History of the Slave Wrecks Project (SWP) in Mozambique

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "The Underwater Archeology of a French Slave Ship In Northern Mozambique- L'Aurore", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

SWP is an international network investigating the global history/legacies of the African slave trade. It was launched in 2008 in recognition that archeology had mostly ignored thousands of wrecks of ships once engaged in the slave trade. While performing this research, SWP diversifies the field by engaging new networks of emerging scholars of African descent, as well as scholars engaged in the study of the African diaspora. SWP’s work is grounded in collaborations that build sustainable partner capacity and protect heritage. One of SWP’s foci is Mozambique Island. There, in 1998, SWP and its member-partners at Eduardo Mondlane University suggested the island’s World Heritage Site designation should expand to include submerged resources. However, in 1999 the government sanctioned a salvage company to commodify the area’s submerged heritage. Mozambique rescinded its permit in 2014, and professional archeological documentation has proceeded since then, resulting in the tentative identification of L’Aurore.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Underwater Archeology of a French Slave Ship In Northern Mozambique- L'Aurore   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow