Academic Journal
View in EDS
Linked Full Text

Atlantic Crossings: Biosocial Interventions in African Diasporic Bioarchaeological Thought and Practice.

Bibliographic Details
Title: Atlantic Crossings: Biosocial Interventions in African Diasporic Bioarchaeological Thought and Practice.
Authors: Cunningham AS; Boston University, Boston, USA.
Source: American journal of biological anthropology [Am J Biol Anthropol] 2025 Oct; Vol. 188 (2), pp. e70140.
Publication Type: Journal Article; Historical Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Language: English
Journal Info: Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101770171 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 2692-7691 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 26927691 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Am J Biol Anthropol Subsets: MEDLINE
Imprint Name(s): Original Publication: [Hoboken, NJ] : John Wiley & Sons Inc., [2022]-
MeSH Terms: Enslavement*/history , Enslaved Persons*/history , Black People*/history , Archaeology*, Humans ; History, 19th Century
Abstract: Objectives: The African diaspora, or the mass displacement of Africans and their descendants as a result of colonial slave trading, continues to be a topic of methodological and theoretical interest in biological anthropology and bioarchaeology. However, the legacies of racist and exploitative research that are inherent to diasporic burial contexts have prompted questions about the futures of diasporic bioarchaeological practice. This paper presents a biosocial integrative framework as an intervention toward interdisciplinary study of African diasporic biosocial variation.
Materials and Methods: Framing the sea as a site of rupture, possibility, and interconnectivity serves as a theoretical foundation for this framework to outline both the diversity and complications in analyzing enslavement contexts. In operationalizing biosocial integrative approaches, the framework emphasizes critical interrogation and deconstruction of traditional modes of measurement. These considerations are applied to two diasporic island case studies in 19th century Barbados and St. Helena, sites comprising enslaved and "Liberated African" groups, respectively.
Results: The case studies reflect the ways that notions of birthplace can profoundly shape modes of racialization and agency. In Barbados, this emerged in the disparity between creole and African birthplace, while in St. Helena this was demonstrated in biosocial stratification and prominent Southeastern African origins.
Discussion: The case studies reveal ways that shifting 19th century coercive labor systems corresponded with changes to migration flows and Afro-descendants' origins. More broadly, the framework and case studies demonstrate how biosocial integrative approaches may glean a more holistic understanding of historic Afro-descendant variation.
(© 2025 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)
References: Agarwal, S. 2024. “The Disposability and Inclusion of Brown Bodies.” American Journal of Biological Anthropology 186, no. 1: e25003.
Agarwal, S., M. Blakey, T. Champney, et al. 2024. The Commission for the Ethical Treatment of Human Remains American Anthropological Association. Final Report.
Aljoe, N. 2021. “Creole Testimonies in Caribbean Women's Slave Narratives.” In Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920, 34–51. Cambridge University Press.
Allen, R. 2015. European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850. Ohio University Press.
Allina, E. 2012. Slavery by Any Other Name: African Life Under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique. University of Virginia Press.
Beckles, H. 1998. “Creolisation in Action: The Slave Labour Élite and Anti‐Slavery in Barbados.” Caribbean Quarterly 44, no. 1–2: 108–128.
Beckles, H. 2016. “The First Black Slave Society: Britain's “Barbarity Time” in Barbados, 1636–1876.” (University of the West Indies Press).
Beckles, H. 2017. On Barbados, the First Black Slave Society. Black Perspectives. https://www.aaihs.org/on‐barbados‐the‐first‐black‐slave‐society/#:~:text=In%201636%2C%20a%20political%20directive,surrounded%20it%20with%20additional%20reinforcements.
Blakey, M. 2001. “Bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora in the Americas: Its Origins and Scope.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30, no. 1: 387–422.
Blakey, M. 2008. “An Ethical Epistemology of Publicly Engaged Biocultural Research.” in Evaluating Multiple Narratives (New York, NY, Springer New York) 17–28.
Blakey, M. 2010. “African Burial Ground Project: Paradigm for Cooperation?: African Burial Ground Project: Paradigm for Cooperation?” Museum International 62, no. 1–2: 61–68.
Blakey, M. 2022. “Walking the Ancestors Home: On the Road to an Ethical Human Biology.” Anthropology Now 14, no. 1–2: 1–20.
Blakey, M., and L. Rankin‐Hill. 2009. “The Skeletal Biology of the New York African Burial Ground.” Howard University Press: in association with the General Services Administration (Vol. 1, pt. 1).
Braun, V., and V. Clarke. 2012. “Thematic Analysis.” In APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology, Vol 2: Research Designs: Quantitative, Qualitative, Neuropsychological, and Biological, edited by H. Cooper, P. Camic, D. Long, A. Panter, D. Rindskopf, and K. Sher. https://doi.org/10.1037/13620‐004.
Burroughs, R. 2015. “Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Abolition From Ship to Shore.” In The Suppression of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1–14. Manchester University Press.
Cohen, R. 2008. Solid, Ductile and Liquid: Changing Notions of Homeland and Home in Diaspora Studies, 156. Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, QEH Working Papers.
Cox, G. 1995. Historical Background and Isotopic Analysis of Skeletons Found Near the Site of Fort Knokke, Cape Town Foreshore, edited by J. Sealy. Honours, University of Cape Town. https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/23004/Cox_Historical_1996_1.pdf?sequence=1.
Cox, G., and J. Sealy. 1997. “Investigating Identity and Life Histories: Isotopic Analysis and Historical Documentation of Slave Skeletons Found on the Cape Town Foreshore, South Africa.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1, no. 3: 207–224.
Cunningham, A. 2023. “Reframing Diaspora: Southeastern African Contributions to Biosocial Variation in Atlantic Afro‐Descendant Groups.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Florida. ProQuest Dissertation Publishing. https://ezproxy.bu.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fdissertations‐theses%2Freframing‐diaspora‐southeastern‐african%2Fdocview%2F2881072079%2Fse‐2%3Faccountid%3D9676.
Curtin, P. 1969. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. University of Wisconsin Press.
de la Cova, C. 2017. “Fractured Lives: Structural Violence, Trauma, and Recidivism in Urban and Industrialized 19th‐Century‐Born African Americans and Euro Americans.” In Broken Bones, Broken Bodies: Bioarchaeological and Forensic Approaches for Accumulative Trauma and Violence, edited by D. Martin and C. Tegtmeyer, 153–180. Lexington Books.
de la Cova, C., C. Hofman, K. Marklein, et al. 2024. “Ethical Futures in Biological Anthropology: Research, Teaching, Community Engagement, and Curation Involving Deceased Individuals.” American Journal of Biological Anthropology 185, no. 2: e24980.
DeWitte, S. N. 2015. “Bioarchaeology and the Ethics of Research Using Human Skeletal Remains.” History Compass 13, no. 1: 10–19.
DiGangi, E., and J. Bethard. 2021. “Uncloaking a Lost Cause: Decolonizing Ancestry Estimation in the United States.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 175, no. 2: 422–436.
Drescher, S. 2004. The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor Versus Slavery in British Emancipation. Oxford University Press.
Dunnavant, J. 2021. “Have Confidence in the Sea: Maritime Maroons and Fugitive Geographies.” Antipode 53: 884–905. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anti.12695.
Dwyer, I., D. Justinvil, and A. Cunningham. 2023. “Caribbeanist Casualties: Interrogating the Application of Structural Vulnerability to Forensic Anthropology.” Forensic Science International: Synergy 6: 100327.
Eltis, D. 2007. “A Brief Overview of the Trans‐Atlantic Slave Trade.” The Trans‐Atlantic Slave Trade Database, Voyages. https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp‐content/uploads/2013/05/HIST211‐1.3.3‐TransAtlanticSlaveTrade.pdf.
Eltis, D., and D. Richardson. 2008. “A New Assessment of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” In Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, 1–53. Yale University Press.
Fleskes, R., A. Ofunniyin, J. Gilmore, et al. 2021. “Ancestry, Health, and Lived Experiences of Enslaved Africans in 18th Century Charleston: An Osteobiographical Analysis.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 175, no. 1: 3–24.
Fricke, F. 2020. Slaafgemaakt: Rethinking Enslavement in the Dutch Caribbean. Common Ground.
Fricke, F., J. Laffoon, A. Victorina, and J. Haviser. 2020. “Delayed Physical Development in a First Generation Enslaved African Woman From Pietermaai, Curaçao.” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 30, no. 1: 43–52.
Fuentes, M. 2016. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Harvard University Press.
Gosse, P. 1938. St. 1502–1938. Cassell London.
Handler, J., and F. Lange. 1978. Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archaeological and Historical Investigation. Harvard University Press.
Haney Lopez, I. F. 1997. White by Law. New York University Press.
Hartman, S. 1997. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self‐Making in Nineteenth‐Century America. Oxford University Press.
Hartman, S. 2007. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar.
Hau'ofa, E. 1993. “Our Sea of Islands.” In A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, edited by E. Waddell, V. Naidu, and E. Hau'ofa. School of Social and Economic Development, The University of the South Pacific.
Helena, S. 2022. “In Encyclopedia Britannica.” https://www.britannica.com/place/Saint‐Helena‐island‐South‐Atlantic‐Ocean.
Jackson, E. 1905. St. Helena: The Historic Island From Its Discovery to the Present Date. Thomas Whittaker.
King, T. 2019. The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. Duke University Press.
Lans, A. 2020. “Embodied Discrimination and “Mutilated Historicity”: Archiving Black Women's Bodies in the Huntington Collection.” In Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, 31–52. Springer International Publishing.
Lans, A. 2022. “Investigating Black Women's Mental Health in Progressive Era New York City: A Bioarchaeological Study of Slow Violence and Landscapes of Impunity.” Historical Archaeology 56, no. 4: 663–680.
Maass, C. 2022. “Race, Gender, and Intersectionality in the Bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora: Perspectives From Colonial Peru.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 30: 805–827. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816‐022‐09577‐3.
Mack, M., and M. Blakey. 2004. “The New York African Burial Ground Project: Past Biases, Current Dilemmas, and Future Research Opportunities.” Historical Archaeology 38, no. 1: 10–17.
MacQuarrie, H., and A. Pearson. 2016. “Prize Possessions: Transported Material Culture of the Post‐Abolition Enslaved – New Evidence From St Helena.” Slavery and Abolition 37: 45–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2015.1077636.
Madrigal, L. 2006. Human Biology of Afro‐Caribbean Populations. Cambridge University Press.
McHenry, G. 1845. “An Account of the Liberated African Establishment at St. Helena.” Simmond's Colonial Magazine and Foreign Miscellany 5: 172–183.
McLean, S. 2019. “Isolation by Distance and the Problem of the Twenty‐First Century.” Human Biology 91: 81. https://doi.org/10.13110/humanbiology.91.2.02.
Mercury, B., and B.‐T. Gazette. 1813. “Barbados Mercury, and Bridge‐Town Gazette.” https://dloc.com/AA00047511/00878.
Morris, A. 1987. “The Reflection of the Collector: San and Khoi Skeletons in Museum Collections.” South African Archaeological Bulletin 42, no. 145: 12–22.
Patterson, T., and R. Kelley. 2000. “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World.” African Studies Review 43, no. 1: 11–45.
Pearson, A. 2016. Distant Freedom: St Helena and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1840–1872. Oxford University Press.
Pearson, A., B. Jeffs, A. Witkin, and H. MacQuarrie. 2011. Infernal Traffic: Excavation of a Liberated African Graveyard in Rupert's Valley. St. Helena.
Rankin‐Hill, L. 1997. A Biohistory of 19th‐Century Afro‐Americans: The Burial Remains of a Philadelphia Cemetery. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.35‐0367.
Redman, S. 2016. Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums. Harvard University Press.
Roberts, B., and M. Stephens. 2017. “Archipelagic American Studies: Decontinentalizing the Study of American Culture.” In Archipelagic American Studies, edited by B. R. Roberts and M. A. Stephens. Duke University Press.
Sandoval‐Velasco, M., A. Jagadeesan, J. Ramos‐Madrigal, et al. 2023. “The Ancestry and Geographical Origins of St Helena's Liberated Africans.” American Journal of Human Genetics 110, no. 10: 1825.
Schroeder, H., T. C. O'Connell, J. Evans, K. Shuler, and R. Hedges. 2009. “Trans‐Atlantic Slavery: Isotopic Evidence for Forced Migration to Barbados.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139, no. 4: 547–557.
Schroeder, H., K. Shuler, and S. Chenery. 2013. “Childhood Lead Exposure in an Enslaved African Community in Barbados: Implications for Birthplace and Health Status.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150, no. 2: 203–209.
Sharpe, C. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press.
Shuler, K. 2005. “Health, History, and Sugar: A Bioarchaeological Study of Enslaved Africans From Newton Plantation, Barbados, West Indies.” (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Ann Arbor, United States; R. S. Corruccini, Ed.). https://www.proquest.com/dissertations‐theses/health‐history‐sugar‐bioarchaeological‐study/docview/305388376/se‐2.
Shuler, K., and A. Cunningham. 2023. “African Diasporas: Bioarchaeological Approaches to Intercontinental and Global Legacies of Displacement.”.
Smith, C., B. Gomes, and A. Davies, eds. 2023. The Dialectic Is in the Sea. Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento.
Trans‐Atlantic Slave Trade‐Database. 2008. https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/database.
Tuck, E., and K. Yang. 2014. “R‐Words: Refusing Research.” In Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry With Youth and Communities, edited by M. W. D. Paris. Sage.
Walvin, J. 2014. “Atlas of Slavery.” https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315837536/atlas‐slavery‐james‐walvin.
Wesp, J., and M. Sandoval‐Velasco. 2020. “Ethno‐Geographic Origins and Genomic Diversity of Afro‐Descendants in Colonial Mexico City.” https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?cluster=7445587151470695999&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&sciodt=0,5.
Worden, N. 2016. “Indian Ocean Slaves in Cape Town, 1695–1807.” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 3: 389–408.
Yon, D. 2007. “Race‐Making/Race‐Mixing: St. Helena and the South Atlantic World.” Social Dynamics 33, no. 2: 144–163.
Grant Information: BCS-2041182 National Science Foundation
Contributed Indexing: Keywords: African diaspora; Atlantic; archival; bioarchaeology; biosocial; interdisciplinary; theory; variation
Entry Date(s): Date Created: 20251021 Date Completed: 20251021 Latest Revision: 20260520
Update Code: 20260520
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.70140
PMID: 41116596
Database: MEDLINE
Description
ISSN:2692-7691
DOI:10.1002/ajpa.70140