Social Science Research Council

"Village des Bambaras: An Archaeology of Domestic Slavery, Gorée Island, Senegal, A.D. 16th-19th Centuries"

My dissertation includes archival research in France and archaeological fieldwork on Gorée Island, Senegal, a major 16th-19th century slave port, trade nexus, and home to one of the earliest multicultural and transnational communities of the transatlantic world. My research focuses on the experience of the island's resident enslaved population, though Gorée is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the purported 10 million transient captives exported to the New World through its infamous slave warehouse. Excavation centers on, but is not limited to, Gorée's possibly earliest (18th c.) slave quarters, the Village des Bambaras and its settlement trajectory from centralized to dispersed and ultimately to its integration into the increasingly Europeanized landscape caught in a tug-of-war between the Dutch, French, and English. I will be examining from a material perspective how the quality of life changed for enslaved Africans through this urbanization and how this cultural, economic, and spatial urban metamorphosis was driven by Gorée's increasing access to global trade networks. I will be directing a small, diverse crew of student volunteers from the Université de Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, and from the University of Pretoria in South Africa.