impacts did these conditions have on the embodied experiences of enslaved children? By situating research findings in a child-centered approach, this presentation hopes to illuminate the embodied experiences and social agency of a group that is often overlooked in African diaspora scholarship.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Afro-Latin American Landscapes

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32367