The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe: The Invisible Commodity 9783030732912, 3030732916

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Themes in Contemporary Archaeology

Felix Biermann Marek Jankowiak Editors

The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe The Invisible Commodity

Themes in Contemporary Archaeology Series Editors Peter Attema, Groningen Institute of Archaeology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Agathe Reingruber, Institut für Prähistorische Archäologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany Robin Skeates, Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK

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Felix Biermann  •  Marek Jankowiak Editors

The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe The Invisible Commodity

Editors Felix Biermann Institute of History University of Szczecin Szczecin, Poland

Marek Jankowiak Associate Professor at the University of Oxford Corpus Christi College Oxford, UK

ISSN 2730-7441     ISSN 2730-745X (electronic) Themes in Contemporary Archaeology ISBN 978-3-030-73290-5    ISBN 978-3-030-73291-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Written sources from the early Middle Ages frequently report enslavement and slave trade in northern Europe. The evidence, abundant and unequivocal, indicates the great importance of this form of unfreedom for social structures and the economy, and sheds light on the forms of violence and oppression associated with it. But written sources, by nature fragmentary, illuminate only some aspects of the phenomenon of slavery and leave many questions unanswered. It is therefore tempting to supplement them with archaeological finds. This raises, however, a number of methodological problems, given that enslavement, slave trade, and slave holding leave few, if any, unambiguous material traces. They can be easily missed when looked at it in isolation; but when combined with the results reached by historians, natural scientists, or linguists, archaeological evidence can provide important insights into this “dark side” of the early medieval economy. To address this methodological challenge, comparative and interdisciplinary approaches offer the most secure way forward. This was the starting point of the session organised by the editors at the 20th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Istanbul, Turkey (10–14 September 2014). It brought together archaeologists, historians, and researchers from neighbouring fields interested not only in slavery in early medieval northern Europe – i.e., the area from the British Isles to Scandinavia to the central and eastern parts of the continent – but also in other geographical areas and in other periods. This comparative perspective is reflected in this volume, which is based primarily on the papers presented in Istanbul. The contributions take different approaches, reach varied results, and often offer divergent interpretations. They not only shed light on many aspects of early medieval slavery, but also grapple with methodological issues related to the paradox summarised in the title of this volume, namely how to trace the “invisible commodity” in the material evidence. The editors would like to thank the European Association of Archaeologists – in particular Claes Uhner and series editors Peter Attema, Agathe Reingruber, and Robin Skeates – for including this volume in the Themes in Contemporary Archaeology series; the Springer team – Werner Hermens, Christi Lue, Selvaraj Ramabrabha, and Neelofar Yasmeen – for seeing the volume through to publication; and the authors for their contributions and patience. Szczecin, Poland Oxford, UK December 2020

Felix Biermann Marek Jankowiak

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Contents

1 Introduction: An ‘Invisible Commodity’? ���������������������������������������������������������������   1 Marek Jankowiak and Felix Biermann Part I Comparative Perspectives 2 The Arrogation of Slavery: Prehistory, Archaeology, and Pre-theoretical Commitments Concerning People as Property ���������������������   9 Timothy Taylor 3 Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  23 Paul J. Lane Part II The British Isles 4 To Tread the Paths, and Traverse the Moors: Investigating Slavery in Early Medieval Western Britain �������������������������������������������������������������  43 Katie A. Hemer 5 The Archaeology of Slave Trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Approach �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  53 Janel M. Fontaine Part III Scandinavia 6 The Norm and the Subaltern: Identifying Slaves in an Early Medieval Scandinavian Society �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  67 Anna Kjellström 7 Legacy of the Disowned. Finding ambátts in High Medieval Scania and Östergötland Through Ceramic Production�����������������������������������������������������  81 Mats Roslund 8 Bonded People: Making Thralls Visible in Viking-Age and Early Medieval Sweden���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  99 Torun Zachrisson Part IV Central Europe 9 Slave Trade in Great Moravia: Reality or Fiction?������������������������������������������������� 113 Jiří Macháček

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10 Slavery and Slave Trade in Early Medieval Bohemia: Archaeology of Slavery or Slavery of Archaeology?����������������������������������������������� 127 Ivo Štefan 11 Archaeological Evidence for Slavery Among the Early Medieval North-­Western Slavs ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 141 Felix Biermann 12 Tracing the Saqaliba: Slave Trade and the Archaeology of the Slavic Lands in the Tenth Century����������������������������������������������������������������� 161 Marek Jankowiak Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 183

Contents

About the Editors

Felix Biermann is Associate Professor at the Institute of Historical Sciences, Department of Archaeology, at the University of Szczecin and scientific employee in the Sachsen-Anhalt Archaeological Monuments Service (Halle/Saale). After the study of prehistory and early history in Münster, Marburg, Bamberg and Berlin, he completed the doctorate at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the habilitation at the University of Greifswald. After a Feodor Lynen Scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt-­Stiftung in the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and a travel scholarship of the German Archaeological Institute (Berlin), he was scientific employee and assistant at the universities of Frankfurt/Main and Greifswald, interim and visiting professor at the Humboldt and Free Universities in Berlin as well as at the universities of Frankfurt/Main, Wrocław and Warsaw. He also held a Heisenberg Scholarship of the German Research Foundation in the Institute for Prehistory and Early History of the University of Göttingen. He directed a number of research projects and published extensively on his main research interests: Slavic and medieval archaeology.  

Marek Jankowiak is, since 2018, Associate Professor in Byzantine History at the University of Oxford. He studied Mathematics at Paris IX Dauphine, Finance and Banking at the Warsaw School of Economics, and History at the University of Warsaw. He holds a doctorate from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) and the University of Warsaw. He was a Newton Fellow of the British Academy at Oxford (2011–2013), Co-­Investigator of the AHRC project ‘Dirhams for Slaves’ (2013–2017) and Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham (2017–2018). His research focuses on the transformation of the Roman world in the seventh century ad, the eastern Roman empire in the middle Byzantine period, and slave trade and slavery in the ninth and tenth centuries ad.  

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Introduction: An ‘Invisible Commodity’? Marek Jankowiak and Felix Biermann

The cliché of the archaeological invisibility of slavery has been, in the last two decades, undermined by research on areas and periods as diverse as prehistoric Europe (e.g. Gronenborn 2001; Parker Pearson and Thorpe 2005), classical Mediterranean (e.g. Thompson 2003; George 2013), medieval and early modern Africa (e.g. Lane and MacDonald 2011), or pre-colonial and plantation-age America (e.g. Marshall 2015b). Attempts to reflect on slavery on the basis of the material evidence have also been made, since the 1990s, in central and northern Europe (e.g. Henning 1992, 2004, 2008; Gustafsson 2009; Raffield 2019), but they remain timid, no doubt because of a certain reluctance to accept slave-holding and slave trade as valid interpretative frameworks applicable to the archaeology of early medieval east-central and northern Europe. There is no shortage of written sources on slavery in early medieval Europe. Their reappraisal by historians has resulted in a series of publications focusing, among others, on north-­ western Europe (Rio 2017), Anglo-Saxon and early Norman England (Pelteret 1995; Wyatt 2009), Scandinavia (Karras 1988; Brink 2012), Bohemia (Petráček 2017), and Hungary (Sutt 2015), in addition to monographs taking a broader, European or global, perspective (McCormick 2001; Zeuske 2013). Even if we are still far from a full coverage of northern and eastern Europe – Germany, Poland, and Rus remain little studied –, it is clear that paradigms rooted in models such as those of the feudal or tribal society are being replaced with more nuanced approaches that leave more space for the historical reality of early medieval slavery.

M. Jankowiak (*) Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] F. Biermann Institute of History, University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland e-mail: [email protected]

This reorientation is on-going, and the ‘rediscovery’ of slavery in early medieval Scandinavia and Slavic lands has not yet been fully absorbed in the scholarship. Most papers in this volume restate, therefore, the case for its significance and begin with historical introductions based on written and numismatic sources on slave-holding and slave trade in their respective areas of interest. In the absence of a general historical survey of slavery in early medieval northern Europe, this volume partly fills this gap. But its main objective is to reflect on the kinds of material evidence that can be associated with slavery in early medieval northern, central and eastern Europe. This immediately poses the problem of defining slavery, and in particular medieval slavery. Differently from the classical cases of Roman and American slavery, the gulf separating the free and the enslaved in medieval western Eurasia was bridged by a range of intermediate statuses. The dichotomy enshrined in Roman law (cf. Gaius, Institutes i.9: ‘all men are either free or slaves’) ceased to operate; moreover, social and legal status did not necessarily overlap. What for Orlando Patterson (1982: 308–14) was the ultimate paradox dismissed as ‘semantic confusion’ – the slave rulers of some Islamic polities – merely illustrates the broader rule that persons of slave status did not necessarily find themselves at the bottom of medieval social hierarchies. This was, in part, the result of the dissociation of the demand for slaves from the demand for labour. Although large-scale agricultural slavery was not unheard of in the Islamic or Byzantine world, it was rare and only in exceptional cases can we identify it as a major source of the demand for slaves. The main form of labour demanded from the enslaved was, it seems, domestic chores. At the risk of oversimplification, it appears that slavery in our period took on a more domestic character, and that medieval slaves were more closely integrated in the households than their counterparts in the paradigmatic Roman and American cases. This did not necessarily result in less abuse or exploitation of the enslaved, nor did it imply a lower demand for slaves – who served by thousands, we are told, in the households of Muslim rulers as soldiers,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Biermann, M. Jankowiak (eds.), The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe, Themes in Contemporary Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_1

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concubines, or bureaucrats. But it is important to bear in mind that we are confronted with s­ lavery of a different type from those that we intuitively associate with this term. This has implications for the types of material imprints left by the enslaved that we will attempt to uncover. Beyond this tentative common denominator, the diversity of geographic and cultural areas of interest to this volume precludes a uniform definition of slavery. In centralised polities with developed legal systems, such as the Islamic world, Byzantium, and to a lesser extent Hungary and post-­ Carolingian western Europe, slavery can be defined as a legal category. But what about non-state societies in the British Isles, Scandinavia, and central Europe, or early states that did not yet develop formalised legislation? Categories such as ‘slavery’, ‘captivity’, or ‘unfreedom’ are, in such contexts, difficult to delineate (Cameron 2015), and it is perhaps best to leave the boundaries between them porous, as they were no doubt in reality. It is also not necessary to homogenise the language in which we speak of slavery, a product not only of the fragmented early medieval world, but also of diverse modern scholarly traditions: Scandinavian scholars, for instance, tend to speak of ‘bondage’ or ‘thraldom’. It is important, however, to be attentive to the medieval vocabulary of slavery, the complexity of which serves as a reminder of its multiple, constantly evolving forms. The ambiguity of the concept of slavery is perhaps best summarised by the definition proposed some years ago by Timothy Taylor: ‘slavery can only be defined polythetically, so that no one single attribute is at once sufficient and necessary to define it, but each instance shares a large number of the most commonly observed and experienced traits,’ such as the perception of unfreedom, natal alienation, coerced labour, abuse and privation of honour, social subjugation, or commodification (Taylor 2005: 229). Terminological precision is more easily attained within the perspective of the slave trade. Slaves can then be defined as commodified human beings who were sold or bought in exchange for coins or other goods. Given the importance of northern Europe in the long-distance slave trade circuits between c. 800 and c. 1100 (Gruszczyński et al. 2021), much of this volume is devoted to a reflection how the enslavement of populations and their subsequent commodification correlate with the material evidence. The two perspectives, of slave-holding and slave trade, interrogate archaeological data in different ways. In the former case, which we can label ‘archaeology of slavery’, we are faced with the insufficiency of the material evidence to establish, on its own, the social relationships of individuals in sufficient detail to firmly assign them a slave status. The contributors unanimously warn that no artefact, no body, no category of evidence, no matter how suggestive, can on its own bear witness to slavery or slave trade. An iron shackle, a malnourished female skeleton placed in a subordinate posi-

M. Jankowiak and F. Biermann

tion in a multiple burial, human bones in a settlement context, or a depopulated landscape will always admit of alternative interpretations (cf. Alexander 2001: 56; Fontaine 2017). An instructive example is provided by the debate surrounding the Agora of the Italians in Delos, an emblematic building usually associated with the Roman Republican slave trade, whose purpose, however, has been forcefully contested (Trümper 2009). Even if in this particular case the balance of the scholarly opinion leans in favour of a more positive approach (Bradley 2009; Annequin 2011; Raffield 2019: 11–12), such debates remind us that we are moving in the realm of probabilities – as in quantum physics. The methodologies proposed by the contributors to this volume allow to substantially raise these probabilities. The positioning of a burial within a cemetery, or of a body in a multiple burial or a settlement pit, can be indicative of the social status of an individual. Scientific methods such as isotope or aDNA analysis have the potential to reveal the biographies of non-local or undernourished individuals who may have been enslaved at some point during their lives. The spread of a new technology may be due to a forced resettlement of a captive population. Echoing Taylor’s polythetic definition of slavery, the contributors combine these methods and emphasise the need for a nuanced, multi-dimensional approach. The ‘archaeology of enslavement’ is equally, if not more, dependent on accounts of slave trading offered by written sources and on the assumptions on its scale, in our case often extrapolated from the numismatic evidence. Without neglecting individual cases of captivity and enslavement, it adopts an approach akin to landscape archaeology and attempts to assess broader implications of large-scale slaving for social, economic and political structures, both of the enslavers and the targeted populations. As amply demonstrated by archaeologists working on Africa, depopulation, various strategies of mitigating insecurity, consolidation of rulership, or emergence of state structures are among the expected outcomes of warfare aimed at providing captives (e.g. Lane and MacDonald 2011). Such phenomena are attested also in central and northern Europe in the early medieval period. But although this approach holds much promise, we need to remember that the interpretation of individual objects and of the often fragmentary written record requires much caution. The ‘archaeology of slavery’ and ‘archaeology of enslavement’ have thus in common not only their reliance on written and numismatic sources, but also their probabilistic nature. They use, however, different lenses and can, to some extent, be assimilated to micro- and macro-scale perspectives. It is not a coincidence that the former predominates in the contributions on Scandinavia, the latter in the section on the Slavic lands, and the two are combined in the chapters on the British Isles. The choice of the methodology reflects the nature of slave systems in these areas, and in particular the extent to which they were net importers or exporters of slaves. A s­ imilar difference

1  Introduction: An ‘Invisible Commodity’?

in focal length can be observed in the studies on the archaeology of slavery that were the inspiration for this volume: while the introduction of a collection focused to a large extent on the Americas calls for ‘a more diachronic approach to slavery, one that encompasses capture and enslavement’ (Marshall 2015a: 3), that of a volume on African archaeology ‘focuses at the landscape scale, rather than attempting to find physical evidence of slavery per se’ (Lane and MacDonald 2011: 1). The first section of this volume presents the approaches adopted by archaeologists working on prehistoric Europe (Chap. 2 by Timothy Taylor) and Africa (Chap. 3 by Paul Lane). It provides a comparative background for the understanding of slaving structures in early medieval central and northern Europe. Even more importantly, it encourages a methodological reflection on how the interpretation of the material evidence is guided by our pre-theoretical assumptions, to use Taylor’s words, and the availability of the written evidence, as in the case of Africa. The two following contributions investigate the archaeological data for slave-holding and slave trade in the British Isles in the early middle ages. Katie Hemer (Chap. 4) begins with a review of the written evidence for slavery in early medieval Wales; within this context, she proposes to interpret untypical burials from the emporium of Llanbedrgoch as those of the enslaved. She broadens her investigation to include distinctive burials and isotopic evidence for mobility from other burial grounds in Wales and England, arguing for a holistic approach combining various kinds of archaeological evidence and the written record. The need for such a comprehensive methodology is reaffirmed by Janel Fontaine (Chap. 5) who demonstrates that none of the four types of archaeological evidence from Ireland and Great Britain singled out for her investigation – shackles, fortified settlements, monetary exchange, and deviant burials  – can, in isolation from its context, be conclusively associated with slavery. The section on Scandinavia focuses primarily on modern-­ day Sweden and consists of three chapters. Anna Kjellström (Chap. 6) publishes the results of isotope analysis of the remains of possible slaves from burial grounds in Grimsta and Sigtuna which suggest, at least for some of them, a non-­ local origin and a diet slightly poorer in protein than for the rest of the sample – but the differences are small and may have been shaped by factors other than social status. We are reminded, yet again, that no single indicator can demonstrate the slave status of an individual and that, moreover, ‘slaves’ cannot be seen as a cohesive category. Mats Roslund (Chap. 7) proposes a different type of evidence to trace the mobility of otherwise invisible categories of the enslaved: the importation to Scania and the gradual localisation of a pottery tradition characteristic for the southern shore of the Baltic, brought no doubt by forcibly resettled (and possibly enslaved) Slavic women. Torun Zachrisson (Chap. 8) surveys archaeological data from central Sweden and Gotland

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that can shed light on slavery in a longer chronological perspective. Her catalogue of ideas for detecting the material impacts of slave-holding includes several promising methodologies such as, for instance, a new approach to identifying the enslaved in multiple cremation burials. The final section surveys the material record from the areas populated in the early middle ages by western Slavs, i.e. from modern-day eastern Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, and western Ukraine. All the contributions devote much space to the abundant, but still insufficiently studied, written and numismatic sources that provide the framework for the analysis of the archaeological data. Jiří Macháček (Chap. 9) investigates how these categories of sources correlate for ninth-century Great Moravia; he also brings into the discussion the later market site of Kostice-Zadní hrúd (on the border between medieval Bohemia and Hungary) which in all probability thrived thanks to slave trade. Ivo Štefan (Chap. 10) considers the early Bohemian state in the tenth to twelfth centuries from the double perspective of slave-­ holding and slave trade. Documentary and historiographical sources confirm the importance of the former, but the paucity of texts directly attesting to long-distance trade between Prague and Muslim Spain, together with the absence of Spanish dirhams in central Europe, incites to prudence. Felix Biermann (Chap. 11) joins the other contributors in emphasising the difficulty of tracing slavery archaeologically: the connection between the archaeological material and the instances of slavery and slave trade known from the written sources is, by definition, hypothetical. But he offers a long list of cases where such a connection is likely, and implies that much of the archaeological material from the Slavic lands awaits reappraisal in the light of large-scale slaving activities between the ninth and twelfth centuries. His regional perspective is complemented by Marek Jankowiak (Chap. 12) with a reflection on long-distance slave trade circuits. He argues that the broader context of violence and political fluidity characteristic for the Slavic lands in the ninth and tenth centuries is an expected correlate, if not the consequence, of enslavement and slave trade, the scale of which is demonstrated by the vast quantity of dirhams found in northern Europe. The two chapters reach a similar conclusion: such phenomena as the construction of fortifications, the movements of populations, the competition for imported luxuries are all coherent with deep social and political transformations triggered by an external demand for slaves. The contributors to this volume do not speak with a single voice. Their divergent interpretations – as, for instance, in the case of shackles – will, we hope, encourage debates on the materiality of early medieval slavery. They raise a number of caveats and reservations, and warn of the dangers of hasty generalisations from individual case studies. But they all argue that slave-holding, enslavement, and slave trade are legitimate objects of archaeological inquiry. They affected not

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Bradley, K. (2009). Review of M. Trümper, ‘Graeco-Roman slave markets: Fact or fiction?’. Mouseion, 53/9(2), 185–188. Brink, S. (2012). Vikingarnas slavar. Den nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid. Stockholm: Atlantis. Cameron, C. M. (2015). Commodities or gifts? Captive/slaves in small-­ scale societies. In Marshall, 2015b, pp. 24–40. Fontaine, J. M. (2017). Early medieval slave-trading in the archaeological record: Comparative methodologies. Early Medieval Europe, 25(4), 466–488. Gaius. (1946-53). The Institutes of Gaius (F. de Zulueta, Ed. and Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. George, M. (Ed.). (2013). Roman slavery and Roman material culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gronenborn, D. (2001). Zum (möglichen) Nachweis von Sklaven/ Unfreien in prähistorischen Gesellschaften Mitteleuropas. Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift, 42, 1–42. Gustafsson, N. B. (2009). För folk och fä. Om vikingatida fjättrar och deras användning. Fornvännen, 104, 89–96. Henning, J. (1992). Gefangenenfesseln im slawischen Siedlungsraum und der europäische Sklavenhandel vom 6. bis 12. Jahrhundert. Archäologisches zum Bedeutungswandel von „sklābos – sakāliba – sclavus“. Germania, 70, 403–426. Henning, J. (2004). Slavery or freedom? The causes of early medieval Europe’s economic advancement. Early Medieval Europe, 12, 269–277. Henning, J. (2008). Strong rulers  – Weak economy? Rome, the Carolingians and the archaeology of slavery in the first millenium ad. In J. R. Davis & M. McCormick (Eds.), The long morning of medieval Europe. New directions in early medieval studies (pp. 33–53). Aldershot: Ashgate. Karras, R.  M. (1988). Slavery and society in medieval Scandinavia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lane, P.  J., & MacDonald, K. (Eds.). (2011). Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marshall, L. W. (2015a). Introduction: The comparative archaeology of slavery. In Marshall, 2015b, pp. 1–23. Marshall, L.  W. (Ed.). (2015b). The archaeology of slavery: A comparative approach to captivity and coercion. Carbondale: Southern Acknowledgements  This book grew out of a session organised at the Illinois University Press. Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in McCormick, M. (2001). Origins of the European economy. Cambridge: Istanbul in August 2014 within the framework of the project ‘Dirhams for Cambridge University Press. Slaves. Dirham hoards from Northern Europe, trade in Slavic slaves, and Morris, I. (1993). Remaining invisible. The archaeology of the excluded the emergence of Medieval Europe’. Marek Jankowiak gratefully in classical Athens. In S. R. Joshel & S. Murnaghan (Eds.), Women acknowledges the support of the British Arts and Humanities Research and slaves in Greco-Roman culture. London: Routledge. Council that founded the project in 2013–2017 and of the Khalili Parker Pearson, M.  P., & Thorpe, I.  J. N. (2005). Warfare, violence Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East of and slavery in prehistory (BAR international series, 1374). Oxford: the University of Oxford that provided a home for it. He thanks the parArchaeopress. ticipants of the project – Luke Treadwell, Jonathan Shepard and Jacek Patterson, O. (1982). Slavery and social death. A comparative study. Gruszczyński – for their collaboration and support. Felix Biermann gives Harvard: Harvard University Press. sincere thanks to the German Research Foundation (Bonn) for the Pelteret, D. A. E. (1995). Slavery in early medieval England. Suffolk: Heisenberg Grant at Göttingen University where he developed his interThe Boydell Press. est in slavery, and Katrin Frey (Prenzlau) for helpful suggestions. We both Petráček, T. (2017). Power and exploitation in the Czech lands in the thank Joachim Henning (Frankfurt am Main) for his enriching comments 10th–12th centuries: A central European perspective. Leiden: Brill. and Michael McCormick (Harvard) for his concluding remarks at the Raffield, B. (2019). The slave markets of the Viking world: Comparative session in Istanbul. But above all, we are grateful to the contributors for perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’. Slavery & Abolition, their patience during the lengthy preparation of this volume. 40(4), 682–705. Rio, A. (2017). Slavery after Rome, 500–1100. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gruszczyński, J., Jankowiak, M., & Shepard, J. (Eds.). (2021). Viking-­ age trade: Silver, slaves and Gotland. London: Routledge. References Sutt, C. (2015). Slavery in Árpád-era Hungary in a comparative context. Leiden: Brill. Alexander, J. (2001). Islam, archaeology and slavery in Africa. World Taylor, T. F. (2005). Ambushed by a grotesque: Archaeology, slavery Archaeology, 33(1), 44–60. and the third paradigm. In  Parker Pearson & Thorpe, 2005,  pp. Annequin, J. (2011). Compte-rendu de Monika Trümper, ‘Graeco-­ 225–233. roman slave markets. Fact or fiction?’. Dialogues d’histoire anciThompson, F. H. (2003). The archaeology of Greek and Roman slavery. enne, 37(2), 165–167. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co.

only their direct victims – captured, killed, or displaced –, but also the enslavers and the neighbouring populations. Their impacts can be detected, at the level of an individual and of a community, through a range of methodologies. Even if none of them provides, on its own, a definitive connection with slavery, and even if, just as there is no single definition of slavery, there is no single formula for its material identification, when used in combination and supported by written and numismatic sources they often converge in interpretations that are not only plausible, but also more coherent than the available alternatives. Just as importantly, the methodologies set forth in this volume help us to hear the voice of the socially subjugated, many of whom would have been slaves. They allow us to recover the biographies of non-elite men, women and children, and thus enable a fresh perspective on the social history of early medieval central and northern Europe. Archaeology will be increasingly contributing to our understanding of early medieval slavery. The refinement of analytical methods such as aDNA, isotope analysis or osteological anthropology will shed more light on the life of the enslaved, while the ever growing number of excavations and surveys will reveal more hoards, irregular burials and other finds relevant for the study of slavery and slave trade, also no doubt in areas where they have not yet been identified. But we can already confidently state that, as demonstrated by the contributions to this volume, ‘archaeology of slavery’ is not a contradiction in terms. If slaves sometimes seem ‘invisible’ in the material record, it is ‘largely because we have failed to look for them’ (Webster 2008: 115; Morris 1993: 193).

1  Introduction: An ‘Invisible Commodity’? Trümper, M. (2009). Graeco-Roman slave markets: Fact or fiction? Oxford: Oxbow Books. Webster, J. (2008). Less beloved. Roman archaeology, slavery and the failure to compare. Archaeological Dialogues, 15(2), 103–112. Wyatt, D. (2009). Slaves and warriors in medieval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200. Leiden: Brill. Zeuske, M. (2013). Handbuch Geschichte der Sklaverei. Eine Globalgeschichte der Sklaverei von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

5 century ad, the eastern Roman empire in the middle Byzantine period, and slave trade and slavery in the ninth and tenth centuries ad.

Felix Biermann is Associate Professor at the Institute of Historical Sciences, Department of Archaeology, at the University of Szczecin and scientific employee in the Sachsen-Anhalt Archaeological Monuments Service (Halle/Saale). After the study of prehistory and early history in Münster, Marburg, Bamberg and Berlin, he completed the doctorate at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the habilitation at the University of Greifswald. After a Feodor Lynen Scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt-­Stiftung in the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and a Marek Jankowiak is, since 2018, Associate Professor in Byzantine travel scholarship of the German Archaeological Institute (Berlin), he History at the University of Oxford. He studied Mathematics at Paris IX was scientific employee and assistant at the universities of Frankfurt/ Dauphine, Finance and Banking at the Warsaw School of Economics, and Main and Greifswald, interim and visiting professor at the Humboldt History at the University of Warsaw. He holds a doctorate from the Ecole and Free Universities in Berlin as well as at the universities of Frankfurt/ Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) and the University of Warsaw. He was Main, Wrocław and Warsaw. He also held a Heisenberg Scholarship of a Newton Fellow of the British Academy at Oxford (2011–2013), Co-­ the German Research Foundation in the Institute for Prehistory and Investigator of the AHRC project ‘Dirhams for Slaves’ (2013–2017) and Early History of the University of Göttingen. He directed a number of Birmingham Fellow at the University of Birmingham (2017–2018). His research projects and published extensively on his main research interresearch focuses on the transformation of the Roman world in the seventh ests: Slavic and medieval archaeology.  

 

Part I Comparative Perspectives

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The Arrogation of Slavery: Prehistory, Archaeology, and Pre-theoretical Commitments Concerning People as Property Timothy Taylor Prominent ideas […] are organic parts of our lives, cognitive and emotional habits, structures that shape our thinking. So they follow conservation laws within it. Instead of dying, they transform themselves gradually into something different, something that is often hard to recognise and to understand. Midgley (2011: 6–7)

Abstract

This chapter is designed to set the deeper diachronic and global scene for the more culturally- and chronologically-­ focussed contributions that follow. In it, I attempt to steer a path between acknowledging the need for close and tight definitions of phenomena such as chattel slavery (as it might distinguish itself from, say, ‘wage slavery’), while also insisting that what we understand as slavery is often dramatically narrowed by prior assumptions about social structures, especially an idée fixe concerning the naturalness of flat hierarchies in less complex human societies. I argue that the political agendas of the moment, and especially the search for justice in the aftermath of recent European colonialism, obscure a deeper global history and prehistory of slavery, and therefore effectively usurp or monopolize (that is, arrogate) the story of inequality and exploitation to a single aberrant interlude. This has the effect of delegitimating and rendering less plausible readings of archaeological evidence from periods and places where totalizing forms of human exploitation could also have been the norm. Keywords

Archaeology of slavery · Prehistory · Methodology · Chinua Achebe · Hallstatt

T. Taylor (*) Department of Archaeology, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia e-mail: [email protected]

2.1

Introduction

At the end of June 2020, as this text was being finalized, a group of a hundred people tore down a historic statue of a ruthless slave owner in Cannizaro Park in southwest London. Their iconoclasm attracted scant media attention as compared to that given to the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol at the start of the same month. One might speculate that this could have been solely due to the naturally reduced media impact of a copycat action, but it is perhaps especially significant that the statue in London was of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, part of a dynasty whose power base had been cemented through brutal campaigns of genocide and enslavement. It is worth recalling that Ethiopia, almost uniquely in Africa, was not subject to European colonisation, and its short occupation by Italian forces from 1935 to 1941 was justified by Mussolini in part in terms of the abolition of slavery (Wright 2020). The lack of attention to the Cannizaro Park action suggests that there is some cognitive dissonance in our moral understanding of the history of slavery. In his review of Niall Ferguson’s 2011 Civilisation: The West and the Rest, the essayist Pankaj Mishra criticised the historian for underestimating the contribution of slavery to Western civilization (Mishra 2011). There may be truth in this, but if, as I argue below, the contribution of slavery to almost every complex social formation, not just Western civilization, has been underestimated, the force of the criticism is significantly weakened. Indeed, one of Ferguson’s points is that the expansionist Portuguese found a slave market ready-formed on the West African coast, in the area in which the Kingdom of Dahomey would subsequently rise. This fact could prompt us to reflect on how much we might underestimate the con-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Biermann, M. Jankowiak (eds.), The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe, Themes in Contemporary Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_2

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tribution of slavery to cultural evolution in a fully global and fully diachronic perspective. Such reflection would then require us to challenge the widespread idea that the phenomenon of slavery can properly be understood as limited to chattel slavery within market economies, and is therefore not a significant systematic feature of non-state societies generally. If, as I argue here, it was indeed such a feature, then dominant narratives concerning the character and effects of the North Atlantic slave trade (which Mishra’s review of Ferguson reflected) should be judged as a kind of arrogation, and as lacking proper critical historical (and prehistorical) perspective. One reason the Portuguese found an established slave market is that the various Arab caliphates were powered by slaves, many of them traded northeast across Central Africa (Pittioni 2019). The numbers are not well known, but, by comparison, just in the period ad 1630 to ad 1780 an estimated 1–1.5 million western Europeans were captured and sold by the Barbary Corsairs (Davis 2003: 45), a rate of around 10,000 a year. We may guess that the per annum numbers traded from sub-Saharan Africa would have been at least as high in this same period. Caliphate practices were built on Byzantine slave-owning foundations, that is, the remains of the slave-owning Roman Empire, which had succeeded the slave-owning Greek states as the dominant Mediterranean power; they in their turn had been constructed out of the inherited structures of the Bronze Age civilisations of the Aegean, western Asia and Egypt, all of them almost certainly slave-owning by any reasonable comparative definition. As those civilizations were the first literate ones, in terms of documentary evidence sensu stricto, the trail goes cold past this point. If we find belief in the coterminous appearance of both property in humans (slavery) and the administrative technology that preserves a record of their existence (writing) overwhelmingly convenient (as many do), then we can follow the template provided by the monumental Cambridge World History of Slavery, whose volume 1 (Bradley and Cartledge 2011) starts precisely with the earliest written records. By contrast, having stated at the outset my belief that the contribution of slavery to almost every complex social formation has been underestimated, I want to develop an argument that slavery’s contribution to simple societies has also been underestimated: in short, that it is a phenomenon that, while axiomatically of low archaeological visibility, nevertheless permeated prehistoric societies in one form or another. This essay draws attention to the way in which the subject of slavery may have been at various times more or less ‘owned’ or, conversely, disowned, by particular interests, time periods, nations (usually under a negative sign), and scholarly disciplines. Given that the typical material traces of slaves’ individual existences are fairly fugitive, the subject is more than usually vulnerable to analyses and interpretations in which the analyst’s or interpreter’s own background

T. Taylor

assumptions weigh heavy. The quantifiable data have first to be qualified as slavery data, so what there is to study depends to a great extent to what kinds of things are admitted to be relevant. One particularly resilient background assumption is that slavery is in some way connected to resources, labour and capital within market economies, thus intimately connected to some kinds of chiefdoms and state societies. That in itself connects to a debate in which warfare on a major scale is regarded (with little regard to the global archaeological and palaeoanthropological evidence) as a relatively recent kind of dysfunction, caused by the expansions of states and empires into the living spaces of more or less peaceful, pre-­ existing indigenous societies (e.g. Ferguson and Whitehead 1999). Chattel slavery has for long provided the central paradigm of what slavery is, despite a significant amount of work and argument concerning slavery in so-called traditional societies, including its documentation in hunter-gatherer societies (Donald 1997; Flannery and Marcus 2012: 66–70). And even when such ethnographic phenomena are taken seriously, there remains a broad and nebulous resistance to the idea of slavery sensu lato as an expression of a fundamental (albeit not precisely inevitable) mode of human social behaviour that might have seamlessly emerged from our primate evolutionary background. For some reason, ‘primitive egalitarianism’ is often taken quite unreflectively to be an established fact about pre-agricultural and most small-scale agricultural societies in the past (Woodburn 1982; cf. Brunton 1989). This is a classic case of pre-theoretical commitment. By pre-theoretical commitment, I mean to indicate a state of understanding of the plausible in which non-paradigmatic data cannot break the surface. Consider, for example, Terence Powell’s description of slavery in early medieval Ireland, where: units of value in terms of six heifers, or three milch cows, came into use, and to these a female slave (cumal) came to be regarded as roughly equivalent. The term cumal then came into very general use, as in estimating the worth of a chariot, or of land holdings. The choice of the bondswoman in this connection suggests that at some stage she had become a directly negotiable asset on her own account, and the Roman slave market may well be suspected as having brought this about (Powell 1980: 119–20).

Powell assumes that the institution here must be influenced by and tangentially descended from a preceding state-level formation, as if it could not have been a preexisting form of valuation and exchange that Rome for a while tapped into and formalized, in a disembedded monetary market system. We might do worse than to reflect on the meaning of those representations of individual females in bondage known from long before the Roman period, from the European Upper Palaeolithic. These are very broadly ignored, despite their explicit and apparently unambiguous nature. Perhaps the most striking example is

2  The Arrogation of Slavery: Prehistory, Archaeology, and Pre-theoretical Commitments Concerning People as Property

Fig. 2.1  Fragment of a limestone ‘Venus’ figurine from Kostenki. (Photo Paul Bahn)

a partial limestone ‘Venus’ figurine, dating to around 25,000  years ago from the Gravettian-­ culture site of Kostenki on the Don river in Russia, which depicts a woman, with everted navel and swollen belly (probably intended to be understood as pregnant), naked except for the rope which binds her hands together (Fig. 2.1; and see Taylor 2005). Such data can certainly generate a form of intellectual discomfort, insofar as there is a general avoidance of discussion of what appears iconically and semiotically obvious. For that reason alone such cultural representations are worth considering afresh. Well over a hundred examples are known from the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic, and the fact that they all (with one possible exception) depict adult females, and were all portable and exchangeable, perhaps indicates something at a symbolic and economic level informative of a deeper prehistory for the cumal concept. An objection might be made here that cattle were not present in Palaeolithic Europe, so that we cannot expect women to have been treated like them. The reasonable counterargument is that the way cattle come to be c­ lassified and managed was based on a prior and primal exemplar in an original treatment of women.

2.2

Being and Becoming Enslaved

The way we attempt to define slavery is socially reflexive. Legal conceptions of persons as property, or philosophical definitions of people as objects  – broadly speaking, ideas generated by owners, rulers, or outside analysts – can be con-

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trasted with approaches that focus on the personal testimonies of those who have experienced, and lived to report on, marginal status transitions. These are transitions in which individuals become disembedded, commodified, and reassigned to some new social status, higher (e.g. manumission) or lower (e.g. resale as expendable forced labour). There have been different emphases at different times in the history of scholarship. Igor Kopytoff, writing in 1986, indicated that a biographical and process-oriented position was perhaps at that time superseding essentialist definitions of the first kind: ‘What we see in the career of a slave is a process of initial withdrawal from a given original setting, his or her commoditization, followed by an increasing singularization (that is, decommoditization) in the new setting, with the possibility of later recommoditization’ (Kopytoff 1986: 378). Robert Englund, in more recent work assessing cuneiform evidence for Babylonian slavery in the late Uruk period, shows the existence of a classification which distinguished slaves in their first, second and third years of life, young and very young boys and girls, those 4 years old and up to (perhaps) full working age at (plausibly) six, in a system of slave labour generation, accounting, and market transfer that bears ‘an uncanny resemblance to herding accounts of large cattle and pigs of later periods’ (Englund 2009: 15). Estimating the extent, objective or subjective, to which one person is or feels enslaved to another rests on a vast range of factors. It must take into account the historical identity and motives of those individuals, fields of scholarship or institutions doing such estimating. There are many relativist and translational dimensions involved in discussing slavery vs. membership of the lowest caste, slavery vs. domestic drudgery, slavery vs. freedom, slavery vs. serfdom, chattel slavery vs. debt bondage, slavery vs. context-specific compulsion, and so on, which, qua the language of binary contrast, may mislead simply by promoting essentialist thinking. The range of contrasts not only  signals a comparative complexity as between practices in different socio-cultural communities and external (‘our’) understandings of them, but indicates something that typically operates within them. The kinds of unfreedom and intra-personal exploitation in ancient Mexico (a.k.a. Aztec slavery: Smith 2006) can be interpreted as having been pretty much as many and varied as in ancient Scythia (Taylor et al. 2020), and the same seems broadly true of indigenous institutions in the Pacific northwest (Ruby and Brown 1993). Almost every early civilization had something we might identify as an institution of slavery, but each seems to have been specific. Hittite slaves, for instance, could own property in land and livestock, and could marry (even marry into the freeborn if they had enough bridewealth: Hoffner 1997). They could also claim compensation for injury, and be fined for causing injury (both at half the rate of the freeborn); nevertheless, punishment inflicted

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T. Taylor

by their owners included permanent corporal disfigurement and execution, and appears to have been fairly much at a master’s discretion. People in cultural communities clearly have, and have had, differing expectations from one another concerning what some of us might today term freedom of action. They have also had different experiences of what we might term autonomy, according to age, reproductive status, biological sex, gender performance, physical attributes (abilities and disabilities), familial or other affiliation or lack of such affiliation (status and ethnic identities as presented and accorded). These complexities mean that there appear at first sight to be clear analytical benefits to limiting the meaning of the term slavery to chattel slavery. Chattel slavery describes an institution where buyers view culturally-disembedded ‘wares’ within a regulated market context, on the understanding that the products can be legally disposed of in any fashion. That is, a socio-economic relationship exists only between vendor and buyer. Here, the slave is, in Aristotle’s famous phrase, ‘an animate tool’, and as Orlando Patterson has it, ‘socially dead’ (Patterson 2000: 8). But despite advantages, limiting the approach does not solve all problems of ambiguity and evaluation, and obviously leads us away from understanding slavery as a spectrum, and as a series of experienced life events. Aristotle’s deritualized conception of a tool as inanimate is distinctly proto-scientific and fits poorly with much that we know about objects of exchange in the majority of pre-modern cultural systems. Both ‘people’ and ‘things’ could be thought of as having spirit or soul in some circumstances and being without them in others. (Put another way, the person–thing distinction etically crystallizes out a general distinction that may make sense to us but did not necessarily make emic sense within the thought systems of indigenous or prehistoric socio-cultural formations.)

2.3

Defining Slaves: Thucydides in Liverpool

Carved in stone and blazoned across the wall in Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, Thucydides’ words appear in popular (mis)translation: ‘The secret of freedom, courage.’ Setting aside the fact that this is only loosely based on Thucydides, whose actual subject was those who died defending their homeland (Thucydides, II: 43, runs rather more literally as: ‘Do you, therefore, now make these men your examples, and judging freedom to be happiness and courage to be freedom, be not too anxious about the dangers of war’), the effect for those with some sense of the historical is disconcerting, and forces an ironic smile. How would one of Thucydides’ silver-mine slaves on Thasos have under-

stood the sentiment? What sort of courage would they have needed to uncover the ‘secret of freedom’? Thucydides was plugged in to the standard extractive economy of his day, and his words were addressed to fellow citizens, not the unfortunate majority who supported the comfortable citizen lifestyle. The only freedom that lay ahead for most of these hard-labouring unfortunates was death. Slavery in mines, as in galleys, implied high levels of ‘turnover’; and the fact that continual replacement was required is made clear by Xenophon in his extended and dispassionate assessment of the economics of owning versus leasing slaves for such work (Xenophon, Ways and Means, IV: 2–25; Taylor 2001). When Theodor Mommsen wrote about the details of early second-century bc chained, gang-­ labour agricultural cultivation, introduced from the east to Carthage and then to the plantations of Sicily, he suggested that ‘the abyss of misery and woe, which opens before our eyes in this most miserable of all proletariates, may be fathomed by those who venture to gaze into such depths; it is very possible that, compared with the sufferings of the Roman slaves, the sum of all Negro sufferings is but a drop’ (Mommsen 1905: 308). Such questionable arrogation finds itself mirrored by the Liverpool museum curators (virtue signalling seeming to be a common pitfall in this thematic). In Liverpool the concern seems to have been to present the horrors of the recent Atlantic slave trade as so monolithic that it should somehow override any relativizing historical perspective. This suspicion is reinforced by an information board which explains that chattel slavery meant total ownership and was therefore ‘far worse than any form of slavery that had previously existed in Europe or Africa’. Hard though it is to analyse hyperbole, the implication that slavery of this type was previously unknown is simply untrue (for Eurasia, total ownership, including the right to conduct summary execution, was well known in the Classical world, and probably existed in Bronze Age Uruk too). But, the central problem, obviously, is that it presents a value judgment as if it were an empirical fact. This statement, like Mommsen’s, may be questioned in many ways, including existentially (worse for whom? how can different individual experiences be measured against one another?). Finally, by naming Europe and Africa alone, the Slavery Museum’s information tacitly implies that Asia and the Americas did not have prior institutions of slavery, which in neither case is true. It may seem rather anecdotal to include in a critical assessment aimed at a scholarly readership and introducing a set of analytical papers comments on such museum content. But it is precisely in such popular formats that our own background assumptions, our often unexamined judgement systems within a so-called ‘sociological paradigm’ (vide Masterman 1970), are most clearly exposed. Much is implied in omission. It is probably not far from the truth to say that

2  The Arrogation of Slavery: Prehistory, Archaeology, and Pre-theoretical Commitments Concerning People as Property

the background assumption of both curators and visitors in Liverpool is that slavery is something that emerges with states, is accelerated by the development of monetary economies, and reaches its apogee (or point of maximum unpleasantness) in the period of European global expansion. The Africans who became slaves on the African coast were certainly victims of British slave traders but they were also victims of the pre-existing indigenous African slave supply system. The tacit assumption that, minus the system of European-controlled trans-shipment, some kind of tribal or band-level egality would have persisted locally is almost certainly incorrect (although one must also grant that the scale of the exploitation would have been far less). The idea that earlier, pre-contact, indigenous, prehistoric small-scale societies were either egalitarian or only lightly hierarchical is widely credited. The idea of the egalitarian band-level society as part of a socio-cultural evolutionary sequence formalized by, especially, Sahlins, Service, and Fried in the 1960s has become canonized in introductory archaeology and anthropology textbooks (e.g. Service 1971; Renfrew and Bahn 2004). Yet in terms of biological evolution and ethology, a clear problem arises, in that primate societies of chimpanzees and gorillas are quite strongly hierarchical and employ lethal violence in establishing and maintaining social order (e.g. Muller et al. 2018). Thus there appears to be a major disjunction between what we (now) know of the structure of power inequalities in primate societies and the assertion that the earliest emergent forms of prehistoric human society were naturally egalitarian. Thus what is, for instance, so surprising about the recent aDNA revelation that the Neolithic man buried at the centre of New Grange barrow in Ireland was the product of first degree incest (a phenomenon associated with Egyptian pharaohs, and systematically associated ethnographically and sociologically with the dramatic centralization of power: Cassidy et al. 2020) is that we should be at all surprised. Who ever really thought that the flat hierarchies conjured into mind on the basis of a few instances of ‘collective’ burial (the burial of a very tiny sub-set of the overall population) could plausibly correlate with the massive scale of prestige monumentality? Set against an idea of socio-cultural evolution, in which undifferentiated bands of equals slowly diversify and develop hierarchies to the point of becoming early states, with property laws and specialized labour requirements that finally involve the elaboration of an institution of slavery, is the idea that it is equality that is the rarefied, civilized, historically-­ devolved concept. This contrary view would imply that persistent forms of exploitation of humans by other humans, including having another person, in essence, operating at one’s entire disposal  represents a background behavioural norm. This is less evidentially tenuous than it might at first appear, however uncomfortable for our species’ view of

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itself. The point of taking this alternative seriously is that it may help us to situate the medieval slave phenomenon  – involving the Vikings, the Slavs, the Caliphate and so on – within a broader critical perspective with significantly altered background assumptions.

2.4

 he Problem of Archaeological T Visibility and Representativity

It is an archaeological truism that the direct material signature of slavery is extraordinarily faint in comparison to the intensity of the phenomenon. The textually-deduced 12.5 million slaves transported in the Atlantic trade have left very few remains, either in terms of belongings, or physically (skeletally). Of around 8000 slaves liberated (but not repatriated) on St Helena in the mid-South Atlantic by the British Royal Navy during the abolition period, some 400 were recovered during in the 2006–2008 Rupert’s Valley rescue (salvage) excavation (Pearson 2012). This reveals that it was predominantly young people who were incarcerated for the Middle Passage from West Africa to the Americas. By contrast, mainland American slave cemeteries such as Key West and Lower Manhattan predominantly contain the bodies of adults born into slavery or manumitted in the Americas. These cemeteries have produced a total of around 9000 documented bodies (Harrington 1993). However one does the calculations, the archaeological skeletal footprint for the Atlantic trade and its demographic sequellae is representative of the dynamic context of historically documented transportees at a level below 0.1%. Overall, with slavery, there may even be an inverse relationship between numbers and accidental residues. This is because, with increasing organization there is an increasing efficiency in utilizing any ‘by-product’, a phenomenon also discernible in Nazi mass exterminations during World War II. Put another way, there is more chance of discovering all the bones of a murdered fifteenth century king (Richard III of England) than any specifically personal skeletal remains from the six million caught up in the Holocaust. In some cases one can come close, as with the damaged remains of 86 Holocaust victims who had been chosen and catalogued pre-­ mortem at the concentration camp at Natzweiler-Struthof, as they were destined to become anatomical specimens in the Jewish Skeleton Collection of the Anatomy Institute of the Reichsuniversität Straßburg. Their remains are now interred all together in the Cronenbourg-Strasbourg Jewish Cemetery, and represent of the order of 0.001% of those who died in the labour and extermination camps (Gutman and Rozett 1990; Bartrop and Grimm 2019: 144). So here we have two empirically-­determined order-of-magnitude  representativity percentages (0.001% and 0.1%), for instances of the survival of direct remains of what we know from documentary evi-

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dence to have been truly massive groups systematically victimized, within the past 500 years. Although for more distant, and specifically prehistoric periods, the filters on the survivability of evidence will obviously be stronger, there are also reasons why some categories of slave may be more visible. In both the Holocaust (primarily a genocide programme but one where the economics of working people to death in slave labour camps should not be underestimated) and the Atlantic slave trade, there were challenges to the ideology which caused perpetrators to at least reflect, as when Bartolomé de las Casas, who had participated in the European conquest of Cuba, turned his slaves free (see Boruchoff 2008), or when Francisco de Vitoria argued that Amerindians could not be thought of as natural slaves in the Aristotelian sense (Vitoria 1537). Such moral questioning was not present in the earlier Classical world: people accepted slavery as a fact and as a benefit – it was how the world was and it needed no hiding (the change perhaps becomes discernible first with the advent of Christianity: ‘In Christ there is neither slave nor free’ (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11); and see below). Certainly pre- and non-­ Christian elites conducted funerary rites which involved the mass slaughter of their slaves, to accompany them into the afterlife. The suttee-style burial of elite Scythians and Thracians in the Classical period is well known (both described in detail by Herodotus, IV: 71–72 and V: 5) and archaeologically attested (Taylor 1994, 2002), while similar and earlier practices in Neolithic and Bronze Age China were on so large a scale and so ubiquitous that their actual significance in human terms has tended to be virtually overlooked by those excavating the masses of ‘secondary’ remains associated with high-status interment (Reinhart 2015). Given, however, that even the elites in such societies are represented in archaeologically-recorded dynastic royal burials at what may arguably be relatively low percentage levels, we see only the tip of the iceberg in the co-burial of (typically) wives and servants with their husbands and owners. (The psychological or metaphysical issues surrounding the actions of retainers ‘accompanying’ their rulers into death, for example in the Indo-European social structure of the comitatus, is rather complex, and requires separate discussion: cf. Beckwith 2009; Taylor et  al. 2020.) The true scale of ancient slavery is hinted at in the celebratory iconography of war, and perhaps only really apprehendable in terms of works: ziggurats, pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and so on, and in the technologies of mining and galley transport that produced and circulated mass materials before the steam engine and electricity. The scale of past economies is what we often fail to grasp, expecting somehow archaeology to obligingly preserve the key ratios we seek. I have suggested elsewhere that the historically-­attested practice of using slaves to transport ele-

T. Taylor

phant tusks to east African coastal ports (the slaves tied to the tusks they had to carry, preventing their escape, and the tusks being later converted into ivory objects), had an earlier counterpart in the European Iron Age, where iron shackles used for restraint up to the point of sale then became reusable iron for other purposes in that same export market. This is one way of explaining the relative paucity of known shackles and chains as against quantitative estimates for numbers enslaved in major slave-taking events (such as the Dacian Wars), in which shackling and chaining was in regular use (Taylor 2001). The difficulties of documenting slavery archaeologically are compounded by a dynamic of denial in textual discussion and scholarly discourse. Instead of using written and verbal testimony, where that exists, to actually measure the stark mismatch with material indices (between, that is, the original systemic and the surviving archaeological context), commentators often take material near-invisibility as an invitation to sweep the whole topic from sight. I want to take a closer look at what this dynamic of denial might be, using a contemporary example drawn from literature, literary criticism and ethnography. A precedent for taking such an approach can be found in Keith Bradley’s now classic Slavery and Society at Rome (1994), in which ancient novelistic texts (such as Artemidorus’ Dream Book) are brought into play alongside comparative literature (Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography) to ‘patch in’ plausible and even unavoidable but (often axiomatically) not directly recorded aspects of the experience of slavery.

2.5

 he Dynamic of Denial: Achebe T and the Ethnographers

I have chosen Chinua Achebe’s famous novel, Things Fall Apart, a story set in the Igbo region of Nigeria some time in the past, as a case study (Achebe 1958, 1959, 2009). Achebe wrote the book in 1956–1957, and made the claim that it depicted tribal life a century before, but half a century appears more realistic, with a key scene at the end based on the Ahiara massacre of 1905. The principal interest here is in the direct and indirect description and commentary on (and also in many places the lack of commentary on) indigenous slavery institutions. One reason for taking an English-language literary text as a source is that the choice of terms for representing indigenous categories has been made by the observer-author himself in bridging between two languages/cultures. A second reason is that, in being fictional, there is nothing directly historical or empirical at stake for those ethnographers who, in Francis Abiola Irele’s 2009 critical edition (Achebe 2009), provide the socio-cultural background to the novel, and whose commentaries and elucidation of aspects of the nov-

2  The Arrogation of Slavery: Prehistory, Archaeology, and Pre-theoretical Commitments Concerning People as Property

el’s action provide further points of interest. By choosing the filter of a novel, rather than the filter of professional ethnography, it may be possible to slip around the methodological problem that field anthropologists inevitably face in documenting practices that are discerned by the target socio-­ cultural formation as negatively valorized in the eyes of outsiders (perhaps one could speak of circumambulating the methodological limitation that tends towards the construction of the ‘other-as-wished-for’); and by choosing commentaries on this novel that are standard exegeses designed for educational use, I mean to show how denial operates in the very face of the writer’s expression where that might impinge on our comfort zones. The first US edition of the book (1959) was subtitled ‘the story of a strong man’, reflecting the central role of the imposing male warrior Okonkwo. Described by the Norton Anthology of English Literature (Greenblatt and Abrams 2006: 2, 2623) as the ‘novel’s hero’, ‘dignified and courageous, a noble figure’, Okonkwo presides over an extended family that includes several young brides and many children whom he regularly beats. Okonkwo has also become adoptive father to a little boy who has been given up by a neighbouring village, along with a girl virgin, in payment for a murder of one of Okonkwo’s kinswomen. The girl virgin, whose name we do not learn, quickly drops from view in the novel (we assume she becomes a junior wife of Okonkwo himself). The boy, Ikemefuna, who has been separated from his mother and 3-year-old sister, becomes like a brother to Okonkwo’s elder son, Nwoye. The two boys play and develop together so that Ikemefuna finally feels sad when he is one day told he is to be taken home. However, the reunion with mother and sister never happens, as ‘going home’ is a euphemism for execution. Ikemefuna is taken outside the village to a place of ritual killing and it is Okonkwo who does the honours. Achebe has the boy call out in despair as he is hacked to death with a machete. Nwoye, who has learned to love Ikemefuna like a brother, is traumatized and becomes a Christian; as a result, his father effectively disowns him. Okonkwo goes on to murder a colonial messenger before hanging himself. The closest the Norton anthology comes to morally questioning this behaviour is in saying that Okonkwo is ‘flawed and falls through lack of the balance everywhere celebrated in Achebe’s novels’. If flawed is an understatement, then the commentators in the critical edition develop a cultural apologetics that operates through an actual denial of the novel’s explicit content. Aside from Irele’s own editorial footnoting, the critical edition reprints two ethnographic background essays designed to complement the text: ‘The Igbo World’ (Uchendu 2009 [originally 1965]), and ‘Igbo Culture and History’ (Ohadike 2009 [originally 1996]). Ohadike provides an informative introduction to the Igbo culture area, with its

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population of c. 15  million living between the Niger and Cross rivers. He uses archaeology, in passing, to establish the idea that Igbo culture is broadly regionally indigenous, with continuities extending back at least 3000 years. He tells us that ‘the Igbo communities were known as extremely democratic, yet they had no centralized governments’ (Ohadike 2009: 238). This democracy was, Ohadike claims, ‘achieved’ through cross-cutting councils of elders, age-groups, the conduct of chiefs, women’s assemblies, and secret societies. Of these last, while the female oracle of the cave had significant authority, final jurisdiction lay with the senior male mask-wearing society personifying the (male) ancestors (or egwugwu), who for practical purposes held ultimate power over life and death. Perhaps Achebe, while starkly conflicted in his account of the crumbling of traditional values under pressure from Christian missionaries and a new colonial law code, depicts aspects of Igbo society that were too ‘messy’ and inconvenient for critical assessment. Thus, even those indigenous ethnographers whose specific and self-undertaken remit is to shed light on the practices and institutions the novelist described ignore his references to indigenous slavery, and with it the interplay between outcasts, tabooed untouchables, potential human sacrifices held hostage, and everyday chattel slaves. There are four explicit references to slaves and slavery in Things Fall Apart. At the start of Chapter 6, Achebe writes: ‘The whole village turned out on the ilo [the central place of assembly], men, women and children. […] The elders and grandees of the village sat on their own stools brought there by their young sons or slaves’ (Achebe 2009: 29). In Chapter 15, he has a character, fearing colonial influence, saying: ‘We have heard stories about white men who made the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true’ (Achebe 2009: 81). In Chapter 18, the indigenous Christian, Mr. Kiaga, enters discussion with the new congregation: ‘“Before God,” he said, “there is no slave or free. We are all children of God and we must receive these our brothers.” “You do not understand,” said one of the converts, “What will the heathen say of us when they hear that we receive osu [see below] into our midst? They will laugh”’. Finally, in Chapter 21 we hear about the missionary, Mr. Brown, who ‘went from family to family begging people to send their children to his school. But at first they only sent their slaves or sometimes their lazy children’ (Achebe 2009: 102). Not only does Irele, a fulsome footnoter, let each of these instances pass without comment, but the two companion commentaries of Uchendu and Ohadike also wholly ignore them. The same is true with all five of Achebe’s references to ritual infanticide, specifically the killing of twins shortly after birth. The novelist describes such children as being ‘thrown away’. The practice is presented as a necessary rite

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T. Taylor

in which the newborns are placed together in a large pot and left in the Evil Forest, from whence their dying screams are audible (it is this traumatic noise that so haunts Nwoye, Okonkwo’s elder son, that it is cited as an additional spur to his conversion to Christianity after his father hacks Ikemefuna to death: Achebe 2009: 85). Although editor and commentators are silent on the issue, the description is convincing in general and in its specifics. The systematic infanticide of twins is well documented as a current practice for various parts of West Africa by the medical researcher Dr. Alessandra Piontelli in her 2008 survey, ‘Twins in the World’ (which also examines the superstitious rationales that underpin it). Piontelli also describes the more highly ritualized, and often peculiarly cruel and unpleasant, killing of older twins marked down for scapegoating when social order requires some injection of viscerally-engaged imagistic ritual. There is, however, some brief commentary on the status of the outcast (osu) in the novel. Osu, as explained in Chapter 18 to a newly arrived Nigerian Christian convert, is ‘a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart – a taboo forever, and his children after him. He could neither marry or be married by the free-born. He was in fact an outcast, living in a special area of the village, close to the Great Shrine. Wherever he went he carried with him the mark of his forbidden caste – long, tangled and dirty hair. A razor was taboo to him. An osu could not attend an assembly of the free-born, and they, in turn, could not shelter under his roof. He could not take any of the four titles of the clan, and when he died he was buried by his kind in the Evil Forest’ (Achebe 2009: 90). Irele footnotes osu with the definition: ‘Member of a low caste in Igbo society; originally destined to be sacrificed, they were held in contempt, and it was taboo to mix with them.’

2.6

Democracy and Egality

Just as Thucydides’ conception of democracy did not include voting rights for slaves, so the extent to which Igbo society is ‘extremely democratic’ can be seen to depend very much on who is considered a social member, and those who were not social members could easily become victims of rites that would not have looked out of place in Carthage. Where the ancients had vernae, the children of slaves, born as slaves into slavery, the Igbo had segregated osu perpetuating their own community; denied access to the legitimation of marriage and therefore family or clan affiliation, their children were born into the same status and were (presumably – although neither Achebe or his commentators tell us this) a reservoir for the young slaves who service the elders. Thus, clearly, we have a network of social and status relations in which the ‘extremely democratic’ Igbo community of men, and some women, with title and power, becomes seen as the proper focus of outside interest in socio-cultural

practices, while the osu exist on the edge of focus, with no real clue to their relative numbers (fewer, equal or more, and to what degree?). It would be easy to say there were few, because they had few outside contacts. But, given the labour benefits accruing to the powerful, there is no reason to suppose that there might not have been more of them, in relative terms. Statistics are not, of course, to be expected from a novel. Nor, one might argue, is social reality. But we should be clear in Achebe’s case that he was certainly not ‘making it up’, and presented his work as a historical novel. Testamentary data on indigenous institutions come from a variety of sources. A recent example from the journalist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, ‘My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves’ (Nwaubani 2020), is informative, despite, however, tending to suggest that the issue is no longer topical. In fact, indigenous slavery remains extant in Nigeria and has probably increased in its incidence recently, especially in the north under the influence of the fundamentalist Islamist overlordship of Boko Haram, which has seen ‘the return of the Nigerian slave trade’ (Clarfield 2014; see also Hegarty 2017). The issues of the millennium of Islamic slavery are dealt with by Alexander (2001, see p. 44 on the ‘variety of indigenous African concepts transmitted only by oral traditions before contacts with Arabic or European visitors added a new source’), while central questions of archaeological and oral data sources are addressed by various papers in Lane and MacDonald (2011). I have spent some time on presenting the details of the social structure that was familiar to Achebe in order to highlight the dynamic of denial in commentaries. What might seem to many to be the most striking aspects of the description elicit what is in effect an exegetic and critical silence. This suggests an inability to pursue the discussion of absolute versus relative morality that the author himself seems to invite. More generally, however, it tells us something about the low visibility of slavery and slave-like institutions within discourses where there is every opportunity to discuss them. The failure of Achebe’s commentators both feeds and is fed by a broader myth about traditional and indigenous societies, the myth of primitive egalitarianism. This is a true myth in the Mary Midgley sense, and it is worth repeating my chosen epigram here: ‘Prominent ideas […] are organic parts of our lives, cognitive and emotional habits, structures that shape our thinking. So they follow conservation laws within it. Instead of dying, they transform themselves into something different, something that is often hard to recognise and to understand’ (Midgley 2011: 6–7). I take Midgley to mean that a structuring idea can pass often almost without notice as discussions move on to detail. This is probably even more the case with implicit assumptions. In order to criticize these, it is necessary to treat their axiomatic inchoateness by

2  The Arrogation of Slavery: Prehistory, Archaeology, and Pre-theoretical Commitments Concerning People as Property

attempting the drag them out into the light. It is this challenge that (I hope) justifies the slightly oblique approach taken in this essay. Aphra Behn provides as clear an example of this problem of recognition as we could wish in her 1688 narrative Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave, which centres on the story of a ‘gallant slave’ caught up in the organized transatlantic trade between the Ghanaian Gold Coast and a European sugar plantation in Venezuela. As an ostensible cultural and moral contrast to the broader setting, Behn inserts a mini ethnography of the locally native Amerindian tribe. These people she describes as naked but ‘extreme modest and bashful, very shy and nice of being touched’. Nuancing Montaigne and anticipating Rousseau, she says that the indigenes: represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before Man knew how to sin. And ’tis most evident and plain that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. […] Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by ignorance, and laws would but teach ’em to know offense, of which now they have no notion. (Behn 2006 [1688]: 2184–85)

Nevertheless, custom approves ‘a plurality of wives, which, when they grow old, they serve those that succeed’em, who are young, but with a servitude easy and respected; and unless they take slaves in war, they have no other attendants’ (Behn 2006 [1688]: 2185). Notwithstanding her own sex, Behn effectively reveals that the natural egality she is apparently depicting is actually limited to a relation among adult male initiates, and is a condition that discounts the terms of existence among their broad and varied penumbra of human support and service staff. In this she was following a lead in envisioning an egalitarian society that was perhaps most disarmingly and ­influentially set out in theory by Thomas More in his 1516 Utopia. More describes the structure of cashless market places, where ‘there is plenty of everything, and no reason to fear that anyone will claim more than he needs’, noting that: fear of want, no doubt, makes every living creature greedy and avaricious – and in addition, man develops these qualities out of sheer pride, pride which glories in getting ahead of others by a superfluous display of possessions. But this kind of vice has no place whatever in the Utopian way of life. Next to the marketplace of which I have just spoke are the food markets, where people bring all sorts of vegetables, fruit, and bread. Fish, meat, and poultry are also brought there from designated places outside the city, where running water can carry off all the blood and refuse. Slaves [servi] do the slaughtering and cleaning in these places: citizens are not allowed to do such work. The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable. (More 1992 [1516]: 42)

Critical commentary concerning what More ultimately meant to say in Utopia, and whether he was actually advocating the society it describes, is not in my competence.

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What is rhetorically undeniable within his semantics is that the phrase ‘our human nature’ is used as a collective characterization that clearly does not extend to the servi, whose dystopia underwrites More’s utopia, presumably unironically. But even if ironically meant somehow, the text suggests that double-think in relation to who counts as human is remarkably easy. Whoever More included into human society, Behn’s classification at least makes it clear that she would have been in good company among some anthropologists of the modern period. One wonders if Mahatma Gandhi could have been influenced by More’s vision when nuancing the position of untouchables in relation to caste Hindus within the emergent post-colonial democratic structures of India: ‘The moment a slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. […] Freedom and slavery are mental states’ (Gandhi 1981: 11–12).

2.7

 roblematizing Archaeological Data P Proxies for Slavery

In this last section, I will limit myself to some remarks about the directions we could travel in in order to uncover or recognize data proxies for slavery, which must usually remain a direct unobservable in the vast majority of prehistoric contexts (though not all). Understood generously, Mommsen’s vision of ‘the old, in some measure innocent, rural slavery’ (Mommsen 1905: 305), was meant to point up the systematized horror of chained, galley- and mine-slavery at its height. But he failed, as so many have, to appreciate the hopeless tenor and more distributed, but no less massive, scale of suffering of the exploited and owned in less well-accounted social systems, where the miseries of dislocation, victimhood and exploitation could operate on all sorts of dimensions, simultaneously and at whim. By contrast, there could at times be a structural clarity in developed systems of institutionalized slavery that provided a very few talented and/or lucky individuals with more positive possibilities (such as manumission) of a sort that remained axiomatically non-existent for, say, ritual outcasts. Archaeologically speaking, beyond the grave markers of liberti, who could not have constituted any great percentage of slaves in the Classical world, chattel slavery leaves a very scant material trace. Non-chattel slavery (which I would contend has been even more widespread), is also perhaps even harder to spot. But it is not entirely invisible if we know how to interpret what evidence we can accrue: advances in dietary isotopic analyses and ancient DNA are providing new methods that may allow us to better identify displacement and disadvantage (for example, increasing isotopic and aDNA data for Neolithic Europe seems to point ever more strongly to a pattern characterized by a high level

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of competition between patrilineal groups, with interethnic massacres and captive taking: see Schroeder et  al. 2019). The adequate development of these methods will require not just increments in methodological and analytical sophistication, but also the development of the cultural-theoretical setting. We shall need to sensitize ourselves to the possibility of the near ubiquity of slave-like statuses in the past – only then will we have a chance to properly identify and track the indicators. The most obvious indicators are those by which we can gauge the level, intensity and overall ‘belligerence-rating’ of interpersonal violence in specific area-period/culture contexts. These include not only the presence of offensive weaponry, which might be argued as simply ‘symbolic’ (albeit symbolic of martial prowess), but more especially patterns of skeletal markers such as sharp- and blunt-force traumas, both fatal and healed, and their persistent location and/or age-sex associations (for example where multiple, healed parry fractures occur predominantly in, for example, the left forearms of young females). However, this is not the place to review the primary and synthetic accounts of prehistoric warfare, massacre, human sacrifice and cannibalism (there is a burgeoning corpus of recent work on this: e.g. see Schulting and Fibiger 2014, and Meyer et  al. 2015 for Neolithic Europe; and Taylor 2002, 2018 for some reassessment of data). We should perhaps be paying as much attention to the sometimes significant mismatch between the visibility of settlement sites and of cemeteries, which can provide a different view of particular demographic situations. Connected with that are issues of how relative status is marked across contexts. To illustrate what may be at stake, I will briefly use the example of a Bronze Age and Iron Age salt mine in the Austrian Salzkammergut. Here, despite evidence for intensive and sustained underground salt mining, little settlement evidence has been uncovered – certainly not enough for the actual numbers of people active in the mine’s shafts and galleries. By contrast, a very wealthy-looking Iron Age cemetery (the eponymous cemetery of the Hallstatt culture) has been archaeologically excavated for more than a century. The orthodox view is that the bodies in the cemetery are those of the miners themselves, grown rich on the commerce in salt which they controlled by their efforts. The sample of analysed bones shows biomechanical markers consistent with hard physical work, while the saline conditions of the mine, perfect for organic preservation, contain many pieces of high-quality decorative woven textiles (Grömer et  al. 2013). Nevertheless, the analysis of faecal material from the mines suggests low health status, and a sub-analysis of surviving child skeletons indicates relatively frequent blunt-­ force trauma. The social picture therefore seems curiously mixed. What I want to briefly consider here is that the wealthy adults in the cemetery were indeed hard-working

T. Taylor

beneficiaries of the mine, but that their physicality was connected to overseeing activities, and that the trauma-­displaying sub-adult skeletal material in the cemetery could just possibly represent the caching of property in people  – that is, involve some kind of status-display tableau, in which child labour was valorized  – rather than that these child burials represent attributed statuses in death (the default assumption, and one which – obviously – more easily explains the presence of what are usually considered grave goods). Within such a setting, the high-status textile materials in the mine may simply be the hand-me-downs of the managerial class, used by the mine slaves who otherwise had nothing of their own to wear. The controlling elite – the ultimate owners and major beneficiaries  – may have resided at a distance and been buried somewhere quite different (Pany-Kucera et  al. 2019). It may be countered that this is speculation; but all social inference is a speculation that we have to test against the evidence, preferably against multiple independent strands of it. The aim with the Hallstatt example is to show that different readings of evidence can be obtained simply by taking a different jumping-off point. It is, for example, rather hard to argue that indigenous Iron Age societies of this period did not have slaves, as there can be little doubt that a servile class is frequently represented iconographically on the high status bronze wine buckets or situlae of the Eastern Hallstatt culture, and the act of taking captives is shown as part of standard warriordom in the same material context (for example on the Benvenuti situla: Fig. 2.2). Thus this is not deliberate contrarianism, rather it is intended to underline the point that pre-theoretical commitments concerning people as property can and do exist among prehistorians and archaeologists. Whilst that may be inevitable before proper analytical and interpretative steps have been taken, it is not an acceptable ongoing position. Put another way, when we try to ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ a particular human behaviour in the past, we always have some kind of implicit and explicit image of ‘normal’. This is not an ‘and/or’ (implicit and/or explicit) but a real ‘and’; however explicit some of our assumptions about plausible social structures and formations, there are aspects that may have been present which we did not consider because of our implicit assumptions. Jumping-off points (or starting points) in assessing data frequently have implicit aspects. These then condition our sense of the plausible in assessing what is the best explanatory inference based on the data. It may seem analytical enough in a particular archaeological context to say ‘we have no evidence for slavery’. However, a properly analytical statement would need to include a note on what kinds of evidence of any kind exist that could be relevant to constraining or characterising the particular past social formation. In too many cases ‘we have no evidence for slavery’ could be qualified with ‘but we have no evidence for not-­

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Fig. 2.2 Captive-taking iconography on the Benvenuti situla (lower frieze, right). Original drawing of the repoussé sheet bronze iconography. (Prosdocimi 1882: Tav. VI)

slavery either’. It is not, because the first statement plays to our prejudice and our optimistic imagery of a past as wished for. As Karim Mata writes, in relation to inferring slavery in Iron Age northwestern Europe, ‘archaeologists have to move beyond searching for material “markers” of slavery and instead examine local particularities against a background of broader historical dynamics’ (Mata 2019: 39). There are some signs of a broadly positive systematic change in how we approach these matters as prehistorians and archaeologists. Catherine Cameron has recently advanced strong and detailed arguments for the centrality of captive taking within pre-state societies (and about the concomitant role of captives, especially women, in driving culture change: Cameron 2016); Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus (2012) have elaborated a new framework for understanding the origins of inequality, and provide a welcome reprise of the data on slavery in pre- or non-agricultural societies such as the northwest coast Tlingit and Nootka; and the ‘treadmill’ model of cultural complexity, which links complexity unambiguously to demography (i.e. complexity as a feature and symptom of higher absolute population numbers and densities) is also increasingly being brought into question (Andersson and Read 2016). All these approaches do, however, depend on calculations of population numbers and ‘reasonable’ estimates of nutritional carrying capacities in particular environments that may well underplay the possibility of the existence of malnourished and materially-­ impoverished (even wholly materially bereft) humans subsisting as underclasses and disenfranchized peripheries. So, again, there can be misleading circularities in starting assumptions. Protestant Anglican anti-slavery societies were formed in Britain in 1823 (with a remit to abolish slavery in the British Empire) and (with a global and Catholic remit) in 1839, the year that Pope Gregory XVI decried slavery as inhuman. Both were instrumental in enforcing laws that put the brakes on the mass exploitation of the North Atlantic slave trade. Activists understood that laws, ultimately, were the only way to do this; moral pressure was not enough. As David

Livingstone wrote in 1874, ‘We must never lose sight of the fact that though the majority perhaps are on the side of freedom, large numbers of Englishmen are not slaveholders only because the law forbids the practice’ (Livingstone 1998: 451). Although by 2033, slavery will have been outlawed for two centuries in the UK, there are still tens of thousands of slaves in Britain, mainly in London, and numbers may again be rising. Globally the situation is far worse: the Anti-Slavery Society has not become unnecessary: now called Anti-­ Slavery International (UK Registered Charity 1049160), it recognizes that modern slavery affects nearly four times as many as were victim to the colonial North Atlantic slave trade. At the start of 2020, the estimate is 40.3 million slaves worldwide, within six broad, non-mutually-exclusive categories: forced labour, debt-bondage, human trafficking, descent-based slavery, child slavery, and forced and early marriage. Visibility remains a methodological problem. Not only are the material traces of slaves themselves typically absent but, spurred by shame, we now also erase the material traces of their owners. Emotionally understandable though the destruction of statues of slave owners and traders such as Haile Selassie or Edward Colston is, their removal removes a physical prompt to later generations – who may begin to forget such people and what they stood for – to critically discuss their behaviour. What if, instead of assuming that humans do not frequently capture, dominate and exploit others where they can, we assume that, if not stopped, they almost always will and do? Then the search will be on for positive ‘not-slavery’ evidence in every past and present analysis of any social formation or culture. Perhaps the plausibility factor here can be boosted (against what we might like to be the case) by considering the influential recent argument of the psychologist Victor Nell, who asserts the adaptational power of cruelty in hominin groups from around 1.5 million years ago (Nell 2006). In ‘Cruelty’s Rewards: The Gratifications of Perpetrators and Spectators’, Nell suggests that social power is promoted through cruelty in the contexts of war, religious ritual, punishment, and even

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entertainment. Although he does not deal expressly with servitude, it is clear that this state answers very well to the needs of those who use the psychological mechanisms he identifies to create and consolidate a power base. His argument, if accepted, thus supports the suggestion made here that the only societies that have not made others into slaves are those with a complex enough anti-slavery legislature, not those ‘too simple’ to have thought that exploiting others could be an advantage. Acknowledgments With thanks for many critical comments, useful suggestions, and help with the illustrations: Paul Bahn, the late Ofer Bar-Yosef, Chris Beckwith, Catherine Cameron, Martin Gamon, Kathe Heiss, Marek Jankowiak, Nicholas Loy, Roger Matthews, Wendy Matthews, Philippa Monckton, Mark Pearce, Fabio Saccoccio, Helena Seidl da Fonseca, Oliver Wright, and Sarah Wright. The views expressed are my own.

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Secondary Sources Achebe, C. (1958). Things fall apart. London: Heinemann. Achebe, C. (1959). Things fall apart: The story of a strong man. New York: McDowell, Obolensky. Achebe, C. (2009). Things fall apart. Authoritative text, contexts and criticism (F. A. Irele, Ed.). New York: Norton. Alexander, J. (2001). Islam, archaeology and slavery in Africa. World Archaeology, 33(1), 44–60. Andersson, C., & Read, D. (2016). The evolution of cultural complexity: Not by the treadmill alone. Current Anthropology, 57(3), 261–286. Bartrop, P.  R., & Grimm, E.  E. (2019). Perpetrating the Holocaust: Leaders, enablers and collaborators. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Beckwith, C. I. (2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A history of central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Behn, A. (2006 [1688]). Oroonoko or, the Royal Slave. In Greenblatt & Abrams, 2006, Vol. 1, pp. 2183–2226. Boruchoff, D.  A. (2008). Another face of empire: Bartolomé de las Casas, indigenous rights, and ecclesiastical imperialism. Early American Literature, 43(2), 497–504. Bradley, K. (1994). Slavery and society at Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

T. Taylor Bradley, K., & Cartledge, P. (2011). The Cambridge world history of slavery, vol. 1: The ancient Mediterranean world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brunton, R. (1989). The cultural instability of egalitarian societies, Man, 24, 673–681. Cameron, C. (2016). Captives: How stolen people changed the world. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press. Cassidy, L. M., Maoldúin, R. Ó., Kador, T., et al. (2020). A dynastic elite in monumental Neolithic society. Nature, 582(7812), 384–388. Clarfield, H. (2014, May 11). Boko Haram and the return of the Nigerian slave trade. The Times of Israel [online]. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/boko-­haram-­and-­the-­return-­of-­the-­nigerian-­slave-­trade/. Accessed 26 Aug 2020. Davis, R. C. (2003). Christian slaves, Muslim masters: White slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Donald, L. (1997). Aboriginal slavery on the northwest coast of North America. San Francisco: University of California Press. Englund, R.  K. (2009). The smell of the cage. Cuneiform Digital Library Journal [online], 2009, 4. https://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/ cdlj/2009/cdlj2009_004.pdf. Accessed 25 Aug 2020. Ferguson, N. (2011). Civilisation: The west and the rest. London: Allen Lane. Ferguson, R.  B., & Whitehead, N.  L. (Eds.). (1999). War in the tribal zone: Expanding states and indigenous warfare (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series) (2nd ed.). Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Flannery, K., & Marcus, J. (2012). The creation of inequality: How our prehistoric ancestors set the stage for monarchy, slavery and empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gandhi, M. K. (1981). The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 83: January 20, 1946–April 13, 1946. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust. Greenblatt, S., & Abrams, M.  H. (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed.). New York: Norton. Grömer, K., Kern, A., Reschreiter, H., & Rösel-Mautendorfer, H. (Eds.). (2013). Textiles from Hallstatt: Weaving culture in Bronze Age and Iron Age salt mines. Budapest: Archaeolingua. Gutman, I., & Rozett, R. (1990). Estimated losses in the Holocaust. In I. Gutman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Vol. 4, pp. 1797– 1802). New York: Macmillan. Harrington, S. (1993). Bones and bureaucrats. Archaeology [online]. https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/afrburial/. Accessed 26 Aug 2020. Hegarty, S. (2017, September 26). A Boko Haram commander’s wife persuaded me to escape with her. BBC News [online]. http://www. bbc.com/news/world-­africa-­41388569. Accessed 26 Aug 2020. Hoffner, H. A. (1997). The laws of the Hittites: A critical edition. Brill: Leiden. Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process. In A.  Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (pp.  64–94). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lane, P., & MacDonald, K.  C. (Eds.). (2011). Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Livingstone, D. (1998). Last journals. In J. Gross (Ed.), The new Oxford book of English Prose (pp.  450–451). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Masterman, M. (1970). The nature of a paradigm. In I.  Lakatos & A.  Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge. Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London 1965 (Vol. 4, pp. 59–90). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mata, M. (2019). Iron Age slaving and enslavement in northwest Europe. Oxford: Archaeopress.

2  The Arrogation of Slavery: Prehistory, Archaeology, and Pre-theoretical Commitments Concerning People as Property Meyer, C., Lohr, C., Gronenborn, D., & Alt, K. W. (2015). The massacre mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten reveals new insights into collective violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(36), 11217–11222. Midgley, M. (2011). The myths we live by. London: Routledge. Mishra, P. (2011). Watch this man. Review of Civilisation: The West and the rest by Niall Ferguson. London Review of Books [online], 33(21). https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-­paper/v33/n21/pankaj-­mishra/ watch-­this-­man. Accessed 26 Aug 2020. Mommsen, T. (1905). The history of Rome (W. P. Dickson, Trans., Vol. 3). New York: Scribner. More, T. (1992 [1516]). Utopia, rev. trans. by R. M. Adams (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Muller, M., Pilbeam, D., & Wrangham, R. (Eds.). (2018). Chimpanzees and human evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nell, V. (2006). Cruelty’s rewards: The gratifications of perpetrators and spectators. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(3), 211–257. Nwaubani, A. T. (2020, July 20). My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves. BBC news [online]. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-­ africa-­53444752. Accessed 26 Aug 2020. Ohadike, D.  C. (2009 [1996]). Igbo culture and history. In  Achebe, 2009, pp. 236–257. Pany-Kucera, D., Kern, A., & Reschreiter, H. (2019). Children in the mines? Tracing potential childhood labour in salt mines from the Early Iron Age in Hallstatt, Austria. Childhood in the Past, 12(2), 67–80. Patterson, O. (2000). Slavery and social death: A comparative study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pearson, A. (2012). Dataset to accompany the excavation report for a ‘liberated African’ graveyard in Rupert’s Valley, St Helena, South Atlantic. Journal of Open Archaeology. Data [online], 1: e5 https:// openarchaeologydata.metajnl.com/articles/10.5334/4f7b093e d0a77/. Accessed 26 Aug 2020. Piontelli, A. (2008). Twins in the world: The legends they inspire and the lives they lead. New York: Palgrave Macmillian. Pittioni, M. (Ed.). (2019). Muslimische Sklaverei: Ein „vergessenes“ Verbrechen. Berlin: Lit Verlag. Powell, T. G. E. (1980). The Celts. London: Thames & Hudson. Prosdocimi, A. (1882). Notizie delle necropoli euganee di Este. Roma: Salviucci. Reinhart, K. (2015). Religion, violence, and emotion: Modes of religiosity in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Northern China. Journal of World Prehistory, 28(2), 113–177. Renfrew, A.  C., & Bahn, P. (2004). Archaeology: The key concepts. London: Routledge. Ruby, R.  H., & Brown, J.  A. (1993). Indian slavery in the Pacific Northwest. Spokane: Arthur H. Clark. Schroeder, H., Margaryan, A., Szmyt, M., Theulot, B., Włodarczak, P., Rasmussen, S., et al. (2019). Unravelling ancestry and kinship in a

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late Neolithic mass grave. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(22), 10705–10710. Schulting, R., & Fibiger, L. (2014). Violence in Neolithic north-west Europe: A population perspective. Proceedings of the British Academy, 198, 281–306. Service, E. (1971). Cultural evolutionism: Theory in practice. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Smith, M. E. (2006). Aztec Culture. Albuquerque: Arizona State University. Taylor, T. (1994). Thracians, Scythians, and Dacians, 800 bc–ad 300. In B. W. Cunliffe (Ed.), The Oxford illustrated prehistory of Europe (pp. 373–410). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, T. (2001). Believing the ancients: Quantitative and qualitative dimensions of slavery and the slave trade in later prehistoric Eurasia. World Archaeology, 33(1), 27–43. Taylor, T. (2002). The buried soul. Boston: Beacon. Taylor, T. (2005). Ambushed by a grotesque: Archaeology, slavery and the third paradigm. In M. Parker Pearson & I. J. N. Thorpe (Eds.), Warfare, violence and slavery in prehistory (BAR international series, 1374) (pp. 225–233). Oxford: Archaeopress. Taylor, T. (2018). Uniform to unique: Cannibals, vampires and non-­ paradigmatic data. In J.  Drauschke, E.  Kislinger, K.  Kühtreiber, T.  Kühtreiber, G.  Scharrer-Liška, & T.  Vida (Eds.), Lebenswelten zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte. Festschrift für Falko Daim zu seinem 65. Geburtstag. Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums. Taylor, T., Havlicek, C., & Beckwith, C. (2020). The Scythian empire: Reassessing steppe power from western and eastern perspectives. In S. J. Simpson (Ed.), Masters of the steppe (pp. 616–626). London: Britsh Museum Publications. Uchendu, V.  C. (2009 [1965]). The Igbo world. In  Achebe, 2009, pp. 225–236. Vitoria, F. de. (1537). De Indis. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_ Indis_De_Jure_Belli/Part_1. Accessed 26 Aug 2020. Woodburn, J. (1982). Egalitarian societies. Man, 17, 431–451. Wright, O. (2020, August, 6). Ignored: The iconoclasm that didn’t fit the narrative. The Conservative Woman [online]. https://conservativewoman.co.uk/ignored-­the-­iconoclasm-­that-­didnt-­fit-­the-­narrative. Accessed 06 Aug 2020. Timothy Taylor is Jan Eisner Professor of Archaeology at the Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia. He read Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge and held positions in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and the Bradford Department of Archaeological Sciences before becoming Professor of the Prehistory of Humanity, University of Vienna, Austria, and Director of the Vienna Institute for Archaeological  Science (VIAS), 2013–2020. His books, which have been translated into several languages, include The Prehistory of Sex (1996), The Buried Soul (2002) and The Artificial Ape  (2010). Since 2007, he has served as Editor-­ in-­ Chief of the Journal of World Prehistory (SpringerNature).  

3

Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa Paul J. Lane

Abstract

Much of the research on slavery in Africa still relies heavily on documentary and oral sources and uses archaeology more as a means to materialize the practices of slave trading and ownership than as an independent source of evidence. This is perhaps understandable given that their marginal status generally meant enslaved persons left far fewer material traces of their presence than other labour categories. Moreover, even where material evidence has been interpreted as indicative of either slave trading or slave ownership, alternative explanations can usually also be forwarded. In the absence of supporting documentary evidence, verification of the presence of slaves, therefore, may be hard to achieve. Nonetheless, as recent studies now demonstrate, new information about the lives of enslaved individuals, the wider impacts of slave raiding and the organization of slave trading can be gleaned from analysis of material and bioarchaeological evidence at multiple spatial scales, and when several different material and landscape indicators occur together convincing arguments for the presence of slavery can be made. The aim of this chapter is to review these emerging approaches to highlight their possible relevance for the study of slavery systems in other contexts.

3.1

Introduction

The identification of enslaved individuals from archaeological evidence alone, and in the absence of textual sources that attest their existence, is a well-known interpretative challenge (Handler and Lange 2006). Three factors, in particular, combine to make this so. First, as an extreme form of exploitation and dependency (Eltis and Engerman 2015: 1), the institution of slavery entails the denial of several of the individual rights of those enslaved. Typically, these include the denial of personhood, social identity, control over one’s own labour, sexuality, and reproductive capacity, and often also a denial of access to personal property and/or its ownership (Lovejoy 2011: 2–3). Consequently, the material traces enslaved persons generate as individuals and as a social class are frequently insubstantial and highly ephemeral. Secondly, many of the common artefactual and architectural expressions of slave ownership, control and exchange, such as shackles (Fig.  3.1), slave-pens and slave-markets (Raffield 2019), are not uniquely associated with the institution of slavery. Thus, for instance, while it is possible that iron chains and manacles may attest to the presence of captives destined to become slaves, they could equally have been used for restraining criminals and other wrongdoers. Similarly, most of the spaces and landscapes where enslaved

Keywords

Archeology of slavery · Trans-Atlantic slave trade · Trans-Saharan slave trade · African slavery · Africa

P. J. Lane (*) Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Professor of the Deep History & Archaeology of Africa, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected]

Fig. 3.1  Leg irons used to shackle enslaved individuals on Gorée Island, Senegal, now on display in the Maison des Esclaves Museum, Gorée. (Photograph author)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Biermann, M. Jankowiak (eds.), The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe, Themes in Contemporary Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_3

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persons lived and worked, such as plantations, agricultural fields, households, the sites of collective building projects, and even military barracks, were shared and used by free persons and/or could be associated with other types (e.g. indentured, convict and corvée) of forced labour. Commenting on the nature of slavery in Islamic Africa and its archaeological recognition, Alexander (2001: 56) noted that all of the possible material signatures that might be associated with the practice could be indicative of other activities and/or social statuses and identities. The same is broadly true for other contexts, and there is very little about the material world and built space that can be said to be uniquely characteristic of either the institution of slavery or the condition of enslavement. Interpretive challenges associated with the equifinality of material objects and spatial patterning, of course, are not unique to the archaeological study of slavery and enslaved persons, but they do compound matters. As does the fact that the conditions and duties of enslavement take many forms, both within a particular society and between different societies across space and time. These different forms may even co-exist simultaneously within the same locality or society. Accordingly, there can be no singular set of defining characteristics of enslavement, and identifying who was considered a slave and how this status was determined even where a detailed lexicon of terms has survived, can be particularly challenging. To this we must also add the inherent ambiguity of the various vernacular terms that might be loosely translated into the English words ‘slave’ and ‘slavery’, and their equivalents in other major European languages (see Lane and MacDonald 2011a: 3–7, for a discussion with reference to sub-Saharan Africa). Semantic analysis of these invariably Fig. 3.2  A row of bound Nubian prisoners depicted beneath the feet of the seated statue of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel Great Temple. (Photograph Angus Graham)

P. J. Lane

demonstrates that much is lost in translation (Miers 2003; Alexander 2001: 44). The history of slave raiding, trading and enslavement in Pharaonic Egypt, the earliest attested example of the institution of slavery in Africa, is a case in point. Textual sources certainly describe different categories of coercive labour, including: ‘royal corvée workers’ (nswtjw, mrjt) during the Old Kingdom (2600–2100 bce); First Intermediate Period state employees termed ‘royal labourers’ (ḥmw-nsw) who could be assigned to private individuals; and the extensive use of ‘war prisoners’ (sqrw-anx) and ‘conscripts’ (ḥsbw) as forced labour during the New Kingdom (Loprieno 2012: 2). Moreover, over the course of the Middle and New Kingdoms (2000–1000 bce), the presence of enslaved individuals is increasingly documented in the available textual sources (Bakir 1952; Shaw 2012). There is also a rich corpus of iconographic material to supplement the surviving physical remains of settlements, elite palaces, production sites and other places where slaves lived and worked. Yet, although domestic slavery was probably common and scholars have a relatively clear idea that the basic residential group often included slaves, defining their presence archaeologically remains elusive (e.g. Meskell 1998), and most of the iconographic evidence is open to competing interpretations. As, for example, the row of bound Nubian prisoners depicted beneath the feet of the seated statue of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel Great Temple (Fig.  3.2), or the many other similar carvings, wall-paintings and drawings on papyrus that are popularly presented as depicting evidence for a slave economy. Likewise, even in the New World, where there is a well-­ established tradition of research on the archaeology of slav-

3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa

ery (e.g. Handler and Lange 1978; Ferguson 1992; Orser 1994; Singleton 1995; Barrett and Blakey 2011; Hayes 2013; Funari and Orser 2015) and a much richer documentary and oral record, there can be no guarantee that archaeological remains will provide unambiguous evidence for the existence of slavery as an institution or the presence of slaves themselves. Commenting on the results of their archaeological investigations of the eighteenth-century ce Van Cortlandt Mansion and its associated plantation estate in the Bronx, New York, for instance, Bankoff and Winter (2005: 305–06) observed that at the end of their project they ‘were faced with a common conundrum: the enslaved population that is known to have inhabited the plantation for 75 years is invisible in the archaeological record’. As they noted, this was ‘hardly surprising’ since, typically, ‘slaves are constrained from setting their own life agendas’, their routine activities are to greater or lesser degrees ‘defined by their servitude’, and ‘the material manifestations of their activities as well as their access to the material goods that make up the archaeological record […] limited by the nature of their enslavement’ (ibid.: 306). Slave owners ‘may even seek to reinforce their domination by suppressing the (material) culture’ of their slaves and household servants (ibid.). This, if coupled with the recycling of elite goods as seems to have been the case on the Van Cortland plantation (ibid.: 310–12), can make the material signatures of slaves and slave owners, even in contexts where great social, economic and cultural differences prevailed, indistinguishable. As Lynn Meskell has observed more generally, this unsettles us precisely because the artefacts of slaves and slavery ‘are supposed to be distinctive’ and so we ‘become suspicious’ when they cannot be differentiated from the material traces of their owners (Meskell 2002: 286, my emphasis). These kinds of interpretative challenges typically arise when archaeologists interested in documenting the archaeology of enslavement approach historical texts and oral accounts as sources that require verification. One consequence of such an interpretative strategy is that the enslaved and their material traces inevitably result in being defined only in contrast to those who dominated the cultural and historical context they occupied, rather than as independent sociocultural entities. This inability to disentangle master from servant, and slave from slave owner then becomes a challenge to archaeological aspirations to deploy archaeological methods and theory to reveal the ‘hidden transcripts’ (Scott 1990: 4–5) of slavery, and exploit the democratic potentials of the archaeological record (Ferguson 1992: xliv). More recent comparative approaches to the archaeological study of the material production of slave labour have sought to overcome these difficulties by redirecting the analytical gaze away from trying to identify universal material correlates of enslavement, slave trading and slave raiding,

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toward a consideration of the different consequences that the existence of slavery as an institution might have had for all sections of society. In other words, the focus of research has shifted from a concern with confirming the presence of enslaved persons to understanding the wider implications of the facts of their presence. Thus, in their review of the archaeological dimensions of slavery in African contexts, Robertshaw and Duncan (2008) note that a societal desire for slaves is often enacted out at a landscape scale, with multiple material consequences that include settlement relocation, aggregation and/or fortification alongside evidence for the increased militarisation of societies, the appearance of difficult to access ‘refuge sites’, widespread evidence of destruction at site abandonment, and evidence for population migration. They also point out that slavery and slave trading often had a gendered dimension, with adult females and young males commonly being preferentially desired as slaves. These imbalances, conceivably, might even be evident in demographic reconstructions of mortuary assemblages (Robertshaw and Duncan 2008: 60–71). They may also be evident in changes to the genetic composition of slave owning populations (e.g. Cadenas et al. 2008). Studies of the genetic ancestry of descendant populations using autosomal DNA-, mitochondrial DNA-, and/or Y-chromosomal DNA markers, especially in the New World (e.g. Torres et al. 2013), and isotopic analyses of the skeletal remains of enslaved individuals (e.g. Schroeder et al. 2009; Bastos et al. 2016), have also proven helpful in determining the geographical origins of different groups of slaves and their dietary profiles. Furthermore, the ‘sites’ of slavery are not restricted to landscapes, plantations, or places of capture. They also include places of memory, revolt and escape, specific material cultures, the routes to captivity and freedom, human bodies, and in fact, any and all of those persons, places and things connected to the institution, whether directly or more tangentially (DeCorse 2001a, b; Cameron 2008; Lane and MacDonald 2011b; Marshall 2014a). Multi-sited archaeological approaches that explore the diachronic processes by which the social identity ‘slave’ was ‘imposed and upheld’ from the moment of capture onwards, are also coming to be seen as increasingly necessary, in view of the pervasive impacts that slavery has on everyday life (Marshall 2014b: 3; see also Stahl 2015). As Marshall (2014b: 7) notes, ‘consideration of the process of enslavement demands attention to both enslaver and enslaved’ and the transformative consequences for both. For the latter, the flow of wealth generated from enslaved labour is clearly one such consequence, and recent work shows how the wealth generated by the trans-­ Atlantic slave trade was used to create new landscapes, elites and material expressions of social distinction in eighteenth century England (Finch 2016). This provides an excellent indication of how the institution of slavery can still be deeply

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P. J. Lane

implicated in places and material culture geographically far removed from either the sites of initial enslavement or its routine practice.

3.2

 tudying the Archaeology of Slavery S in Africa

The long history of slave trading and enslavement across Africa, extending back at least to Pharaonic times, in several ways offers excellent opportunities to explore the potential of these emerging approaches. Again, at least three reasons as to why this is so can be given. First, multiple sources – documentary, oral, linguistic, cartographic, pictorial, material, bioarchaeological, genetic and ecological – are available. Each of these different sources informs us about different aspects of slavery in the past, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. That these sources operate in different registers also means that they need to be compared, interrogated, triangulated and critiqued alongside one another. Secondly, diverse forms of enslavement and routes both into and out of slavery existed across the African continent. Relative to other continents, only limited numbers of individuals from other continents were imported as enslaved persons, although examples are known from the southern tip of Africa (Worden 1985; Sealy et  al. 1993; Cox and Sealy 1997), Mamluk Egypt (Marmon 1999) and North Africa’s Barbary Coast (Davis 2004). Internal systems of enslavement were far more consequential, with enslaved persons contributing significantly to agricultural production, household economies, craft industries, government, raw material extraction and military endeavours in many areas. Many of these individuals were forced to travel long distances from their homeland, and so were literally ‘outsiders’ in the communities where they finally ended up, and generally treated socially as such. Nonetheless, at times, enslaved individuals held key positions of responsibility and even considerable power over others in their own right. Set against these contributions, it still needs to be acknowledged that these internal slavery regimes also entailed exploitation, brutalisation, sexual predation and violent death enacted upon enslaved Africans by fellow Africans. Finally, Africa has been a major supplier to other continents of men, women and children destined to live out some or all of their lives in states of un-freedom, whose descendants now form part of the global community. The largest of these enforced diaspora was that associated with the trans-­ Atlantic slave trade involving the transhipment of over 12.5 million Africans to the New World between 1501 and 1866, of whom around 10.7 million survived to disembark (Burnard 2011: 91). While less is known of the numbers exported during different centuries (see, however, Lovejoy 2011: 46–48, 61–62 for various estimates), millions of Africans also left

their homeland via the trans-Saharan slave trade and the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade routes (Campbell 2004a; Lovejoy 2011). These trades existed over long spans of time and over vast distances, affecting different areas and engaging different groups in variable ways, and were based on complex and evolving social, economic and political systems. Local responses to the slave raiding that fuelled these trade systems were also far from uniform. In short, as the following case studies from sub-Saharan African contexts illustrate, the institution of slavery was a fundamental aspect of the daily lives, routines and social reproduction of millions of people across the continent for almost two millennia, and in some contexts even longer, and spanned local, regional and global scales of interaction. Furthermore, and more so than has been the case for enslaved persons exported from any other continent, the knowledge Africans carried with them into slavery has left profound material, ecological, and genetic legacies across the globe (e.g. Carney 2001; Carney and Rosomoff 2011; Leone and Tang 2014). Such traces are only now being recognised as archaeologically accessible expressions of slavery of equal significance, and perhaps even greater importance in the wider scheme of global history, as the physical remains of slave plantations, quarters and cemeteries in the New World that have received greatest archaeological attention to date.

3.3

 orth Africa, the Sudanic Belt N and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

The use of slaves as agricultural labourers, house servants, concubines, and in artisan industries and mineral extraction was common across much of North Africa, and in the Sudanic belt south of the Sahara. As already indicated, slave labour was a component of Pharaonic Egypt, and the institution of slavery was extended throughout North Africa during the Roman Empire. Further south and east, various Christian, Muslim and pagan communities all used slave labour at different times during the last two millennia. Military slavery, that is the use of slaves as part of a standing army, was a common practice and several early states in these regions relied on slave soldiers, obtained by either raiding or in trade with neighbouring communities (Edwards 2011: 89–90). African communities, especially those in the Sudanic belt, also became a primary source of slaves for their immediate neighbours and more distant lands, including (at different times) the Ottoman Empire, diverse Arab sultanates and parts of the Indian sub-continent. As Edwards (2011: 79) has noted for the medieval and post-medieval kingdoms of the Middle Nile, ‘“slavery” in all its forms, was an ancient practice and an integral reality of relations of power over people, within relationships of dominance and dependence’ (for a similar observation about the Roman world, see Webster

3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa

2008). As proposed by Miers and Kopytoff (1977), African systems of slavery are best studied, therefore, as one extreme in a shifting scale of ‘rights-in-people’ that included different forms of indenture and the labour obligations of bride-price. However, whereas the antiquity of the institution of slavery across the Sudanic/Sahelian belt is well known and a recurrent focus of historical research (e.g. Fisher and Fisher 1970; Willis 1985; Savage 1992; Clarence-Smith 2006), only a handful of archaeological studies have been undertaken on this topic. These can be divided roughly between those that focused on the evidence from Islamic North Africa associated with the trade in captured individuals, and those that focused on the consequences of that trade in the areas of slave capture and extraction. Only one project, to date, has examined localities specifically associated with enslaved individuals (MacDonald and Camara 2011). Thus, owing to the paucity of studies, understanding of the lived experiences and conditions of enslaved persons across these regions from an archaeological perspective remains poorly developed, although the scope is enormous especially given the partiality of the written sources and their many gaps (McIntosh 2001: 16; Haour 2011: 66). As Alexander (2001: 45–47) noted, there was a shifting frontier between the zones of ‘use’ and ‘capture’ following the Arab conquest of North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries ce, which was directly related to the expansion of areas subject to Islamic religious law (shariʿa). More specifically, over the course of roughly 500 years, between 800 and 1300 ce, the southern boundary of dar al-islam (where inhabitants had made their submission to the Muslim faith) and dar al-harb (where they had not), was extended approximately 1800 km from roughly the 31°N parallel to around 18°N. Shariʿa prohibits the enslavement of fellow Muslims, and also the followers of other world religions such as Christianity and Judaism provided they have ‘made their (non-religious) submission to Islamic rulers, paid the required taxes and accepted shariʿa law’ (Alexander 2001: 45). Consequently, the southward expansion of dar al-islam also resulted in increased raiding of African societies south of the Sahara for slaves. In this, the slave raiders and trades were greatly enabled by the introduction of the domestic horse and camel, the former for use in military attacks and the latter as a key component of the trans-Saharan caravan trade. Archaeological traces of these, whether directly or in the form of models (e.g. MacDonald and Camara 2011: 25), might thus serve as one possible indicator of the trade. Unfortunately, although the routes taken by these trade caravans across the Sahara are well known (Botte 2011), and frequently reproduced in historical and archaeological studies of the region, there has been no systematic attempt to map their archaeological traces. The results from the limited survey work that has been undertaken (Lange and Berthoud

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1977) are ambivalent at best and have not been subject to follow-up excavation (Haour 2011: 69). Similarly, although some of the renowned trading centres at the northern end of these routes have been investigated archaeologically, such as Sijilmassa (757–1393 ce) in modern-day Morocco (Lightfoot and Miller 1996), and Zawīla (first to fifteenth centuries ce) in the Libyan Sahara (Mattingly et  al. 2015), no definitive study of the material traces of slavery in such towns has been attempted, although the historical sources attest to their considerable presence. Much the same can be said for the medieval and early post-medieval centres in the Sudan, where ‘slavery was an integral part of the ordering of society and the functioning of the state’ (Edwards 2011: 98). The material evidence, however, is far from definitive. Increased frequency of exotic trade goods (such as copper, tin, textiles and glass beads) from North Africa certainly attest to the importance of trans-­ Saharan trade, and there is also a broadly coeval increase in the number of fortified settlements and an increased locational preference in areas that are known to have been the target of slave raiding, such as Kordofan, for defensible hilltop settlements. Historical sources also point to changes in military organisation and strategy within the Middle Nile kingdoms, including the introduction of firearms, greater use of cavalry and increased reliance on military slaves, all of which might leave tangible archaeological evidence. However, without sustained archaeological research specifically aimed at recovering a slave presence, it is impossible to infer conclusively much about their lives or their contributions to the lives of others from the isolated fragments of material evidence currently available. The same applies for the Christian kingdoms of highland Ethiopia, where institutionalised slavery was also an important feature of society (Finneran 2011). In this regard, the results of archaeological surveys and excavations in the Chad Basin relating to the rise and fall of the Kanem-Borno Empire, and parallel work in adjacent areas to the south, especially the Mandara Mountains, ­provide a useful model on how to approach ‘an archaeology of enslavement’, more broadly. Specifically, the available historical sources suggest slave-raiding and war underpinned the rise of Kanem to the north-east of Lake Chad, and it is probably no coincidence that the first documentary references to the kingdom occur in the eighth-ninth century when the export of slaves to Zawīla is also attested (Gronenborn 2001). By the eleventh century, slave settlements were established at a string of oases between Lake Chad and Fezzān (Lange and Berthoud 1977). During the thirteenth-fourteenth century as a result of deteriorating climatic conditions and increased raiding, the Kanem elite moved their settlements to the western side of Lake Chad, establishing their capital at Birni Gazargamo south of the River Yobe in 1472. This period onwards also witnessed the establishment of slave

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settlements throughout Borno (Nigeria) (Gronenborn 2001: 102, fig. 6.1), and it is likely that the beginnings of the use of carnelian and glass beads as grave goods in the southern Chad basin during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reflects an increased involvement in the trans-Saharan caravan trade (ibid.: 108). Birni Gazargamo remained the centre of the Borno Empire for the next 300 years. It was supported by other, smaller satellites, one of which may have been at the site of Garumele, in eastern Niger (Fig.  3.3), where numerous pottery-­strewn ashy mounds, with traces of a baked-brick enclosure, all set within a 3 km long wall of sun-dried bricks, have survived (Haour 2011). The historical sources imply the occupation of Garumele was for less than a decade, and likely during the second half of the fifteenth century. By contrast, the archaeological evidence indicates a much longer settlement history spanning up to 500 years. Although the precise reasons for the initial occupation of Garumele remain obscure, one possibility is that the Kanem-Borno rulers ‘found their new location more convenient because of its proximity to supplies of enslaveable individuals from the south, and its trade connections via Fezzān’ (Haour 2011: 72).

P. J. Lane

Among those groups known to have been the focus of slave raids from Borno were the inhabitants of the northern Mandara Mountains and adjacent plains in what is now northern Cameroon. As MacEachern’s (2001, 2011) research has highlighted, the growth of slave raiding encouraged settlement relocation into the mountain areas, where the rocky terrain provided a natural defence against mounted horsemen. As farming on the plains became increasingly dangerous, trade between neighbouring communities and other kinds of social interaction diminished. The longer-term result was increased ethno-linguistic fragmentation, and associated material culture variability  – with group territories typically extending no more than five kilometres along the mountain edges, in contrast to the more extensive ­territories occupied by Wandala speaking populations on the plains (MacEachern 2011). In other words, in the Mandara Mountains slave raiding not only initiated a change in settlement location and increased use of fortifications, it also initiated much wider ethnic fragmentation. This has remained a defining characteristic of the region up to the present. Whether comparable trends occurred elsewhere across the region in areas similarly subject to intensive slave raiding is

Fig. 3.3  Remains of the surviving outer, mud block (tubali) wall, Garumele, Niger, September 2005. (Photograph Anne Haour)

3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa

not known, but the possibility certainly warrants further research.

3.4

Archaeology of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Early research on the archaeology of the Atlantic slave trade focussed mainly on the European fortifications along the West African coast (e.g. Wood 1967), with more attention being given to their architectural features and European imports than to the material traces of enslavement or its impact. More recently, archaeologists have endeavoured to document enslavement as part of West African society during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (Fig. 3.3). Rather than dwelling too much on the material verification of the existence of slavery, these studies have focused more on identifying and explaining broad socio-economic and material changes in terms of the differential impacts, manifestations, opportunities, and structural components of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (e.g. DeCorse 1992, 2001b; Kelly 1997, 2011; Bredwa-Mensah 2004). DeCorse’s (2001a) archaeological investigation of Elmina (Ghana) (Fig.  3.4), the site of the first European stronghold established on the West African coast (by the Portuguese in 1482), was especially ground-breaking in this regard. Combining documen-

Fig. 3.4  Elmina Castle, Ghana, April 2014. (Photograph author)

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tary, oral and archaeological sources, DeCorse investigated aspects of both European and African life around this entrepôt in equal measure, supplying detailed information on the lives of Africans living beside the European fortress. A particularly revealing facet of the archaeological research was the high proportion of imported European trade goods, ranging from ceramics and glass to tobacco pipes, firearms and beads, in the African sections of the town (DeCorse 1992, 2001a). These imported goods far outnumber locally produced material. The European documentary sources have virtually nothing to say on how these goods were deployed by local inhabitants as they took advantage of the economic and socio-political opportunities provided by the growth of the coastal European trade, although it is clear that the trade facilitated the rise of a local elite. Thus, what is particularly revealing about DeCorse’s (1992, 2001a) study, and perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive, is that despite the widespread adoption of new material cultures, local beliefs and the majority of other social institutions were fairly stable. This was indicated in a number of ways, including continuities in the organisation of domestic space, dietary practices, food preparation and consumption, burial and other rituals. The results remind us, in other words, that material change may not always signify socio-cultural change, even under circumstances of heightened social instability such as those triggered by the development of an

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economy founded on the extraction of enforced labour and slavery. This was not always the case elsewhere along the Slave and Gold Coasts of West Africa, however, as indicated, for example, by a corpus of recent studies undertaken in Bénin on the rise of the slave-trading states of Hueda (Kelly 1997, 2011; Norman 2009) and Dahomey (Monroe 2007, 2010) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These illustrate that the development of political and economic ties between European merchants, permanent local residents along the coast, transient indigenous traders, and through them communities farther in the interior, was far from uniform. Largely owing to the lack of protected anchorages and sources of gold, European traders generally avoided the Bight of Bénin prior to the mid-seventeenth century. Escalating demand for slaves in the New World, however, encouraged an expansion of slave trading activities here (Kelly 2011: 130), and ‘over one million captive Africans departed [this section of the coast] between the late seventeenth and mid-nineteenth century’ (ibid.: 128–29). The two main trading centres on the coast were Savi, the Hueda capital from c. 1670s to 1727, and Ouidah, the primary slave port for the Dahomey Kingdom between 1727 and 1892 (Monroe 2007). Archaeological research at Savi (Kelly 1997) and in its immediate hinterland (Norman 2009), has indicated that prior to the mid-seventeenth century Hueda occupied a fairly marginal position within the regional economy, and most productive activity was subsistence-oriented. The growth in European demand for slaves transformed the local economy, stimulating agricultural production in the countryside around Savi to feed the constant and growing flow of captives, the European traders, Hueda’s own newly emergent elite, and for provisioning the ships destined to cross the Atlantic. This demand also provided a direct source of wealth for those who through their social contacts and control of capital were able to acquire captives from the interior (Kelly 2011: 132–36). As Kelly’s (1997) research has shown, Savi itself may have only come into existence in response to the upsurge in European demand for slaves, or at least was substantially smaller and less significant beforehand. At least two strands of evidence support this inference. First, virtually all excavated contexts at Savi lack pre-mid-seventeenth century European imports, which might not be expected had the town been present in earlier centuries. Secondly, Savi and Hueda only begin to be mentioned in historical sources from the 1670s onwards, which similarly suggests they were only minimally significant prior to the late seventeenth century. Archaeological research at Savi has also shown that the Hueda elite were adept at using architecture and material culture to express their power and reinforce their control over the trade, as was the elite in the Dahomey Kingdom (Monroe 2010). For example, traders from the different

P. J. Lane

European nations involved, notably Britain, France and Portugal, were allowed to establish trading lodges in Savi. However, these seem to have been fairly insubstantial, unfortified buildings, unlike the large forts on the Gold Coast, and were all constructed adjacent to the palace complex. Together with the palace, they were encircled by a system of ditches that physically separated the elite and their source of economic wealth from the rest of the town (Kelly 1997, 2011). The elite’s control over the trade seems to have included the distribution of imported goods, largely restricting them to the confines of Savi where they are fairly common. In contrast, as Norman’s (2009: 404) research demonstrated, European trade imports are far scarcer in Savi’s rural hinterland. The communities here, nonetheless, benefitted economically from the trade by intensifying agricultural production and switching to new crops, such as maize. Other developments included the establishment of additional royal centres along the major trade routes (see also the discussion by Monroe 2007 of similar later developments in Dahomey), where European imports are typically concentrated, and greater integration of the local craft industries, especially pottery, as suggested by increased standardisation of styles and manufacturing. This probably indicates increased craft specialisation and a shift in the organisation of production to beyond the level of individual households (Norman 2009: 403). Constraints on space preclude exploring the numerous other examples now available from West Africa, except in passing. These consider, among other topics, the material evidence for domestic slavery on Gorée Island, Senegal (Thiaw 2011); transformations in settlement form (Fig. 3.5) and dynamics in an area of northern Ghana subject to intense slave-raiding (Swanepoel 2011); transformations in  local ceramic production and dietary choices on the Gambia River brought about by the growth and then decline of the trans-­ Atlantic slave trade (Gijanto and Walshaw 2014); and the material characteristics (including traces of slave dwellings), spatial organisation, and social dynamics of Danish ‘slave plantation’ sites in the foothills of the Akuapem Hills, north-­ west of Accra, Ghana, established in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century (Bredwa-Mensah 2004, 2008). The key point to note from all these is that changes and continuities in architecture, settlement location, consumption, material style and diet, as well as in the direction, nature and scale of exchange, are all part of the ‘archaeology of slavery’, regardless of whether or not the enslaved themselves can be specifically identified. In other words, as Stahl (2008: 38–39) has observed, the archaeology of enslavement should be less ‘preoccupied with its concrete traces so much as its ramifying effects’, and with looking beyond the bare bones of trade inventories to explore how individuals differently situated in terms of power, access and position responded to the flood of new goods and technologies that a slave trade initiates. In the West African context, such broader, landscape-scale per-

3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa

Fig. 3.5  Remains of defensive walling at Gwollu (Upper West Region, Ghana), probably constructed in the 1880s against slave raiding by the Zaberma. (Photograph Natalie Swanepoel)

spectives allow more nuanced understanding of the processes of early modern globalisation, slavery’s role in these, and the creation of what Richard (2013) has termed ‘vernacular cosmopolitanisms’.

3.5

Archaeologies of Enslavement and Freedom in Eastern and Southern Africa

The institutions and structures of the slave trades across north-eastern, eastern and southern Africa underwent various changes over time, and after 1500 ce several different slave systems are known to have co-existed. These included forms of ‘open slavery’ where slaves were considered as belonging to their owner’s lineage, as for example was the case in the Portuguese prazo system established in Mozambique and on the middle Zambezi (Alpers 2005) (Fig.  3.6); plantation chattel slavery, as for instance found on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar, and parts of the East African coastal mainland from the early nineteenth century (Cooper 1977); different manifestations of Islamic slavery, such as those that had

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already existed on the Swahili coast (Vernet 2009); and various types of bonded servitude, which were more common in the Great Lakes chiefdoms and kingdoms (Médard and Doyle 2007). The dominant system in any particular locality also changed over time, and their impacts were by no means uniform (Médard et al. 2013). The trade in slaves was also multi-directional, with Cape Town, Madagascar, various near (Zanzibar, Comoros) and more distant (Mauritius) off-­ shore islands and certain locations on the eastern seaboard (e.g. Somalia), all becoming steadily more reliant on imported slave labour over time (Campbell 2004b: ix). From the mid-seventeenth to late nineteenth century, there was also considerable export of enslaved persons from the southwestern Indian Ocean region of the continent to the Atlantic world, with the Mascarenes being the most important staging area (Allen 2015). Throughout these regions, slaves existed within ‘multiple and overlapping structures and statuses’ (Campbell 2007: 291). Many entered slavery through debt, misfortune arising from factors such as famines or disease, or as a consequence of a crime they had committed. Slave raiding also occurred, especially close to the coast, from at least the mid-tenth century, as attested in both Arabic (e.g. the Kitab ‘aja’ib al-­ Hind, Beachey 1976: ix) and Chinese (e.g. Zhou Qufei’s Lingwai daida vol. 3, Anshan 2012: 30) sources, which describe children and adults being captured on a fairly regular basis (Mapunda 2017). Less is known about the scale of slave raiding farther into the interior prior to the mid-­ nineteenth century when it is known to have intensified. Slaves also circulated within different exchange systems (Médard et  al. 2013), and while certain European nations, notably France, the Netherlands and Portugal were major players in the trade during the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the financing of the Indian Ocean trade was far more diverse than was the case in the Atlantic world involving coastal Chinese, Arabs, Indians (especially Gujaratis), Bugis and ‘Malays’, among others (Campbell 2004b: ix). Ottoman Turks, Egyptians, Omani, Yemeni and other coastal Arabs, along with diverse western and eastern European merchants were also engaged in the Red Sea and Nile Valley trade routes (Clarence-Smith 2006). Archaeological research on this long and diverse history of enslavement and different slave trades has been piecemeal, and virtually all archaeological research undertaken to date has concerned nineteenth century manifestations and their consequences – such as plantation slavery on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar (Croucher 2014); maroon settlements on the southern Kenyan coast (Marshall 2012, 2014c); and the impacts of increased demand for slaves on the coast following imposition of Omani overrule and the growth of plantation economies (Kusimba 2004, 2014; Lane 2011). There has also been some limited work on identifying temporary slave-holding camps (Fig.  3.7) and fortifications in

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P. J. Lane

Fig. 3.6  Remains of a late eighteenth century Portuguese walled estate sustained by slave labour, Cabeceira Grande, opposite Mozambique Island, Mozambique. (Photograph author)

some of the major extraction areas that supplied the northern markets in Khartoum and Cairo during the Turco-Egyptian era (Lane and Johnson 2008; González-Ruibal 2011). One theme common to several of these studies has been the exploration of processes of identity construction among enslaved and fugitive communities, as expressed through changes and retentions in ceramic style, the spatial layout of settlements and foodways. This has revealed some interesting contrasts. Thus, for example, the multi-ethnic enslaved clove-plantation workers on Pemba seem to have used material culture to forge a new, ‘Islamised’ identity that reduced distinctions between themselves and their owners (Croucher 2014). In contrast, maroon communities on the Kenya coast appear to have actively sustained material expressions of difference, despite frequent interaction and economic relations with their rural, non-Swahili neighbours (Marshall 2012, 2014c). The impacts of intensification of the trade in slaves, especially in areas of extraction have also received some consideration. An increase in preferences for settlement in defendable locations, such as rocky hilltops, and increased use of fortifications (e.g. Kusimba 2004; Lane 2011; González-Ruibal 2011), are perhaps the most obvious

archaeological traces of these impacts, as also documented in inland West Africa (e.g. Swanepoel 2011). Additionally, increased insecurity as a result of slave raiding may also trigger changes in food production strategies and diet when areas of land become too dangerous to exploit on a regular basis and resource patches become unavailable, and also lead to the disruption or even collapse of regional exchange ­systems. This has been documented in the Tsavo area of southwest Kenya for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Kusimba 2004), for instance. Since Portuguese and French sources indicate that from at least the early sixteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century the Swahili were widely involved in slave trading networks (Vernet 2009), it is likely that similar impacts might be evident in the archaeological record of earlier periods. Moreover, the Swahili city states themselves were partly reliant on slave labour, for both domestic and agricultural roles, while other captives were exported to the Persian Gulf, parts of Arabia, India and from the late seventeenth century onwards, to Oman. The Comoro Islands, particularly Anjouan and Mohely, were an important centre for this trans-oceanic trade. As was northern Madagascar, where

3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa

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Fig. 3.7  Remains of a late nineteenth century earthen bank-and-ditch enclosure (zariba) likely to have had a palisade or thorn fence on top at Lol Nhom near Rumbek, South Sudan, used for temporary penning of recently captured slaves, February 2007. (Photograph author)

the port city of Boeny on the island of Antsoheribory was a well-known regional slave trade hub, and the intensification of slave raiding to supply Boeny and other coastal ports may have resulted in the appearance of fortified villages in highland Madagascar around the fifteenth century (for defensive reasons) and the growth of humid rice cultivation (to sustain demographic growth) (Vernet 2009). However, archaeologists working in the region have yet to engage with the issue of slavery during earlier centuries (i.e. before the mid-­ eighteenth century), and little is known about its material signatures prior to the nineteenth century. Certainly, there is enormous scope for multi-scalar and multi-sited landscape studies of the different regional slave trades and slave systems (Walz and Brandt 2006), including evidence associated with their co-option by different European agents. In South Africa, as a slave importing economy after Dutch settlement at the Cape, the focus of archaeological studies of slavery differs somewhat from projects elsewhere on the continent. The first significant shipments were from Dahomey and Angola, then controlled by the Dutch West Indies Company, in 1658. Subsequently, most slaves were drawn from areas to the east, notably Africans from

Mozambique and Madagascar, and Asians from India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Bay of Bengal (Worden 1985). African slaves were commonly used as agricultural workers on privately-owned grain- and wine-producing farms throughout the Cape Colony and as labourers on various Dutch East India Company (VOC) building projects and at Company outposts. The majority of Company owned slaves were housed in a purpose-built ‘slave lodge’ close to the Castle in Table Bay, which also served as a prison and mental asylum. Built in 1679, this was a rectangular, windowless building with a central courtyard with all the classic attributes of a panopticon designed for surveillance of its inmates (Lucas 2004: 124). The number of Company-owned slaves was never great, averaging around 450–500 at any one time, but their mortality was high so their number was constantly being replenished by fresh imports. The number of privately owned slaves, on the other hand, increased with time, especially from the eighteenth century onwards, and a much larger number were born into slavery. Few owners held more than a handful of slaves, typically just one or two individuals kept for various household and agricultural tasks. These often

34

shared the same dwelling space as their owners or were housed in adjacent outbuildings, and special-purpose slave lodges were rare except on the wealthiest estates. Two such lodges have been the focus of archaeological study: that on the Goede Hoop estate in the Dwars Valley east of Cape Town (Lucas 2004: 130–42), and that at Vergelegen, a late-­ seventeenth to early-eighteenth century estate owned by the Cape governor. Although there is nothing about the physical traces of the lodge at Goede Hoop that indicates its use as slave quarters, Gavin Lucas’ analysis of its spatial relation vis-à-vis other buildings, fields, rubbish dumps and a nearby silver mine (also worked by slaves), offers pertinent insights into how the labours of the enslaved shaped the estate and how they likely interacted with and perceived the Dwars Valley landscape. As he notes, this would have been distinctly different from how their owners understood this locality, and was probably regarded as being quite fragmented but, because of this, also offering hidden opportunities, unrecognised by their owners, for the enslaved. The slave lodge at Vergelegen (Fig.  3.8) was identified from archival sources and is shown on a map of the estate (Markell et  al. 1995). Excavations exposed the plan of the building and recovered a range of local earthenware and imported porcelain and stoneware typical of other sites of this period. As at Goede Hoop, without documentary sources it would have been impossible to infer the status of the lodge’s occupants from these physical traces alone. However,

P. J. Lane

the lodge also contained a grave cut into its floor, into which a wooden coffin containing an adult woman had been placed. Stable isotope analyses indicated her diet had changed over the course of her life, and she probably arrived in the Cape from south-eastern Africa when already an adult (Sealy et al. 1993). Isotopic analysis has also assisted identification of the likely geographical origins and enslaved status of three other groups of burials found around Cape Town. Research on 12 skeletons from a mass grave on the Cape Town foreshore near Fort Knokke, for instance, indicated that they probably originated from Mozambique and may well have been among  the 25 slaves who drowned when the Portuguese slaving brig Paquet Real foundered off Cape Town in May 1818 (Cox and Sealy 1997). In a similar study of a larger sample of burials, in this case from the Cobern Street burial ground in central Cape Town, some broad correlations could also be drawn between the likely geographical origins of the deceased and their mode of burial. Excavations at the site exposed 63 intact graves and various scatters of bone, representing a total of 121 individuals (Cox et  al. 2001). Four broad styles of burial, designated Types A–D, were identified. Cobern Street was used between c. 1750 and 1827 for burying various sections of Cape Town’s ‘underclass’, with grave Types B and C almost certainly being associated with enslaved individuals. Type B burials contained individuals placed on their backs with their arms either folded across the pelvis or by their side, different kinds of grave goods, were

Fig. 3.8  The Slave Lodge at Vergelegen, South Africa, after excavation. (Photograph Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town)

3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa

rather shallow, and in some cases included multiple burials (ibid.: 80–81). Several of the recovered individuals had dental mutilations. In all, four different patterns of dental mutilation were evident, and based on comparison with ethnographically documented examples the sample probably included individuals from groups such as the Yao, Maravi and Makua – all known to have been targeted by slavers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (ibid.: 89). Isotopic analyses were conducted on 18 individuals from Type B graves. Ten of these showed signs of significant dietary change during their lives, suggesting that they were foreign-born, whereas the remaining eight were probably born locally and may have lived all their lives as enslaved persons. The combined carbon and nitrogen isotopic signatures of the foreign-born individuals were generally consistent with a Central or south-eastern African signal, in keeping with the dental mutilation evidence (ibid.: 84–88). In contrast, Type C graves were deeper, lacked any kind of grave good and the inhumations were consistently placed on their right-hand side facing toward Signal Hill. The isotopic signatures of these burials indicate that they were first generation Asian migrants originating from around the Indian Ocean, and on the basis of the style of their burial are likely to have belonged to Muslim communities (ibid.: 91). More recent excavations in Cape Town have exposed two other ‘informal burial grounds’. One near Green Point, known as the Marina Residence burial ground, appears to have been used for burying enslaved individuals, and perhaps others, who died shortly after arriving at the Cape possibly having sickened during their passage from around the Indian Ocean (Mbeki et al. 2017). Excavations at the other cemetery, in the area of Prestwich Place to the south of Cobern Street, uncovered the remains around 2500 individual human skeletons, including 1272 articulated individuals and 460 groups, along with disarticulated remains and associated burial goods (Finnegan et al. 2011). A sample (n = 276) of these have been studied in more detail, and ongoing analyses are providing further insights into the lives of Cape Town’s eighteenth and early nineteenth century enslaved population and other members of the city’s ‘underclasses’. The majority appear to have been buried in a supine position, oriented axially west-east following common Christian convention. However, other burial forms also occurred, including niche burials (so named because of the presence of a cut alcove at the base of one side of the burial shaft), which the excavators consider to be associated with Islamic burial traditions (ibid.: 141). Of the studied sample, 49 individuals had culturally modified teeth, mostly in the form of filed incisors. These individuals, like those recovered from Cobern Street, may have been brought from the interior of south-­ central Africa as slaves. Unlike the Cobern Street and Marina Residence individuals, however, no bioarchaeological analyses have been undertaken on the remains of these individu-

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als, partly out of respect for the concerns voiced by local community members when the site was being excavated (see Malan and Worden 2011, for wider discussion of the controversy provoked by the discoveries at Prestwich Place). Unlike either the mode of burial or bodily modifications, the large assemblage of finds, mostly deposited as burial goods, are less diagnostic of identity of the deceased, with the exception of four metal tags and one token – which are of the kind that enslaved individuals were required to carry as they moved about the city (Finnegan et al. 2011: 144). The everyday nature of the majority of artefacts, which include beads, clay pipes and various metal objects (Fig. 3.9), nonetheless point to the fairly low socio-economic status of the individuals buried at the site, and contrast with some of the richer burials from Cobern Street (ibid.: 145). Analysis of the spatial distribution of material and their associations, also suggests that certain areas of the ‘informal burial’ ground were used preferentially for burying members of different groups (ibid.: 146–47). In this sense, the archaeological analyses might be said to have restored some aspect of their individual identities by disaggregating these from a more de-­ personalised classification as simply belonging to Cape Town’s ‘underclass’. Aside from these studies, archaeology has yet to provide much in the way of insights into the everyday lives of the Cape’s enslaved population, with the possible exception of Jordan’s (2005) exploration of women’s labour, specifically clothes washing along the Platteklip Stream Valley which runs off Table Mountain on the southern side of Cape Town. Excavations at several points produced diverse assemblages of material culture ranging from large numbers of broken ceramics and glass bottles, buttons, buckles, metal eyes, clothing fragments, jewellery and a mixed range of other personal objects. Some of these discarded items would have belonged to the owners of the enslaved women tasked with washing household laundry, others were brought to these sites by the women themselves and either deliberately discarded there or inadvertently lost while they were working. Although there is nothing distinctive about these assemblages that definitively tell us that these women were enslaved, knowing this from the documentary sources allows recognition of a specific material trace of enslaved labour in the archaeological record of Cape Town’s everyday life, and so permits the contributions of the enslaved to be written into, rather than written out of, that history.

3.6

Conclusion

The institution of slavery in its various forms had a profound impact on the lives of millions of Africans over millennia. The consequences, of course, were greatest for those who were enslaved, especially those who were

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P. J. Lane

Fig. 3.9  Examples of ‘everyday’ items (key [4], clay pipe [5], firesteel and flint [6, 7], and pendant [8]) recovered from possible slave burials at Prestwich Place (Cape Town, South Africa), and associated examples of lead plate sheets used as ‘slave tags’ in eighteenth-­ century Cape Town [1–3], each with the name of the enslaved individual imprinted on it. (Photographs Archaeology Contracts Office, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town)

shipped overseas to other parts of the world. Yet the effects of slavery as an institution infused the lives of many others, whether they were a slave owner, trader, raider, relative of one of those enslaved, or any number of other individuals whose daily life was in some way implicated in the trade or the institution linked to these via commodity chains and the products of slave labour, or who simply shared the same landscape. As explored here, in the absence of supporting documentary or oral evidence archaeologists will always struggle to definitively identify precisely who was ‘a slave’. But, as also explored here, archaeological approaches ranging from landscape perspectives to bioarchaeological analyses and fine-­ scaled study of artefact and faunal assemblages, have a critical role to play in revealing the multiple ways slavery, when it exists, shapes everyday practices and their material manifestations. These kinds of studies are also now being extended to islands in the Atlantic that were used as staging centres during the trans-

Atlantic slave trade (e.g. Pearson et  al. 2011; Sørensen et al. 2011; Santana et al. 2016), and in the Indian Ocean where enslaved Africans along with enslaved and indentured individuals from Asia formed the mainstay of plantation economies (e.g. Seetah 2015; Lightfoot et  al. 2020). They are also being used to good effect to determine the geographical origins of burials in New World contexts associated with the trans-Atlantic slave trade (e.g. Schroeder et al. 2014, 2015; Bastos et al. 2016). In all such studies, the primary interpretive challenges are not that of confirming a slave presence so much as understanding what it meant to live in a world structured by slavery, and how this experience varied according to identity, power, and structural position within the entangled web of prevailing social and material relations and systems of un-freedom. Answering such questions is likely to shape the direction of research on the archaeology of enslavement across the continent and beyond over the next few decades.

3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa Acknowledgements  I would like to thank the editors for their invitation to contribute to the EAA session on which this book is based and to this volume, and for their patience and helpful comments on an earlier draft. Natalie Swanepoel and Detlef Gronenborn also kindly commented on this earlier draft and responded positively to my request for possible illustrations. I would also like to thank Angus Graham, Anne Haour, Antonia Malan, Neil Norman, Judy Sealy and Natalie Swanepoel for permission to reproduce their illustrations. Any remaining errors or misunderstandings are entirely my responsibility.

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3  Recent Approaches to the Archaeological Investigation of Slavery in Africa Monroe, J.  C. (2010). Power by design: Architecture and politics in precolonial Dahomey. Journal of Social Archaeology, 10(3), 367–397. Norman, N.  L. (2009). Hueda (Whydah) country and town: Archaeological perspectives on the rise and collapse of an African Atlantic kingdom. International Journal of African Historical Studies, 42(3), 387–410. Orser, C. E. (1994). The archaeology of African-American slave religion in the Antebellum South. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 4(1), 33–45. Pearson, A., Jeffs, B., Annsofie, W., & MacQuarrie, H. (2011). Infernal traffic: Excavation of a liberated African graveyard in Rupert’s Valley, St. Helena. York: Council for British Archaeology. Raffield, B. (2019). The slave markets of the Viking world: Comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’. Slavery & Abolition, 40(4), 682–705. Richard, F.  G. (2013). Thinking through “vernacular cosmopolitanisms”: Historical archaeology in Senegal and the material contours of the African Atlantic. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 17(1), 40–71. Robertshaw, P., & Duncan, W. L. (2008). African slavery: Archaeology and decentralized societies. In C. M. Cameron (Ed.), Invisible citizens: Captives and their consequences (pp. 57–79). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Santana, J., Fregel, R., Lightfoot, E., Morales, J., Alamón, M., Guillén, J., Moreno, M., & Rodríguez, A. (2016). The early colonial Atlantic world: New insights on the African diaspora from isotopic and ancient DNA analyses of a multiethnic 15th–17th century burial population from the Canary Islands, Spain. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 159(2), 300–312. Savage, E. (Ed.). (1992). The human commodity: Perspectives on the trans-Saharan slave trade. London: Frank Cass. Schroeder, H., O’Connell, T. C., Evans, J. A., Shuler, K. A., & Hedges, R.  E. (2009). Trans-Atlantic slavery: Isotopic evidence for forced migration to Barbados. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 139, 547–557. Schroeder, H., Haviser, J.  B., & Price, T.  D. (2014). The Zoutsteeg three: Three new cases of African types of dental modification from Saint Martin, Dutch Caribbean. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 24(6), 688–696. Schroeder, H., Ávila-Arcos, M.  C., Malaspinas, A.-S., Poznik, G.  D., Sandoval-Velasco, M., Carpenter, M.  L., Gilbert, M.  T. P., et  al. (2015). Genome-wide ancestry of 17th-century enslaved Africans from the Caribbean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(12), 3669–3673. Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sealy, J. C., Morris, A. G., Armstrong, R., Markell, A., & Schrire, C. (1993). An historic skeleton from the slave lodge of Vergelegen. In M. Hall & A. Markell (Eds.), Historical archaeology in the Western cape (Goodwin series 7) (pp. 84–91). Johannesburg: South African Archaeological Society. Seetah, K. (2015). Objects past, objects present: Materials, resistance and memory from the Le Morne old cemetery, Mauritius. Journal of Social Archaeology, 15(2), 233–253.

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Shaw, G.  J. (2012). Slavery, pharaonic Egypt. In R.  S. Bagnall, K. Brodersen, C. B. Champion, A. Erskine, & S. R. Huebner (Eds.), The encyclopedia of ancient history. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah15006. Singleton, T. A. (1995). The archaeology of slavery in North America. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 119–140. Sørensen M. L. S., Evans C., & Richter K. (2011). A place of history: Archaeology and heritage at Cidade Velha, Cape Verde. In Lane & MacDonald, 2011b, pp. 421–442. Stahl, A. B. (2008). The slave trade as practice and memory: What are the issues for archaeologists? In C. M. Cameron (Ed.), Invisible citizens: Captives and their consequences (pp. 25–56). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Stahl, A.  B. (2015). Circulations through worlds apart: Georgian and Victorian England in an African Mirror. In F.  G. Richard (Ed.), Materializing colonial encounters: Archaeologies of African experience (pp. 71–94). New York: Springer. Swanepoel, N. (2011). Different conversations about the same thing? Source materials in the recreation of a nineteenth-century slave-­ raiding landscape, Northern Ghana. In Lane & MacDonald, 2011b, pp. 167–197. Thiaw, I. (2011). Slaves without shackles: An archaeology of everyday life in Gorée Island, Senegal. In Lane & MacDonald, 2011b, pp. 147–165. Torres, J.  B., Stone, A.  C., & Kittles, R. (2013). An anthropological genetic perspective on creolization in the Anglophone Caribbean. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151, 135–143. Vernet, T. (2009). Slave trade and slavery on the Swahili coast (1500– 1750). In B. A. Mirzai, I. M. Montana, & P. Lovejoy (Eds.), Slavery, Islam and diaspora (pp. 37–76). Trenton: Africa World Press. Walz, J.  R., & Brandt, S.  A. (2006). Toward an archaeology of the other Africa diaspora: The slave trade and dispersed Africans in the Western Indian Ocean. In J.  B. Haviser & K.  C. MacDonald (Eds.), African re-genesis: Confronting social issues in the diaspora (pp. 246–268). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Webster, J. (2008). Slavery, archaeology and the politics of analogy. Archaeological Dialogues, 15, 139–149. Willis, J. R. (Ed.). (1985). Slaves and slavery in Africa. Volume one: Islam and the ideology of enslavement. London: Frank Cass. Wood, W.  R. (1967). An archaeological appraisal of early European settlements in the Senegambia. The Journal of African History, 8(1), 39–64. Worden, N. (1985). Slavery in Dutch South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paul J. Lane is the Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Professor of the Deep History and Archaeology of Africa at the University of Cambridge, and previously Professor of Global Archaeology at Uppsala University. He is a former President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists (2008– 2010) and Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (1998– 2006), with over 35 years’ research experience in Africa. His interests include the archaeology of slavery in Africa, maritime archaeology, landscape historical ecology and the origins and development of farming and herding in eastern and southern Africa.  

Part II The British Isles

4

To Tread the Paths, and Traverse the Moors: Investigating Slavery in Early Medieval Western Britain Katie A. Hemer

Abstract

Documentary sources, including the writings of the fifth-­ century saint, Patrick, attest to the presence of slaves in early medieval western Britain; however, the identification of slaves from the study of the burial record has not hitherto been explored. Recent studies investigating migration through stable isotope analysis have revealed significant evidence for insular mobility between the fifth to tenth centuries ad, and thus in light of the written record, this chapter will consider whether some of this traffic could have arisen through slavery. It shall be argued that identifying possible evidence of slavery requires a holistic approach whereby archaeological data, including evidence from the burial record and stable isotope data from the analysis of human skeletal remains, are scrutinised in the context of the historical narrative. Keywords

Archeology of slavery · Stable isotopes · Mobility · Social death · Britain

4.1

Introduction

The withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Britain in the early fifth century resulted in a period of tension, with the emergence of territorial ‘warlords’ and petty kingdoms in western Britain, and the arrival and settlement of Germanic migrants in eastern Britain.1 Writing at this time, the fifth-­

century saint, Patrick, condemned the violent actions of the tyrannical British king, Coroticus, who ordered raids on a Christian community on the Irish coast (Bieler 1993). According to Patrick’s Epistola, the Church wept for those Christians who were captured and sold as slaves to pagans: ‘freeborn people have been sold off, Christians reduced to slavery: slaves particularly of the lowest and worst of the apostate Picts’ (Bieler 1993: 99). Saint Patrick had, in fact, once been a slave himself, and he recalls in his Confessio how, at the age of sixteen, he was captured by Irish raiders from his father’s estate at Bannavem Taburniae in Britain.2 From here, Patrick was taken and sold into slavery in Ireland, where he remained for approximately 6  years until he escaped, returned to Britain to join the Church, and vowed to return to Ireland to convert the pagan masses (Bieler 1993; Charles-Edwards 2013: 181). This first-hand account of Patrick’s experience as a slave provides a written testimony for the capture and enslavement of native Britons in and around the British Isles during the early medieval period. This paper aims to offer insight into slavery  – specifically insular slavery − in western Britain between the fifth and tenth centuries ad, and to explore the possibility of identifying enslaved individuals within the early medieval burial record. It shall be argued that identifying possible evidence of slavery requires an holistic approach whereby archaeological data, including evidence from the burial record, and scientific data for past population mobility, specifically from the stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains, are scrutinised in the context of the historical narrative. The exact location of Bannavem Taburniae is unknown and has been widely discussed; see for example Dark’s (1993) attempt at locating the village.

2 

Davies 1982; Esmonde Cleary 1989; Higham 1992; Wickham 2005: 306–30; Halsall 2007; Fleming 2011; Charles-Edwards 2013. 1 

K. A. Hemer (*) Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Biermann, M. Jankowiak (eds.), The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe, Themes in Contemporary Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_4

43

44

4.2

K. A. Hemer

 vidence for Slavery in the Written E Record

owner wished as an entry from ad 740, which records that a Saxon woman was given (along with other items) as payment for a piece of land, demonstrates: ‘Rhiadaf bought an Scholars working on Welsh written sources are confident that uncia of land at Guruarch from Gwyddgi and Conuin, sons slavery and slave trading did exist; indeed Wendy Davies of Clodri, for twenty four unspecified objects, a Saxon (1982: 64) asserted, ‘There is absolutely no doubt of the woman, a precious sword, and a valuable horse, with the existence of slavery in Wales in the early medieval period; consent of king Ithel’ (Davies 1978: 174; 1982: 64). […] slavery was normal’. The Welsh law books, such as The Welsh hagiographical sources also make reference to Llyfr Iorwerth compiled in the thirteen century, highlight the slavery and slaves. The Life of Saint David written in the existence of a stratified society, whilst the Laws of Hywel mid-eleventh century by Rhigyfarch recalls how a group of Dda, compiled in the early tenth century, refer to those of the ancillae or female slaves, tried to seduce the monks of the lowest social status as servus or caeth,3 that is, ‘slave’ sixth-century saint, David (Davies 1982: 64). According to (Davies 1982: 67, 111; Charles-Edwards 1993: 365; 2013: the Life of Saint Cadog, compiled in the late eleventh cen267–71, 290–92). Slaves occupied a lower social status than tury, Saint Cadog, the fifth/sixth-century Abbot of the tenant peasantry, who despite being tied to the land and Llancarfan, is said to have revealed the identity of an ox obliged to provide renders to the land owner, were not, in thief who, as punishment, was condemned to slavery at the comparison to slaves, ‘regarded as the moveable posses- saint’s monastery, revealing that some individuals were sions, or chattels, of their owners’ (Davies 1982: 67–68; forced into slavery as punishment for crime (Davies 1982: Webster 2005: 161–63). Indeed, the ninth-century poem 64). The Church in Wales does not therefore appear to have Edmyg Dinbych, written in homage to the lord of Tenby in objected to slavery nor the use of slaves. Even in instances Pembrokeshire, makes the contrast between the ‘slaves of of manumission when slaves were freed by their owners in Dyfed’ and the tenant peasantry of Deuheubarth (Williams an act of piety, many of those who were freed were donated 1972: 164; Charles-Edwards 2013: 659), whilst the tenth-­ as gifts to, and became the property and dependents of, the century poem Armes Prydain Vawr, highlights the lack of Church (Wyatt 2009: 30). The use of slaves by monastic social mobility between social strata at this time (Davies houses is suggested by the scholastic colloquy, On 1982: 64; Charles-Edwards 2013: 519–35). According to the Uncommon Tales, dating from the ninth/tenth century (Hall Laws of Hywel Dda, slaves lacked any social status because 2009: 205). This Latin learning aid – thought to be Welsh or unlike other members of society, no payment (galanas) was Cornish in origin – consists of twenty-four dialogues condue to a slave’s kinsmen in compensation for his/her unlaw- cerning aspects of everyday life in a monastery (Davies ful death. Instead, the only compensation that was paid was 1982: 213). The text refers to a monastery’s dependents received by the slave’s master, and was equivalent to the (subiecti), as well as the tenant peasants, all of whom were value of a slave, that is ‘the worth of a beast’ (Owen 1841: essential to the monastic familia (Herlihy 1991: 2–3; Davies 294; Charles-Edwards 2013: 182). 1978: 44–47). The colloquy also makes reference to the Evidence for the trade of slaves in early medieval Wales is monastery’s subiecti as servi or captivi, suggesting that recorded in the Book of Llandaff (Liber Landavensis); this slaves were essential to the everyday life of monastic estates compilation of documents – including one hundred and fifty-­ (Davies 1978: 44–47; Hall 2009: 205). eight charters  – was collected during the twelfth century, Scholars have also placed considerable focus on the conhowever some records date back to the seventh century flict between the Anglo-Saxons and the native Britons as an (Davies 1978; Charles-Edwards 2013: 245–46). Many of the impetus for slave raiding and trading (Faull 1975; Wyatt charters which record an act of enslavement refer to both the 2009: 27). The sixth-century British cleric Gildas, in his De enslaved individual as well as his or her offspring suggesting Excidio Britanniae, recalls how a ‘tyrannical’ British king, that the inheritance of slave status passed from one genera- Vortigern, invited ‘the fierce and impious Saxons’ to settle in tion to the next (Davies 1982: 64). There are examples in the the east of the island, and how they soon broke their treaty charters, albeit rare instances, which record situations with the Britons and began to war with the native people whereby individuals willingly submitted themselves into (Giles 2009: 33; Charles-Edwards 2013: 56). Gildas recalls slavery (Rio 2012); for example, a man named Tudwg the fate of the native Britons who survived: offered himself and his children to Saint Teilo in perpetua So a number of the wretched survivors were caught in the mounseruitute in compensation for the murder of a boy (Davies tains and butchered wholesale. Others, their spirits broken by hunger, went to surrender to the enemy; they were fated to be 1978: 43; 1982: 64). The charters and the Laws remind us slaves for ever. (Giles 2009: 33) that slaves, like livestock, were chattel to be sold as the Caeth is the modern Welsh term for slave (Charles-Edwards 1993: 365). 3 

Sources from Anglo-Saxon England use the Old English term wealh (m)/wale (f), which is said to mean a foreigner

4  To Tread the Paths, and Traverse the Moors: Investigating Slavery in Early Medieval Western Britain

of British origin, in the context of slavery, and it came to mean a Celtic slave, particularly in southwest England where successful attacks by the Anglo-Saxons led to the enslavement of many native Britons, as recorded for example in the seventh-­century Laws of Ine (Faull 1975; Pelteret 1995: 319–22; Bloch 1975: 25–26). Of particular interest to the investigation of insular slavery are the Anglo-Saxon Riddles in the Exeter Book, which are thought to date to the eighth century (Pelteret 1995: 51–53). Riddles 52 and 72 are traditionally understood as depicting the herding of cattle by a dark-haired Welsh slave (wonfeax wale) (Brady 2014). This imagery has been interpreted as evidence for the subjugation of Welsh agricultural labourers by their Anglo-Saxon masters (Brady 2014: 236). More recently, however, Brady (2014: 235–55) has offered an alternative interpretation, suggesting that the Riddles may also allude to the role the Welsh played as slave traders in their own right. According to Brady (2014: 249), the imagery in Riddle 52 suggests that the chattel were human rather than cattle because the two fettered captives were ‘brought into the house under the roof of the hall’ by a Welsh woman who had overseen their journey. The use of the term ‘hall’, and the fact that the captives were brought indoors is, according to Brady (2014: 249), evidence that these were human slaves rather than cattle since there is no archaeological evidence that halls were built to accommodate livestock in Anglo-Saxon England, nor were byres necessary given the relatively mild British climate. Brady’s (2014: 250) reinterpretation of the Riddles suggests that the Welsh played a ‘dual role’ in the AngloSaxon slave trade; on the one hand, the Welsh were subjugated by the Anglo-­ Saxons, whilst on the other, Welsh slavers could also support the Anglo-Saxon slave trade. Evidence for the mobility and relocation of slaves is also apparent in the Riddles, as Riddle 72 notes the captives journeyed widely and ‘trod the paths of the Welsh marches’ (Brady 2014: 247). According to Brady, the accuracy of the language captures the suffering of those who were forced to walk across the Welsh border for sale in Anglo-Saxon England. The transport of slaves captured from across the British landscape to western Britain is a tradition that continued into the eleventh century, and is evidenced in the Life of Saint Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester (1062–95). According to the Life, the Bristol Channel was an established hub of slave trading, for we hear how Wulfstan implored the slave merchants of Bristol to cease their trading which according to the source brought ‘young people of both sexes’ to Bristol prior to their onward transportation for sale in Ireland (Pelteret 1995: 77). This slave trading is described as ‘a very ancient custom’, thus it seems that insular slave trading which brought captives to the Bristol Channel was established long before the compilation of Saint Wulfstan’s Life. The written evidence, such as that in the Anglo-Saxon

45

Riddles, therefore offers a glimpse into the mobility of captive people across the British landscape during the early medieval period and requires consideration when interpreting evidence from the burial record.

4.3

Investigating the Burial Record

If slavery and slave trading did occur in early medieval western Britain − as we might surmise from the aforementioned written sources  – one hopes it would be possible to locate evidence for slavery within the archaeological record. According to Webster’s (2005) discussion of Roman slavery, some scholars consider slaves to be inaccessible to the archaeologist, and that slaves remain invisible within the archaeological record because they do not have a ‘specific material fingerprint’. Webster (2008) and Morris (1998) challenge such assumptions however, and suggest that it is possible to make slaves visible and understand the life experiences of slaves and slave ownership. A recent discovery from France in 2014 supports their claim since it provides direct evidence from the burial record for the use of slaves. During the excavation of a Gallo-Roman necropolis in Saintes, southwest France, a burial of four adult individuals was discovered, all of whom showed evidence for restraint. One individual was buried wearing an iron neck collar, whilst the other three adults were buried with iron shackles around their ankles (INRAP 2014). Similar shackles and slave ­collars have been found in post-Roman contexts from Britain and Ireland as discussed by Henning (2008), including, for example, two iron collars of seventh-century date from the royal crannog of Lagore in County Meath, Ireland (Hencken et  al. 1950; Scott 1978: 213–30). Unlike the burial from Saintes, the Lagore collars were not, however, directly associated with skeletal remains (Scott 1978). There is one exceptional example from the Viking-Age site of Llanbedrgoch on Anglesey that does warrant consideration in the context of slavery for it is the only direct evidence for the presence of captives in early medieval Wales. The settlement at Llanbedrgoch on Anglesey in northwest Wales was first excavated in 1994 and more recently in 2012 (Fig. 4.1). The site was occupied from the early seventh century (Redknap 2004), however it is the evidence from the settlement’s later occupation dating from the late ninth and tenth centuries that is most relevant to the discussion here. During the excavation of Llanbedrgoch, five skeletons were discovered in the settlement’s ditch, including a young adult female, a young adult male, a mature adult male and two adolescents. The proximity between the skeletons suggests that they were placed in the ditch contemporaneously, whilst the direct association between one adult male and an adolescent suggests they were buried simultaneously. The two adult male skeletons exhibit evidence for restraint as both

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K. A. Hemer

Fig. 4.1  Map of Britain and Ireland illustrating the location of the cemeteries included in the discussion. (Drawing author and Marek Jankowiak)

had their wrists tied (Redknap 2004). Three of the bodies were covered with stones and were thus interred in the ditch prior to the collapse of a nearby structure. The absence of late tenth- or early eleventh-century coins from the settlement suggests that it was by then abandoned; the burial of these individuals must have occurred shortly before that (Redknap 2004: 155). The substantial size and fortification of the settlement, the material culture evidence for trade and craft working, including fragments of hacksilver and lead weights, as well as the proximity of Llanbedrgoch to the Viking trading post at Meols on the Wirral, the Isle of Man and Dublin, suggest that whoever occupied the settlement may have controlled trade passing via Anglesey (Redknap 2004: 156, 169; Griffiths 2010: 115–18). Could some of this trade have included human chattel since historical sources allude to the raiding and capture of slaves on Anglesey during the tenth century? For example, the annalistic chronicle Brut y Tywysogion recalls how, in ad 987, 2000 people were captured on Anglesey and taken as slaves by Godfrey Haroldson and the ‘black Gentiles’ and were held to ransom until 2 years later when Maredudd ab Owain, king of Gwynedd and

Deuheubarth, paid a tribute of one penny a head (Davies 1990: 57; Wyatt 1999: 601–02). Consideration must therefore be given to the possibility that at least two, if not all of the individuals buried in the ditch were enslaved. The haphazard nature of the burials at Llanbedrgoch, the position of the bodies, and the evidence for restraint exhibited by the two male skeletons suggest a non-normative burial rite given that Christianity and the use of Christian burial grounds were, by now, well-established in Wales (Edwards and Lane 1992; Longley 2009). The burial of these individuals in the settlement’s ditch is a clear indication that they were buried unceremoniously and did not receive the preparation and care usually afforded to members of a Christian society. In light of this, as well as the settlement’s fiscal and administrative status, perhaps we have to consider whether Llanbedrgoch was involved in a network of slave trading around the Irish Sea in which Wales played an important role (Bromberg 1942: 264; Wyatt 1999: 601–02). Since the burials from Llanbedrgoch provide the only evidence for the restraint and possible use of captives in early medieval Wales, seeking to identify further evidence for slavery from the burial record is a challenge, and one that is

4  To Tread the Paths, and Traverse the Moors: Investigating Slavery in Early Medieval Western Britain

further hindered by the very nature of the early medieval funerary landscape. For instance, the preservation of human remains from Welsh cemeteries is highly variable due to the presence of acidic soils, which can make it difficult to analyse skeletal remains if, indeed, there are any surviving at all. Moreover, any evidence from the burial record which may offer insight into the status or identity of the individual, or which may distinguish between those who were ‘free’ and those who were ‘unfree’ during life would be exceptional – like the burials from Llanbedrgoch– since the deceased, regardless of status, were buried in cemeteries, either in simple earth-dug or stone-lined graves, without any grave provisions.4 Given the variability of skeletal preservation (which can also militate against radiocarbon dating) and the relative uniformity of the funerary rites in western Britain, how then might archaeologists identify potential slaves from the burial record? One possible approach is through a contextualised analysis of stable isotope evidence for migrant individuals.

4.4

 table Isotope Evidence for Localised S Mobility and Insular Slavery

For more than a decade, stable isotope analysis has been applied to the study of early medieval populations from Britain (e.g. Budd et al. 2003, 2004). Through the strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of human tooth enamel – often from the second permanent molar tooth  – it is possible to identify the region where an individual sourced his or her food and water, and thus resided, at the time of tooth formation, that is during childhood (see for example Montgomery 2002; Montgomery and Evans 2006; Evans et al. 2012). With this information, it is possible to determine whether the individual was buried in the same region where he or she grew up as a child, and if not, to consider the movement of that individual at some point prior to death. Many isotopic studies have focused on individuals identified as having ‘exotic’ isotopic signatures, and this evidence has led to a fruitful discussion of long-distance migration to Britain; for instance, studies have explored migration from northern Europe (e.g. Montgomery et  al. 2005; Brettell et  al. 2012a) or the Mediterranean Sea region (Hemer et al. 2013; Groves et al. 2013). It might be argued that less focus has been placed on the evidence also identified by many of these studies for localised mobility, and the potential importance of these findings to our understanding of early medieval populations, including the enslavement and relocation of people within Britain and Ireland. One of the first studies to investigate early Anglo-Saxon population mobility focused on the analysis of thirty-two burials dating from the fifth- to seventh-century at West Thomas 1971: 48–49; 1981: 231; Petts 2009; Longley 2009: 105–32.

4 

47

Heslerton in North Yorkshire (Budd et al. 2003) (Fig. 4.1). This study revealed considerable variation in the isotope data, and whilst the values were consistent with the British Isles, the results suggest a degree of regional mobility (Budd et al. 2003: 135). In fact, the oxygen isotope data divides into two groups; those whose oxygen values reflect origins in the West Heslerton region or to the east of the Pennines, and those whose origins are more consistent with a westerly climate. The authors suggest a ‘remarkably high degree of mobility with a considerable influx of people from previously settled areas of sub-Roman Britain’ to West Heslerton, and a pattern of west-to-east population movement (Budd et al. 2003: 136). The fifth- to seventh-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery from Berinsfield, Oxfordshire has recently been analysed by Hughes et  al. (2014) and the oxygen data also suggest a bimodal distribution, as observed at West Heslerton (Fig.  4.1). One group is dominated by females who have slightly more enriched oxygen values than the other group; however, an alternative interpretation to that given for West Heslerton is put forward. Hughes et al. (2014) posit that the data could represent a local population who were drinking from two slightly different water sources, with the more enriched oxygen values noted for women indicating that women were consuming more cooked foods than men − since cooking and brewing have been shown to enrich oxygen values  – rather than a westward movement to the Berinsfield area (Brettell et  al. 2012b; Hughes et  al. 2014: 90). Population mobility has also been investigated amongst later Anglo-Saxon populations from England. For instance, Pam Macpherson’s (2006) doctoral study of the late Anglo-­ Saxon population of Black Gate in Newcastle-upon-Tyne identified individuals who had grown up in western Britain, but who had subsequently travelled to the north of England (Fig.  4.1). Further evidence for movement to the north of England was also revealed by the strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of individuals from the seventh- to ninth-­ century Anglo-Saxon cemetery of Bole Hole, at Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland (Groves 2010; Groves et al. 2013) (Fig. 4.1). Groves et al. (2013) obtained strontium and oxygen data for seventy-eight individuals, and of those, over 50% of the sample were identified as ‘non-local’ to the Bamburgh region, including twenty-five individuals whose oxygen isotope values were consistent with western Scotland or Ireland (Groves et al. 2013: 469). That there was a considerable degree of mobility to the Bamburgh region is perhaps unsurprising given that Bamburgh was a seat of the Bernician kings and the kingdom of Northumbria from the sixth century, and had strong connections to Christian communities in western Scotland (e.g. Whithorn, Iona), western Ireland, as well as the nearby monasteries at Lindisfarne and Wearmouth-­ Jarrow (Groves et al. 2013).

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Whilst it is only recently that early medieval populations from Wales and the Isle of Man have been subjected to stable isotope analysis (Hemer et  al. 2013, 2014; Symonds et  al. 2014), the results have also highlighted patterns of localised movement. For example, strontium and oxygen isotope analysis has been undertaken on early medieval cemetery populations from the south Wales coast, including Brownslade, Porthclew and Llandough (Hemer et al. 2013) (Fig. 4.1). The data suggest the movement of people across the Welsh landscape; for instance, a number of individuals buried at Llandough in southeast Wales may have grown up in west Wales. There were also individuals buried at Llandough who, as children, lived close to the present-day border between England and Wales, which suggests the movement of people from the Marches to the south Wales coast (Hemer et  al. 2013: 2356–57). Amongst the analysed populations from Pembrokeshire, the presence of individuals from the extreme western coasts of Britain and Ireland was also noted (Hemer et al. 2013: 2356–57). The mobility of pre-Viking-­ Age people to the Isle of Man has also been identified, principally from the isotopic analysis of three early medieval cemetery populations from Balladoole, Cronk keeillane and Peel Castle (Hemer et al. 2014). Hemer et al. (2014) argue that the Isle of Man’s central position and its close proximity to northern Britain, north Wales and Ireland connected these neighbouring early medieval communities and facilitated movement across the Irish Sea (Hemer et  al. 2014: 248). Given what we know from written sources, insular slavery may therefore be one possible explanation accountable for population movement in and around the British Isles during the early medieval period.5 A number of these isotopic studies have highlighted the movement of women and children as well as men.6 For instance, in their study of Bamburgh, Groves et  al. (2013: 470) identified one group of burials consisting of women and children whose similar isotopic signatures led the authors to suggest that they may have been a family group who moved together from either western Scotland or Ireland to the north of England. Examples such as this allow us to consider whether some of the internal mobility identified by such studies involved the forceful relocation of related individuals, including servile family groups. Evidence from Anglo-­ Saxon wills attests to the treatment of servile families as units of transferrable property who were relocated following the transfer of the land to which they were bound as slaves. For instance, a tenth-century will from Anglo-Saxon England

Given the focus of the discussion upon slavery, it is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the many other possible alternatives, however the author does recognise that slave trading is not the only possible explanation for mobility at this time. 6  Hadley and Hemer 2011; Hemer et al. 2013; Groves et al. 2013; Hemer 2014. 5 

K. A. Hemer

notes that the female testator, Wynflaed  – who may have been the lay-abbess of Shaftesbury – bequeathed many of her slaves, ‘Ecghelm and his wife and their child […] and Eadwyn and Bunele’s son’, to her relatives including her own daughter and son (Pelteret 1995: 126; Wyatt 2009: 26). In Wales, the Llandaff charters also provide evidence for the transfer of land, its inhabitants and their offspring, as an entry dating to ad 760 shows: King Ffernfael gave his wife Ceingar Brinnluguni, with the heredes Crin and all its (animal) stock, and Mathenni with three modii of land; then, with the King’s guarantee, she [Ceingar] gave them with their inhabitants and offspring to bishop Cadwared. (Davies 1978: 179)

The use of women and children as slaves can, according to Wyatt (2009: 33), be a feature of early medieval slavery that historians overlook because many assume that slaves were men employed for the purpose of performing harsh, physical labour. This assumption, Wyatt (2009: 33) argues, stems from the historians’ use of Domesday Book, the writers of which would have disregarded most domestic slaves, including women and children. Such assumptions therefore overlook the potential value placed on women and children as saleable commodities, however we only have to recall Gregory the Great’s seventh-century account of Anglian slave boys for sale in Rome (Pelteret 1995: 56), or recognise Old English terms for child slaves such as wencel, ‘child’, or fostorling, specifically meaning ‘a child adopted as a household slave’, to realise that a price could be placed on even the youngest members of early medieval society (Pelteret 1995: 43–44). It is possible that amongst early medieval cemetery populations were individuals – perhaps even family groups, including children – who were forced to relocate from their homeland.

4.5

‘Non-beings’ and the Use of Distinctive Burial Rites

Whilst stable isotope analysis provides a valuable means by which individuals of non-local origin might be identified, the analysis cannot confirm whether such migrant individuals were involved in, or transported as part of, a slave trade. What the isotopic evidence does permit however is the potential to explore slavery as one possible interpretation for past population mobility. Doing so, however, also demands some consideration of the evidence from the burial record and the funerary provision accorded to those identified through stable isotope analysis as ‘non-local’, since the burial record provides an appropriate arena whereby the living may choose to express or manipulate notions of identity and social status (Ucko 1969; Parker Pearson 2003: 5–20). At the seventh- to twelfth-century monastic cemetery of Llandough in south-east Wales, an adult male aged

4  To Tread the Paths, and Traverse the Moors: Investigating Slavery in Early Medieval Western Britain

35–45 years at death had an enriched oxygen signature that may not be consistent with origins in the British Isles (Hemer et  al. 2013: 2356). The male (skeleton B10) was buried alongside another adult male (skeleton B11) of a similar age (Holbrook and Thomas 2005: 10, 32, 80–81). This contemporaneous multiple burial suggests that the death of one individual occurred at the same time as, or was closely followed by, the death of the other individual – perhaps having undergone the same ‘death event’ – and as such, a decision was made to bury them together (Crawford 1993: 83–91; 2007: 83–92). As the only example of a multiple burial comprising two adults in a cemetery of over 900 other burials, this double burial was a rare exception. Whether place of origin – and thus a non-local identity – had any influence upon this decision is unfortunately difficult to ascertain, not least because the absence of dental remains from the second skeleton (B11) means that it is not possible to say whether this adult – like skeleton B10  – also spent his childhood outside the British Isles. The fact remains however, that whoever was responsible for their burial, chose a double burial which, at this cemetery, was a rite otherwise only accorded to children. Other examples exist of distinctive funerary treatment being afforded to individuals who – on the basis of their isotopic signatures  – grew up outside the British Isles. For instance, at the fifth- to sixth-century cemetery of Bettystown, County Meath in Ireland, an adult male whose oxygen signature was not consistent with origins in Britain or Ireland was one of only three crouched burials amongst the cemetery of fifty-six extended inhumations (Bhreathnach and O’Brien 2010). A young adult female (BD 6) buried at the cemetery of Balladoole on the Isle of Man was also identified, through stable isotope analysis, as having possible origins outside the British Isles, and this evidence has led to the suggestion that the Isle of Man may have had links with the Continent which have previously been overlooked, and that perhaps this woman arrived in southwest Britain or Ireland and subsequently travelled to the Isle of Man through a localised network which redistributed Mediterranean goods around the Irish Sea (Hemer et al. 2014) (Fig. 4.1). During the excavation of Balladoole in 1945, Gerhard Bersu focused his attention on the Viking-Age boat burial and the lintel graves beneath the boat (Bersu and Wilson 1966). Skeleton BD 6, and one other skeleton (BD 5), were buried away from the group of lintel burials, which included at least three individuals identified as local to the British Isles (Hemer et al. 2014). Whilst the area between BD 5/BD 6 and the lintel grave cemetery was left unexcavated, making it difficult to say how many individuals – if any – were interred within the intermediate area, it remains a possibility that BD 6 was buried at the periphery of the cemetery in an area that could be considered marginal, and that the location of BD 6’s burial may relate to a non-local origin.

49

Finally, Groves et al. (2013) identified seven individuals at Bamburgh Castle who exhibited oxygen drinking water values beyond the range established for the British Isles (Eckardt et al. 2009: 2821). The possible places of origin for these individuals include North Africa, southern Europe, and the Mediterranean Sea region (Groves et al. 2013: 470). The excavated area of the Bole Hole cemetery has revealed a total of ninety-one discrete burials, representing adults of both sexes and children, arranged in rows with most burials oriented west to east (Groves et al. 2013: 466). A range of body positions were represented alongside the dominant rite of supine burial, including crouched and flexed, whilst twenty prone burials were also recorded (Groves 2010; Groves et al. 2013: 466). The seven non-local individuals were interred within the cemetery alongside other members of the burial community. Three of these migrant individuals were buried prone, whilst a fourth individual was buried in a semi-flexed position (Groves et  al. 2013: 470). These four individuals were not the only prone or flexed burials in the cemetery, and Groves et al. (2013: 471) note that prone burial was not an exclusive rite afforded to individuals from beyond the British Isles. In fact, the authors conclude that there was no correlation between burial rites and region of origin, but rather, they believe, burial rites are likely to have reflected social status, role within the community, as well as individual or family beliefs (Groves et  al. 2013: 471). Whilst these individuals were included in the cemetery, there was clearly a decision to afford these migrant individuals a burial rite that was accorded to less than a quarter of the excavated cemetery population. The use of prone burial therefore suggests that those responsible for their interment felt that it was not appropriate – perhaps owing to the deceased’s social status or identity – to bury these individuals according to the predominant normative burial rite observed at Bamburgh Castle suggesting they may have lacked the appropriate social or legal responsibilities according to society at that time. Where the predominant burial rite consists of supine extended inhumation, prone or crouched burial can be regarded as non-normative. For instance, prone burials occur in late Anglo-Saxon execution cemeteries (e.g. Guildown, Surrey), alongside other markers of non-normalcy or deviancy, such as decapitation and restraint. An array of explanations are given for why prone burial may reflect deviancy, including punishment for crime or sinful behaviour, superstition, fear of the dead, and a desire to prevent the deceased from returning to harm the living. A discussion of deviant burial practices in late Anglo-Saxon execution cemeteries can be found in Reynolds (2002, 2009). To assume, however, that all prone burials represent deviancy denies the potentially complex nature of the rite because, for instance, prone burial was not uncommon amongst later Anglo-Saxon church cemeteries, and may equally have been a marker of penance; for example, six prone burials were identified at the monastic

50

K. A. Hemer

cemetery of Wearmouth, whilst two prone burials were recorded at Jarrow. The degree of investment afforded to three of the prone burials at Wearmouth – including upright grave markers and head stones – and their association with a Christian cemetery highlight the potentially multifarious nature of the prone burial rite that should not be overlooked or dismissed (Hadley 2010). In seeking to offer a perspective on the use of distinctive funerary rites in the context of slavery, consideration can be given to Orlando Patterson’s (1982) seminal discussion of the nature of slavery. According to Patterson (1982: 5), a slave lost all rights ‘to freely integrate the experience of their ancestors into their lives’ and, as a consequence, experienced what Patterson described as ‘natal alienation’, whereby the slave was not only denied a claim to his or her blood relations, but was also ‘culturally isolated from the social heritage of his or her ancestors’ (Patterson 1982: 5). Through this natal alienation, the owner was able to exert total power over the subjugated individual (Finley 1964: 77). By segregating the slave from the social and cultural milieu of his/her kin, he/she was deracinated and depersonalised, and ultimately transformed into a ‘socially dead person’ (Patterson 1982: 38; Finley 1964: 75). It was this isolation which meant that the slave or ‘non-being’ was different to his master and those around him, who were free: ‘The essence of slavery is that the slave, in his social death, lives on the margin between community and chaos, life and death, the sacred and the secular’ (Patterson 1982: 51). With this in mind, it is necessary to recall the non-normative burial rites accorded to those captive individuals in the ditch at Llanbedrgoch; clearly those responsible for their interment felt that it was not appropriate to bury the deceased according to usual Christian tradition.7 Was such treatment chosen to reflect their slave status, as socially dead ‘non-beings’ devoid of the responsibilities given to other members of society? Perhaps consideration should also be given to the distinctive funerary rites accorded to some of the aforementioned non-local individuals, and whether such treatment was chosen to reflect a slave identity.

4.6

Conclusions

To date, there has been little attempt to identify evidence for possible enslaved individuals within the archaeological record of early medieval western Britain. Evidence from the written sources – such as the Welsh charters – demonstrate

Strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of the individuals from Llanbedrgoch will identify their place of childhood origin and this data will provide evidence that will enable further discussion of their possible role at the site and the nature of their burial (Hemer et  al. forthcoming). 7 

that slavery was, in all likelihood, a part of everyday life in early medieval society and involved the enslavement and transportation of captives across the British Isles. In light of the historical evidence, consideration has been given to the wealth of stable isotope data indicative of internal population mobility in Britain, and it has been argued that insular slavery may account for some degree of localised mobility. This discussion aimed to highlight the potential that a holistic approach to the interpretation of stable isotope data and evidence from the burial record can offer, and has gone some way towards exploring slavery in western Britain during the early medieval period. Acknowledgments  Many thanks are given to Prof. Dawn M. Hadley, Prof. John Moreland, Prof. Jonathan P. Conant and Dr. Simon Loseby, all of whom have kindly discussed this topic with me. Thanks are also given to the National Museum of Wales Cardiff and Manx National Heritage for allowing access to their skeletal collections, whilst this work would not have been possible without the support of the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme.

References Bersu, G., & Wilson, D.  M. (1966). Three Viking graves in the Isle of Man (Monographs, 1). London: The Society for Medieval Archaeology. Bhreathnach, E., & O’Brien, E. (2010). Mapping Death. http://www. mappingdeathdb.ie. Accessed 19 Oct 2015. Bieler, L. (1993). Libri epistolarum Sancti Patricii episcopi. Dublin: W. & G. Baird Ltd.. Bloch, M. (1975). How and why ancient slavery came to an end. In M.  Bloch (Ed.), Slavery and serfdom in the Middle Ages (W.  R. Beer, Trans., pp. 1–31). Berkeley: University of California Press. Brady, L. (2014). The “Dark Welsh” as slaves and slave traders in Exeter book riddles 52 and 72. English Studies, 95(3), 235–255. Brettell, R., Evans, J. A., Marzinzik, S., Lamb, A. L., & Montgomery, J. (2012a). ‘Impious Easterners’: Can oxygen and strontium isotopes serve as indicators of provenance in early medieval European cemetery populations? European Journal of Archaeology, 15, 117–145. Brettell, R., Montgomery, J., & Evans, J. A. (2012b). Brewing and stewing: The effect of culturally mediated behaviour on the oxygen isotope composition of ingested fluids and the implications for human provenance studies. Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27, 77–85. Bromberg, E. I. (1942). Wales and the medieval slave trade. Speculum, 17, 263–269. Budd, P., Chenery, C., Montgomery, J., Evans, J. A., & Powlesland, D. (2003). Anglo-Saxon residential mobility at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire, UK from combined O- and Sr- isotope analysis. In J. G. Holland & S. D. Tanner (Eds.), Plasma source mass spectrometry: Theory and applications (pp. 195–208). Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry. Budd, P., Millard, A., Chenery, C., Lucy, S., & Roberts, C. (2004). Investigating population movement by stable isotope analysis: A report from Britain. Antiquity, 78, 127–141. Charles-Edwards, T. M. (1993). Early Irish and Welsh Kinship. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Charles-Edwards, T.  M. (2013). Wales and the Britons, 350–1064. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4  To Tread the Paths, and Traverse the Moors: Investigating Slavery in Early Medieval Western Britain Crawford, S. (1993). Children, death and the afterlife in Anglo-Saxon England. In W.  Filmer-Sankey (Ed.), Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History (Vol. 6, pp. 83–91). Crawford, S. (2007). Companions, co-incidences or chattels? Children and their role in early Anglo-Saxon multiple burials. In S.  Crawford & G.  Shepherd (Eds.), Children, childhood and society (BAR International Series 1696) (pp.  83–92). Oxford: Archaeopress. Dark, K. R. (1993). Patrick’s Uillula and the fifth-century occupation of Romano-British Villas. In D. N. Dumville (Ed.), Saint Patrick ad 493–1993 (pp. 19–25). Suffolk: Boydell Press. Davies, W. (1978). An early Welsh microcosm: Studies in the Llandaff charters. London: Royal Historical Society. Davies, W. (1982). Wales in the Early Middle Ages. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Davies, W. (1990). Patterns of Power in Early Wales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Eckardt, H., Chenery, C., Booth, P., Evans, J.  A., Lamb, A.  L., & Müldner, G. (2009). Oxygen and strontium isotope evidence for mobility in Roman Winchester. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36, 2816–2825. Edwards, N., & Lane, A. (1992). The archaeology of the early Church in Wales: An introduction. In N.  Edwards & A.  Lane (Eds.), The early Church in Wales and the West (pp. 1–11). Oxford: Oxbow. Esmonde Cleary, A. S. (1989). The Ending of Roman Britain. London: Routledge. Evans, J.  A., Chenery, C.  A., & Montgomery, J. (2012). A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain. Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27, 754–764. Faull, M. L. (1975). The semantic development of old English wealh. Leeds Studies in English, 8, 20–44. Finley, M.  I. (1964). Between slavery and freedom. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 6, 233–249. Fleming, R. (2011). Britain after Rome: The fall and rise, 400–1070. London: Penguin. Giles, J. A. (2009). Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae. Maryland: Serenity Publishers. Griffiths, D. (2010). Vikings of the Irish Sea: Conflict and assimilation ad 790–1050. Stroud: The History Press. Groves, S. E. (2010). The bowl hole burial ground: A late Anglian cemetery in Northumberland. In J. Buckberry & A. Cherryson (Eds.), Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England, c.650–1100 ad (pp.  116– 126). Oxford: Oxbow. Groves, S.  E., Roberts, C.  A., Lucy, S., Pearson, G., Gröcke, D.  R., Nowell, G., Macpherson, C.  G., & Yong, G. (2013). Mobility histories of 7th–9th century ad people buried at early medieval Bamburgh, Northumberland, England. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151, 462–476. Hadley, D. M. (2010). Burying the socially and physically distinctive in later Anglo-Saxon England. In J. Buckberry & A. Cherryson (Eds.), Burial in Later Anglo-Saxon England, c. 650–1100 ad (pp.  104– 115). Oxford: Oxbow. Hadley, D., & Hemer, K. A. (2011). Microcosms of migration: Children and early medieval population movement. Childhood in the Past, 4, 63–78. Hall, T. N. (2009). Aelfric as pedagogue. In H. Magennis & M. Swan (Eds.), A companion to Aelfric (pp. 193–226). Brill: Leiden. Halsall, G. (2007). Barbarian migrations and the Roman West, 376– 568 (pp. 368–370). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hemer, K. A. (2014). Are we nearly there yet? Children and migration in early medieval western Britain. In D. M. Hadley & K. A. Hemer (Eds.), Medieval childhood: Archaeological approaches (SSCIP Monograph 3) (pp. 131–144). Oxford: Oxbow. Hemer, K.  A., Evans, J.  A., Chenery, C.  A., & Lamb, A.  L. (2013). Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and

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the Mediterranean Sea region. Journal of Archaeological Science, 40, 2352–2359. Hemer, K. A., Evans, J. A., Chenery, C. A., & Lamb, A. L. (2014). No man is an island: Evidence of pre-Viking age migration to the Isle of Man. Journal of Archaeological Science, 52, 242–249. Hemer, K.  A., Redknap, M., & Roberts, C.  A. (forthcoming). Life, death and mobility in Viking age Wales: A perspective from Llanbedrgoch, Anglesey. Hencken, H., Price, L., & Start, L. E. (1950/1951). Lagore Crannog: An Irish Royal Residence of the 7th to 10th Centuries A.D. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, 53: 1–247. Henning, J. (2008). Strong rulers, weak economy?  – Rome, the Carolingians, and the archaeology of slavery in the first millennium ad. In J. R. Davies & M. McCormick (Eds.), The Long Morning of Medieval Europe (pp. 33–54). Aldershot: Ashgate. Herlihy, D. (1991). Family. American Historical Review, 96, 1–16. Higham, N. (1992). Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons. London: Routledge. Holbrook, N., & Thomas, A. (2005). An early medieval monastic cemetery at Llandough, Glamorgan: Excavations in 1994. Medieval Archaeology, 49, 1–92. Hughes, S. S., et al. (2014). Anglo-Saxon origins investigated by isotopic analysis of burials from Berinsfield, Oxfordshire, UK. Journal of Archaeological Science, 42(1), 81–92. INRAP. (2014). Une nécropole antique dans le quartier périphérique occidental de la ville de Saintes: plusieurs individus entravés, dont un enfant. https://www.inrap.fr/une-­necropole-­antique-­dans-­le-­ quartier-­peripherique-­occidental-­de-­la-­ville-­de-­5377. Accessed 10 Dec 2019. Longley, D. (2009). Early medieval burial in Wales. In N.  Edwards (Ed.), The Archaeology of the Early Medieval Celtic Churches (The Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph, 29) (pp. 105–132). Leeds: Maney Publishing. Macpherson, P. (2006). Tracing change: An isotopic investigation of Anglo-Saxon Childhood diet. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. Montgomery, J. (2002). Lead and strontium isotope compositions of human dental tissues as an indicator of ancient exposure and population dynamics. PhD thesis, University of Bradford. Montgomery, J., & Evans, J. A. (2006). Immigrants on the Isle of Lewis – Combining traditional funerary and modern isotope evidence to investigate social differentiation, migration and dietary change in the outer Hebrides of Scotland. In R. Gowland & C. Knüsel (Eds.), Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains (pp.  122–142). Oxford: Oxbow. Montgomery, J., Evans, J.  A., Powlesland, D., & Roberts, C.  A. (2005). Continuity or colonization in Anglo-Saxon England? Isotope evidence for mobility, subsistence practice, and status at West Heslerton. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 126, 123–138. Morris, I. (1998). Remaining invisible: The archaeology of the excluded in classical Athens. In S. R. Joshel & S. Murnaghan (Eds.), Women and slaves in Greco-Roman culture, differential equations (pp. 193– 220). London: Routledge. Owen, A. (1841). Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, Vol. 1, DC II. iii. 8. London: Commissioners of the Public Records of the Kingdom. Parker Pearson, M. (2003). The Archaeology of Death and Burial. Sparkford: The History Press. Patterson, O. (1982). Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pelteret, D. A. E. (1995). Slavery in early medieval England. Suffolk: The Boydell Press. Petts, D. (2009). The Early Medieval Church in Wales. Stroud: The History Press. Redknap, M. (2004). Viking age settlement in Wales and the evidence from Llanbedrgoch. In J.  Hines, A.  Lane, & M.  Redknap

52 (Eds.), Land, Sea and Home (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monographs, 20) (pp. 139–173). Leeds: Maney Publishing. Reynolds, A. (2002). Burials, boundaries and charters. In S. J. Lucy & A. J. Reynolds (Eds.), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales (pp. 171–194). Oxford: Oxbow. Reynolds, A. (2009). Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rio, A. (2012). Self-Sale and voluntary entry into Unfreedom. Journal of Social History, 45, 661–685. Scott, B. G. (1978). Iron ‘Slave-Collars’ from Lagore Crannog, Co. Meath. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, 78, 213–230. Symonds, L., Price, T.  D., Keenleyside, A., & Burton, J. (2014). Medieval migrations: Isotope analysis of early medieval skeletons on the Isle of Man. Medieval Archaeology, 58, 1–20. Thomas, C. (1971). The Early Christian Archaeology of North Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomas, C. (1981). Christianity in Roman Britain to ad 500. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ucko, P.  J. (1969). Ethnography and archaeological interpretation of funerary remains. World Archaeology, 1, 262–280. Webster, J. (2005). Archaeologies of slavery and servitude bringing ‘New World’ perspectives to Roman Britain. Journal of Roman Archaeology, 18, 161–179.

K. A. Hemer Webster, J. (2008). Less beloved. Roman archaeology, slavery and the failure to compare. Archaeological Dialogues, 15, 103–112. Wickham, C. (2005). Framing the Early Middle Ages, Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, I. (1972). The Beginnings of Welsh Poetry. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Wyatt, D. (1999). Gruffudd ap Cynan and the Hiberno-Norse world. Welsh History Review, 19, 595–617. Wyatt, D. (2009). Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200. Leiden: Brill. Katie A. Hemer is a Senior Lecturer in Bioarchaeology in the Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2011. She specializes in the study of early medieval skeletal populations, including those from Wales and the Isle of Man, and combines osteological analysis, biomolecular techniques, and skeletal histology as part of her research. She has a particular interest in the study of early medieval children and childhood.  

5

The Archaeology of Slave Trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Approach Janel M. Fontaine

Abstract

Slave trading peaked in the British Isles between the ninth and eleventh centuries and remains highly visible in contemporary texts. Despite this, analysis of archaeological evidence has been patchy, and a comprehensive assessment of possible archaeological indicators has yet to be carried out with reference to unique regional contexts. This chapter will endeavor to synthesize four potential indicators – shackles, fortifications, silver exchange, and burials – to determine their effectiveness as archaeological evidence for slave  trading during the Viking Age. Situating each item within its own historical and cultural milieu will demonstrate the limitations of archaeology in studying the movement of human chattel and the importance of site-specific factors. Keywords

Archeology of slavery · Slave trade · Vikings · Britain · Ireland

5.1

Introduction

For decades, the early medieval slave trade has been used to tentatively explain a variety of archaeological phenomena, even though intensive research into the slave trade itself has only recently begun. And yet, despite growing interest in the subject, few attempts have been made to synthesize more than two potential archaeological indicators of slavery together. In Britain and Ireland, historians and archaeologists often reference the slave trade as an explanation for artifacts J. M. Fontaine (*) Institute of Historical Research, University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected]

or features, but still no comprehensive study of archaeological evidence has been attempted. This is somewhat surprising in light of studies confirming the significance and endurance of slave trading during the Viking Age (Holm 1988; Pelteret 1981, 1995). A recent comparison of archaeological ‘indicators’ of slave trading in the British Isles and eastern central Europe concluded that their viability ought to be assessed on a regional or site-by-site basis, so as to account for cultural, historical, and even historiographical trends (Fontaine 2017). This chapter, therefore, offers a close look at British and Irish archaeological evidence for slave trading from the ninth through eleventh centuries, when the scale of slave trading should stand a chance of making the practice more visible in the archaeological record. The aim of this study is to discuss methodology, to better highlight the possibilities and difficulties that a full, detailed study of Britain and Ireland would need to address. In drawing from studies of both medieval and early modern slave trading, four main criteria emerge as potential indicators of a slave trade: shackles, fortified settlements, monetary exchange, and deviant burials. The application of these criteria to Britain and Ireland demonstrates not only the potential for future research, but also the historical and cultural limitations which must be carefully considered when investigating medieval slavery on a regional level; we cannot assume that certain practices and cultural attitudes towards slavery were ubiquitous. In order to encompass both the coin and coin-­ less economies of the early medieval North Sea region, ‘monetary exchange’ will be treated under a more general study of silver exchange.

5.2

Shackles

Roman and Iron Age shackles are well-represented across Europe, and their use on slaves in the Roman world is widely accepted. Their usage in the medieval world has not been as thoroughly investigated; Joachim Henning’s typology of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Biermann, M. Jankowiak (eds.), The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe, Themes in Contemporary Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_5

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central and eastern European examples and a description of several Czech and Slovak discoveries by Luděk Galuška remain the only catalogues of post-Roman finds (Henning 1992; Galuška 2003). Despite a great deal of interest in British and Irish single finds, there are no published studies that compare shackle finds from multiple sites. These single finds are frequently described as slave shackles, though little effort is made to contextualize them. Proponents of early medieval shackles as indicators of slavery in other areas of Europe have yet to elucidate why such a connection is inevitable, especially when alternate explanations for these finds exist, such as for use on criminals or prisoners of free status. F.H.  Thompson acknowledges this issue of interpretation even for Roman shackles, demonstrating that they present problems of interpretation in a time period when their use on slaves is well-recognized and widely-attested in written sources (Thompson 1993: 58). Textual sources give us some clues as to the function of shackles in the Middle Ages. Early English  laws such as Athelberht §88, Alfred §35, and II Cnut §42 describe binding in a criminal context, clearly referring to people of free status (Liebermann 1903: 8, 68, 340–42). These laws appear across a wide chronology, from the seventh through the eleventh centuries, establishing that binding was not unique to people of slave status in England. The Wooing of Emer, an Irish mythological text compiled c. 1050 and probably based on much earlier oral tradition, includes a brief anecdote in which Emer ‘binds’ a group of would-be rapists before bringing them to Ulster to be her slaves (Meyer 1888: 152). The story is not clear about whether they are chained for their crime or because they are slaves, but in both cases the chains are either practical or symbolic. Neither of these roles exclusively suggest slavery. Similarly, in the early eleventh-­ century Encomium Emmae Reginae, Godwine’s men are captured and shackled following an attack by Harold Harefoot (Campbell 1998: 42–44). Though some of these men are eventually enslaved, the chaining is described as a separate and distinct means of physical subjugation. These sources clearly demonstrate that the presence of shackles does not constitute evidence of slavery at any one point throughout the Viking Age. Textual references to binding and shackling may express practical or symbolic nuances which we must consider when interpreting the shackles themselves. Some texts do describe the chaining of slaves explicitly, and suggest that chaining, or at least binding, was a frequent Viking practice for slaves in transit or at holding points. In the Irish Vita Findani, Findan is chained while being transported on his Northman owner’s ship and is only unchained as a reward for helping to defend the ship from attack (Holder-Egger 1887b: 503). Similarly, the early eleventh-­ century poem Moriuht by Warner of Rouen describes the enslaved titular character being shackled for transportation

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on a Norse ship (McDonough 1995: 18). Restraining captives on a ship would have been the logical means to both protect the safety of the crewmembers and prevent any escape attempts. The practice of shackling or binding captives must have been regular enough, since the ninth-century Miracula Sancti Benedicti by Adrevald of Fleury references chained prisoners held by Vikings on an island in Francia (Holder-Egger 1887a: 494). The status of these prisoners, however, remains unclear. A 938 entry in the Annals of the Four Masters indicates prisoners were also held at Dalkey Island, near Dublin (O’Donovan 1856: 639); however, no shackles have been found there. This practice of binding captives in transit or at holding points may have endured in Britain and Ireland as the result of Hiberno-Scandinavian influence, since the Vita Wulfstani describes lines of people chained together at the market in Bristol, awaiting sale to Ireland in the second half of the eleventh century (Thomson and Winterbottom 2002: 100). Admittedly, William of Malmesbury’s description dates to the twelfth century, but his work is based on an earlier, lost Old English work. It would seem that binding was a common part of the Viking slave trade, but we cannot be certain that these bindings were solely iron shackles. Though the Latin use of vinculum (in vincula coniectus; Holder-Egger 1887b: 503) and concatenatus (concatenatos funibus miserorum ordines; Thomson and Winterbottom 2002: 100) evokes iron restraints for chaining slaves together, it is important to note that no gang shackles equivalent to the Iron Age Llyn Carrig Bach find exist for the early medieval period in Britain and Ireland. Despite what may seem to be clear textual evidence that the Vikings chained their captives and slaves, all of these sources must be interpreted cautiously. After all, each of the sources addressed was written by someone with a negative view of this captive-taking, and in all except Moriuht, chaining and binding could very well have been a trope to elicit the sympathy of the audience (though the situation in Moriuht could have been an expression of the bawdy main character’s humiliation). William of Malmesbury even addresses the reader in second person, claiming that he or she would have bemoaned the state of the chained young people in Bristol (videres et gemeres concatenatos funibus miserorum ordines et utriusque sexus adolescentes; Thomson and Winterbottom 2002: 100). Clearly he was aiming for a reaction from his audience. And though number of sources which reference physical restraint in relation to the Viking slave trade suggest that the descriptions have some grounding in reality, it is significant that the bindings are never explicitly described as iron shackles. Furthermore, we must bear in mind that bondage could just as easily have been a literary device by Christian authors to emphasize the cruelty and barbarism of pagan captors. This is especially true when we consider the scriptural precedent for such a literary device; in Acts 16, Paul and his com-

5  The Archaeology of Slave Trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Approach

panions are miraculously released from chains, making the frequent appearance of similar situations in medieval sources highly suspect. Chains commonly fulfil a symbolic role in miracle stories throughout the Middle Ages (Pelteret 1995: 58). These anecdotes typically involve a person chained in exceptional circumstances, usually by a particularly cruel or unjust individual. They are unreliable as textual evidence of shackling, since the author’s focus is on symbolism rather than on everyday details. During the Viking Age, this trope features prominently in the ninth-century hagiography of St Swithun; the saint is credited with the miraculous unchaining of three individuals (two of them slaves) at his shrine in Winchester cathedral (Lapidge 2003a: 288–90, 314; 2003b: 496), and perhaps the association of these events with the saint’s cult could explain the three tenth- or eleventh-century shackles found at the site of the Old Minster (Goodall 1990: 1011). In both religious and secular cases, chains represented unusual circumstances rather than common occurrences, and certainly both free and unfree people could be shackled. Though some sources indicate the use of chains in the slave trade, we must first consider the motives of the religious commentators who authored these sources, who were perhaps more concerned with denouncing the treatment of their fellow Christians than the accuracy of their narrative. In any case, chaining was seen as harsh punishment, and an exceptional one at that. Textual sources make it clear that such punishment or arbitrary cruelty was not always reserved for unfree people. Though Viking-era sources implicate the use of chains in the slave trade, there is little to suggest that they were used in every instance, or even the majority of them, especially when we take into account the motives of the authors of these sources. Even if slaves were shackled, this in and of itself does not constitute evidence of large-­ scale slave trading. The binding of captives may have been a customary part of the Viking ransoming and slave-trading systems, but this is a matter of speculation, as will become evident with the examination of the finds themselves. With regard to the shackle finds, a few problems must be addressed. Firstly, similar types occurring on the Continent and in Britain and Ireland can be traced from Roman examples all the way through to the seventeenth century, ruling out their spread solely by means of the medieval slave trade (Henning 1992: 412–15; Thompson 1993: 124–26). Secondly, numbers given for the slave trade in the Irish annals suggest that shackles as a primary form of restraint would have been unfeasibly expensive, even when we account for the unreliability of the figures. The Annals of Ulster describe a raid by Vikings on Kells in 951, which resulted in 3000 captives (Mac Airt and Niocaill 1983: 397). Even if this figure is wildly exaggerated, as few as five known shackles from all of Ireland date to the tenth century, suggesting that iron shackles were not manufactured systematically to meet the demand of the slave trade. The survival

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rate of iron shackles almost certainly does not reflect their actual numbers during the early Middle Ages, but there are no more shackles from periods of large-scale slave trading than there are for times seemingly without it. Cheap, organic materials, such as wood and rope, were probably the first choice for restraining captives. Furthermore, a variety of explanations unrelated to slavery exist for the presence of shackles at medieval sites. The restraint of prisoners and criminals could account for their frequency at high-status crannogs and certainly explains the recent discovery of shackles in an eleventh- or twelfth-­ century execution cemetery outside Winchester (Russel 2016: 100). Shackle finds at crannogs could also be explained by the eighth-century Irish legal text Críth Gablach, which describes the chaining of forfeited hostages (MacNeill 1921–24: 306). A seventh-century decorated collar found at Lagore has been proposed as both a hostage restraint (Byrne 1973: 88; Mytum 1992: 144) and a dog collar (Scott 1978: 228–29), uses which could be applied to shackles of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. Since only kings were allowed to hold and bind hostages (Warner 1997: 66), this would help to explain the presence of shackles at Lagore (seventh century) and Knowth (thirteenth- or fourteenth-­ century context), both known royal sites. Certainly the presence of shackles in a medieval context cannot be exclusively explained by slavery, let alone the slave trade. That many shackles do not date from the Viking Age, the height of slave trading in medieval Britain and Ireland, is certainly notable; it suggests that if shackles were used for slaves, this was only one of many possible applications. Shackles may evoke the most visceral images of slavery in the modern imagination, but their role in the medieval world was, at the very least, multi-functional.

5.3

Fortified Settlements

Large fortified settlements have been suggested by several archaeologists and historians as important locations for the slave trade in the Slavic world, but in Britain and Ireland there has been no attempt to directly link fortified sites with the medieval slave trade. Michael McCormick tentatively suggested that evidence for slave pens along trade routes may already exist in the form of Slavic ring forts, many of which date to the early medieval period (McCormick 2001: 741). In a similar vein, Joachim Henning believed that because a large proportion of central and eastern European shackles were found in the context of fortifications and urban centers, this likely provides evidence of a slave trade (Henning 2008: 48–49). And more recently, Marek Jankowiak has proposed that large, minimally occupied fortifications in central Europe housed slaves en route to the Prague market (Jankowiak, Chap. 12, this volume).

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By examining who built these fortified sites, where and – to the extent that this is discernible – why, and if these sites produced evidence of trade, we can determine whether or not fortified sites can be linked with the slave trade, though this connection is tenuous at best. Such a link might manifest itself in the form of unique settlement features, such as large buildings which also produce shackles or restraints, evidence of human occupation (such as bedding, vessels, and phosphate levels), and a lack of craft working (to suggest transient occupants rather than settled workers). However, even taken all together, these pieces of evidence are difficult to connect exclusively with a slave trade. Ben Raffield has highlighted this problem for Viking-Age sites through comparative analysis of historical slave markets, arguing that slave trading likely did not require any distinctive infrastructure (Raffield 2019: 682–705). The same difficulty has arisen in archaeological studies of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in West Africa in which housing for captives remains indistinguishable from that of free natives (Kelly 2011: 140). When such ambiguity exists for a time period with a relative wealth of textual sources and local oral histories, it becomes clear that an investigation of the early medieval evidence is not without its own problems. With this in mind, the clearest indicator for slave trading at these settlements may be signs of general trade. Evidence of long-distance trade appears at a variety of British and Irish fortifications, including native, Scandinavian, and mixed-­culture sites. The main types of sites will be surveyed to illustrate the variety of potential slave trading sites, and to demonstrate that slave trading almost certainly extended beyond urban locations and exclusively Scandinavian settlements. For example, high-status Irish crannogs have produced ample evidence for their use as points of exchange with Scandinavian merchants for goods which likely included slaves, since there is no reason to believe that slaves were traded in locations separate from other goods. Settlement patterns on these artificial islands, and thus the location of potential slave quarters, are still unclear (Edwards 1990: 40). However, with the introduction of the Scandinavian trade system, the wealth of these crannogs increased dramatically, and it is possible that the slave trade played a role in this (Kelly 1991: 92). Excavations at Coolure Demesne in Co. Westmeath have uncovered a hoard of Viking arm rings, decorated Scandinavian weights and scales, and, interestingly, a set of leg fetters (O’Sullivan et al. 2007: 27, 32, 35). The crannog may have been located on the border between two túatha, or chiefdoms (O’Sullivan et al. 2007: 66), and falls into Dublin’s sphere of influence (Valante 1999: 69–83). Coolure Demesne seems to have been an excellent trading location, and it is very possible that slaves were exchanged here, despite the lack of direct archaeological evidence. As such, the identification of

J. M. Fontaine

Fig. 5.1  Leg fetters from Coolure Demesne, Co. Westmeath. Drawing by S.  Nylund. (Used with permission of University College Dublin School of Archaeology, reproduced from O’Sullivan et al. 2007)

points of general exchange may be our best means of pinpointing slave market locations (Fig. 5.1). Longphuirt (singular longphort), or Viking raiding bases in Ireland, should also be considered in this light. These fortified settlements were initially built by Viking raiders as temporary basecamps, but some, such as Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford, later became permanent trade sites. The raid-

5  The Archaeology of Slave Trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Approach

ing bases were located on or near navigable waterways, and the creation of a new Irish word to describe them indicates that their construction and function differed from native Irish fortifications (Sheehan 2008: 282). Longphort sites may, like crannogs, yield evidence of the slave trade through settlement patterns or trade paraphernalia (e.g. weights and scales), though they present similar problems when it comes to linking site occupation specifically with slavery. Textual sources indicate that the term longphort changed in meaning over time, which causes further difficulty in identifying their location and function. While in the ninth century the word referred exclusively to the Viking raiding bases, by the tenth century it could denote any Irish or Scandinavian military camp, and need not be associated with ships (Sheehan 2008: 283). These early Viking fortifications are confirmed as holding points for captives by the Annals of the Four Masters, which states that in 839 an ecclesiastical site was raided, and high-ranking men such as bishops were carried back to a longphort on Lough Neagh (O’Donovan 1856: 461). A comparison with similar entries in the Chronicon Scotorum and the Annals of Ulster has led John Maas to conclude that this entry is not a later edition (Maas 2008: 267). The early date of the raid and the high status of some of the prisoners suggests that the raiders had ransom in mind, but the episode certainly confirms that captives were brought to longphuirt. These bases would have been the ideal locations for organizing the sale of less-valuable captives further afield as slaves, given the maritime links and defensible positions of longphuirt (Fig. 5.2). Unfortunately, while the two longphuirt at Woodstown and Linn Duachaill have received more comprehensive excavation, other proposed sites have undergone only surface assessments. Ballykeeran Little only underwent trial excavation (Sheehan 2008: 284–85), and sites such as Athlunkard (Kelly and O’Donovan 1998: 14–15) and Dunrally Fort, Co. Laois (Kelly and Maas 1995: 31), have only been surveyed topographically or by field walking. All are roughly D-shaped, earthwork enclosures next to navigable waterways, with Viking-era artifacts. We do not know whether they were Norse or Hiberno-Norse, at what date they were constructed, or even to what extent trading took place there. Even the well-documented longphort at Dublin has yet to be conclusively identified. Nevertheless, the site at Woodstown is rich in Hiberno-Scandinavian artifacts, including many indicators of trade such as weights, coins (including a dirham fragment), and hacksilver (Sheehan 2008: 287). John Maas has even asserted that Woodstown may be the original foundation of Waterford, given the close proximity of the Viking sites (Maas 2008: 267). Linn Duachaill has also yielded evidence of ship building or repair (Clinton 2013– 14: 130–31). Like Coolure Demesne, slave trading remains invisible at sites even where there is a wealth of trade indicators and we would expect slave trading to have taken place.

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In England, the two known winter camps at Repton and Torksey functioned as settlements and raiding bases in a manner similar to longphuirt. Indeed, John Dyer’s 1972 argument for the Scandinavian use of D-shaped fortified sites, and the subsequent identification of such a site at Repton, has directed the emphasis on D-shaped longphuirt in Irish scholarship (Dyer 1972: 222–36). Despite meeting the geometrical requirements, the finds at the 873–74 Viking winter camp at Repton did not suggest the same degree of trade as those from Woodstown (Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 2001: 45) (Fig. 5.3). From this we can infer that sites which share similar construction did not necessarily share similar functions as settlements. Comparison with another temporary camp, that of Torksey, also suggests that some potential raiding camps may have been favored as trade locations over others. Excavations at Torksey have revealed a raiding base and settlement that relied upon natural defenses such as wetlands (given that no earthworks were constructed), and yet was a site of considerable wealth, as evidenced through the presence of hackgold, hacksilver, dirham fragments, and over one hundred weights (Hadley and Richards 2013: 12–19). This wealth demonstrates the Viking army was prepared to trade even at temporary settlements, and it is not difficult to imagine captives brought here for sale abroad, or at the very least for local ransoming. It is certainly notable that most of the Viking camps recorded in English written sources, including Repton, were near urban settlements or ecclesiastical sites, which would have provided pre-existing trade outlets and infrastructure. That Torksey lacks D-shaped, man-made defenses may also be relevant to the future identification of Viking sites in Britain and Ireland. After all, Dyer noted that the same D-shaped construction may have been used by the early English (Dyer 1972: 227). Few of the supposed longphort sites have undergone excavation, so there is still the possibility of native adoption of Scandinavian earthwork construction in Ireland. There are also complications caused by native sites taken over by Viking raiders and settlers, as with Llanbedrgoch in Wales, which ultimately became a Norse-dominated location with a mixed cultural assemblage. Because of this, its trade function cannot be easily marked out by the shape of its fortifications or by the high status of its inhabitants. Llanbedrgoch, being a Cambro-Norse site, does not adhere to the D-shaped formula, and exhibits a cultural blending which suggests that trading practices were not divided along Scandinavians and native lines. Following from this, if slave traders operated there, the archaeological record hints that they may not have been divided along Viking/non-Viking lines. The fortified settlement on Red Wharf Bay in Angelsey existed from prehistoric times, but during the Viking Age Llanbedrgoch became a wealthy trade center; the artifact assemblage, which includes

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J. M. Fontaine

Fig. 5.2  Some Viking Age slavery ‘indicators’ which appear in this chapter. (By permission of D. Dougherty)

hacksilver, coins, and a variety of weights, indicates trading of a scale comparable to Woodstown and Torksey (Redknap 2004). Its location on the Irish Sea suggests easy connections with slave trading networks throughout the British Isles, and like Woodstown and Coolure Demesne, remains suggestive of slave trading without providing what could be deemed direct evidence of it. Elsewhere in Chap. 4, this volume, Katie Hemer suggests that the presence of deviant burials at this location, some of whom were interred with their hands tied, should be linked to the known movement of captives

and slaves by Vikings in and around Angelsey. The burials are suggestive, but the execution of high-status individuals by Viking armies was not unheard-of (Mac Airt and Niocaill 1983: 417). We can certainly say that Llanbedrgoch was involved in networks which moved people as well as goods, but as will be discussed below in the burials section, the presence of restraints or evidence of perimortem violence are not reliable means of interpreting status. Potential sites of slave trading in England are more difficult to discern due to the prevalence of pre-Viking urban

5  The Archaeology of Slave Trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Approach

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Fig. 5.3  Example of the D-shaped fortification at Woodstown (bold and ripped line). (By permission of J. Sheehan, see Sheehan 2008)

settlements in England and their swift incorporation into Scandinavian trade systems. Earthworks along the Welsh, Scottish, and Danelaw borders may have temporarily housed captives after raids. These captives would most likely have been funneled into English and Anglo-Norse urban locations like Chester, Bristol, York, and London for sale. If this were the case, the fortified sites of England may prove inconclusive, given the variety of possible trade points and holding locations for slaves. Any kind of distinctive slave housing would be especially difficult to interpret, given the wide range of social statuses present in an urban environment. Furthermore, if large numbers of raid victims were funneled into these areas, such housing would have been regularly occupied by a constant stream of captives, posing questions of how such a building would be distinguished from regular housing for free people. These urban centers almost certainly participated in some degree of slave trading, but this is an assumption which cannot be directly supported by archaeological evidence at this time. The role of fortified settlements in the archaeology of medieval slavery is exceedingly difficult to prove. Crannogs and Viking sites in both Britain and Ireland are promising, but until we can understand more about the types of trading

carried out there, and the relationships between these sites and urban trade centers, we can make few assumptions about their connections with the slave trade. The potential for unique slave settlement patterns relies entirely on the idea of constant, en masse transportation of slaves for sale. For locations and time periods in which this was not the case, fortifications and settlements have little to offer as indicators of slave trading. Given the difficulties of identifying the presence of slaves, or even finding the sites themselves, the most successful line of inquiry would be through seeking a better understanding of general trade, and the wider movement of traceable goods.

5.4

Silver Exchange

The role of slaves in the profitable balance of trade alongside fur and amber in central and eastern Europe has recently been investigated by Marek Jankowiak, whose work quantifies the slave trade through analysis of the immense quantity of dirham hoards in central Europe and Scandinavia (Jankowiak, Chap. 12, this volume). His research highlights the importance of coinage in studies of medieval slavery, but

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unfortunately, the exchange of silver for slaves in Britain and Ireland is not so clear-cut. Studies of silver content in Scottish hoards have shown that dirhams were widely melted down and reused, which limits their visibility and makes circulation estimates incredibly difficult (Kruse and Tate 1995: 75). We can be certain that the coins reached Britain and Ireland through Scandinavia, since their dating and Central Asian provenance reflect patterns seen in Scandinavia and Russia, unlike dirhams in France which originate from Spanish and North African mints (Naismith 2005: 198–99). But even this presents some difficulties with identifying which groups were responsible for the importation of mass quantities of silver to Ireland. Though it seems that Ireland was settled by Norwegians, Norway has yielded hardly any dirham finds in comparison with the rest of Scandinavia. This calls into question the identity of those exchanging silver for slaves in Dublin and suggests a more complex operation than has previously been considered. The interpretation of silver in Britain and Ireland is also complicated by the pre-existing early English coin economy. Sceattas were recycled as ingots and objects, meaning that silver cannot be linked solely to dirhams and by extension, direct trade with Scandinavia, without extensive testing (Kruse and Tate 1995: 74, 76). It is very possible that English and Arab silver were frequently mixed, which makes the sources very difficult to identify (Naismith 2005: 205). This mixing means we may never completely grasp how much silver was brought in through Scandinavian trade. Ireland does not present this problem, given that in the pre-Viking era it possessed a coinless, and largely silver-less economy. The development of Hiberno-Norse weighted armbands and the foundation of a Dublin mint in 997 are indications of the volume of silver imported though Scandinavian trade and the fundamental importance it had in the Hiberno-Norse economy. Some of this silver wealth probably came from the recycling of English money, and sceattas are found in hoards throughout the Irish Viking period (Hall 1973: 71–86). Because silver was primarily used for exchange in Dublin and its environs, it represents a less complicated indicator of long-distance trade than in England, and a possible indicator for the slave trade (Kenny 1987: 514). The dramatic increase in the wealth of the Dublin periphery did coincide generally with the success of the early medieval slave trade. Michael Kenny’s mapping of hoards in Ireland clearly indicates that the highest concentrations of silver hoards fall in a thirty to seventy-mile arc around Dublin. These assemblages were buried in or near Irish sites, and their dates of deposition do not correspond to any known Irish raids on Dublin, suggesting peaceable trade (Kenny 1987: 514–15). While there are many explanations for the depositions of these hoards, including tribute, some of these could be linked to the Dublin slave trade. Outside Dublin’s sphere of influence, where silver deposition and Scandinavian

J. M. Fontaine

contact were more infrequent, it is difficult to use silver as an archaeological indicator even for trade in general. However, we must ask just how much of this silver importation and circulation can be linked specifically with the slave trade. Prices of slaves are rarely given and are difficult to interpret as market values (Pelteret 1995: 180). And though slaves probably represented a considerable export, we have no idea how they compared to other goods, and thus how much of the incoming silver we can safely associate with the slave trade. In England, the end of visible dirham circulation poses questions about the impact of political events on the slave trade. Rory Naismith has pointed out that the latest find, dating to around 927, coincides with West Saxon expansion (Naismith 2005: 206). It is possible that the conquests of the Danelaw in 925 and 954 affected the degree of Scandinavian control over the slave supply, or even that English control resulted in a more rigorous program of recycling dirhams. It is even possible that reminted Arab silver was being shipped back to Scandinavia as Danegeld. In any case, evidence for the role of silver in the Viking slave trade of Britain and Ireland is largely circumstantial. A great many issues arise which are not present for studies of Scandinavian and Baltic silver hoards; these include the pre-­ existing coin economy in England, the recycling of dirhams on an unknown but potentially large scale, and extremely limited information on the price of slaves. While slaves may have represented a significant percentage of trade, we have no way of knowing how much. Silver tells us that a positive balance of trade existed in favor of Scandinavian-controlled areas and their resulting spheres of influence. It also poses questions that force us to reconsider the identity of the slave traders who brought silver to Dublin, and whether Anglo-­ Saxon expansion in the tenth century significantly impacted the slave trade. At present, however, the link between silver and the slave trade in Britain and Ireland remains hypothetical.

5.5

Burials

Distinctive forms of burial in relation to medieval slavery have been discussed by Scandinavian archaeologists, perhaps as a result of the Arab geographer Ibn Fadlan’s notorious account of slave sacrifice amongst the Rus in the tenth century. Ibn Fadlan, when attending the funeral of a Rus chief, witnessed the ritual rape, execution, and interment of a slave woman who volunteered to follow her master into the afterlife (Lunde and Stone 2012: 50–53). By assuming the Rus’ sacrificial practices to have originated in Scandinavia, many multiple burials from northern Europe have been associated with execution and consequently identified as slave sacrifices (Davidson 1992: 334). These discoveries have influenced the interpretation of similar burials in Britain and

5  The Archaeology of Slave Trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Approach

Ireland under the assumption that Germanic tribes in the fifth and sixth centuries, and then Vikings in the ninth century, carried analogous practices with them to Britain and Ireland. The evidence to connect these inhumations directly with slavery or a slave trade is slim. In Chap. 6, this volume, Anna Kjellström discusses the isotopic analysis of teeth from presumed slave burials in Scandinavia  – that is, individuals from multiple burials whose bodies were treated as grave goods. Her study, along with others from Scandinavia (e.g. Naumann et  al. 2013), suggests that there is the potential to identify lower status individuals through diet, as evident in the formation of their teeth. However, Kjellström herself notes that the sample sizes are still too small to make sweeping assumptions of a link between status and diet, and that the practical and social roles of unfree people could change over time, making it impossible to exclusively link any dietary variation to status at this point in time. Whether such studies could be applied to the identification of slaves or the unfree in British and Irish contexts, where similar burials are much rarer, remains to be seen. Those burials linked to sacrifice and, by the researchers’ extension, slavery, all appear in pre-Christian and Viking contexts, in which the presence of grave goods provides more information on the status of the deceased. Some are multiple inhumations, which the researchers connect to Ibn Fadlan’s account. Pre-Christian examples of burials linked to sacrifice and slavery have been cited from Sewerby (Hirst 1985: 39–43, 102) and Spong Hill (Hills et  al. 1984: 41), with Viking examples from Dublin (Hall 1978: 74), Orkney, and the Isle of Man (Davidson 1992: 334). These deviant burials are believed to represent the lower status of the grave occupants, but a variety of explanations exist for the fate of these supposed sacrificial victims. Certainly we must resist the automatic assumption of slavery. Similar burials excavated at Sutton Hoo were initially interpreted as sacrificial (Carver 1992: 357), but later reinterpretation established them to be part of a judicial execution cemetery (Carver 2005: 347–49), further emphasizing that we cannot assume violent death to reveal evidence of slavery, or even status in general. Other burials have been uncovered alongside shackles, but we know from a late medieval inhumation within the cathedral at Old Sarum that these individuals were not necessarily of low status (Hope 1914: 116–17). The best way to link medieval burials with the slave trade is to assume that slaves and captives were treated as chattel by merchants and raiders. This would theoretically make slaves or captives buried along trade routes more identifiable, perhaps characterized by haphazard inhumations. Isotopic or DNA analysis would also provide the opportunity to determine the origin of these individuals, and their movement could potentially be explained by long-distance slave trading networks. Perhaps when more longphuirt are conclusively

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identified, or when crannogs are studied fully within their settlement context we may begin to identify the burials of slaves along trade routes. However, if such graves were discovered, it would be immensely difficult to associate them exclusively with slaves. We must also consider that Viking maritime trade may have required burial at sea, a matter which would further complicate attempts to locate and identify slave burials. Ultimately, the identification of slave burials in Britain and Ireland would require the convergence of many pieces of evidence, including style of burial, location, dating, religious context, knowledge of local social stratification, on top of isotopic and DNA analysis. Even then, slavery or slave trading would remain only one of many possible reasons for travel or disrespectful burial, especially when we consider that with the processes of enslavement, ransom, and manumission, slavery was not always a life-long condition.

5.6

Conclusions

Context is integral to archaeology and history. Without context, finds such as shackles and coins are virtually meaningless, and fortifications and burials tell us little about the cultures they represent. Similarly, we cannot draw conclusions regarding the medieval slave trade without an intersection of these indicators. Because of this, studies regarding the archaeology of slavery should focus on the evidence of individual sites, rather than make generalizations about regions as a whole. Individual finds across wide geographical areas do not provide a context for slavery. Only when we examine the intersection of these finds at a site level can we begin to speculate about their role in the slave trade. Unfortunately, there are few sites at which all, or even most of the four criteria, appear. The only place in Britain and Ireland that has yielded shackles, silver hoards, fortified settlement, and a potential slave burial is, unsurprisingly, Dublin. Even so, the longphort at Dublin has yet to be discovered, and the Viking deviant burial there seems unrelated to the slave trade, and its deviance may only be a result of antiquarian excavation techniques (Harrison and Ó Floinn 2016: 526–33). Even with the potential of sites in the Dublin periphery, or the possibilities of future excavations at York or Bristol, these four archaeological indicators are incredibly difficult to prove as exclusive indicators of slavery. Shackles, coins, and trade at fortified settlements all have so many alternative explanations that any asserted direct links between them and the slave trade are highly dubious. Burials have as-­ yet yielded no definitive links to the slave trade in Britain and Ireland, and the qualifiers required to connect them with it are so many that a statistically significant number of such discoveries seems unlikely. Archaeological indicators of a slave trade can easily be linked to unrelated cultural and historical phenomena. It would seem that even when a large-­

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scale slave trade is visible textually, it can remain nearly invisible archaeologically. Though archaeology offers little direct evidence of the slave trade itself, it can point us in the direction of slave trading locations and help us understand how slave trading fit within wider networks of exchange. It offers valuable context for an everyday aspect of the Viking world, and while the role of archaeology should not be overemphasized, it certainly should not be disregarded.

References Primary Sources Campbell, A. (1998). Encomium Emmae Reginae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holder-Egger, O. (1887a). Ex Adrevaldi Floriacensis Miraculis S.  Benedicti (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 15/1) (pp. 474–497). Hannover: Hahn. Holder-Egger, O. (1887b). Vita Findani (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 15/1) (pp. 502–506). Hannover: Hahn. Lapidge, M. (2003a). Translatio et Miracula Sancti Swithuni. In M. Lapidge. The Cult of St. Swithun (pp. 217–333). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lapidge, M. (2003b). Narratio Metrica de S. Swithuno. In M. Lapidge. The Cult of St. Swithun (pp. 372–551). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Liebermann, F. (1903). Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen. Halle: M. Niemeyer. Lunde, P., & Stone, C. (2012). Ibn Fadlan and the land of darkness. London: Penguin. Mac Airt, S., & Niocaill, G. (1983). The annals of Ulster. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. MacNeill, E. (1921–4). Law of status or franchise. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, 36, 265–316. McDonough, C.  J. (1995). Moriuht. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Meyer, K. (1888). The wooing of Emer. Archaeological Review, 1, 68–75, 150–155, 231–235, 298–307. O’Donovan, M. (1856). Annala Rioghachta Eireann: Annals of the kingdom of Ireland, by the four masters. Dublin: Hodges and Smith. Thomson, R. M., & Winterbottom, M. (2002). William of Malmesbury Saints’ lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary Sources Biddle, M., & Kjølbye-Biddle, B. (2001). Repton and “the Great Heathen Army”, 873–4. In J.  Graham-Campbell et  al. (Eds.), Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Thirteenth Viking Congress, Nottingham and York, 21–30 August 1997 (pp.  47–96). Oxford: Oxbow. Byrne, F. J. (1973). Irish kings and high kings. London: Batsford. Carver, M. (1992). The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sutton Hoo: An interim report. In M.  O. H.  Carver (Ed.), The age of Sutton Hoo (pp. 343–371). Woodbridge: Boydell. Carver, M. (2005). Sutton Hoo: A seventh-century princely burial ground and its context. London: British Museum. Clinton, M. (2013–14). The Viking Longphort of Linn Duachaill: A first report. Peritia, 24–25, 123–140.

J. M. Fontaine Davidson, H.  E. (1992). Human sacrifice in the late pagan period in North-Western Europe. In M. O. H. Carver (Ed.), The age of Sutton Hoo (pp. 331–340). Woodbridge: Boydell. Dyer, J. (1972). Earthworks of the Danelaw frontier. In P.  J. Fowler (Ed.), Archaeology and the landscape (pp.  222–236). London: J. Baker. Edwards, N. (1990). The archaeology of early medieval Ireland. Philadelphia: Routledge. Fontaine, J. M. (2017). Early medieval slave-trading in the archaeological record: Comparative methodologies. Early Medieval Europe, 25(4), 466–488. Galuška, L. (2003). O Otrocích na Velké Moravě a Okovech ze Starého Města. In J.  Klápště (Ed.), Dějiny ve Věku Nejistot. Sborník k Příležitosti 70. Narozenin Dušana Třeštíka (pp. 405–454). Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny. Goodall, I. (1990). Locks and keys. In M. Biddle et al. (Eds.), Object and economy in medieval Winchester (pp.  1001–1036). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hadley, D., & Richards, J. (2013). Viking Torksey: Inside the great Army’s winter camp. Current Archaeology, 281, 12–19. Hall, R. A. (1973). A check list of Viking-age coin finds from Ireland. Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 36(37), 71–86. Hall, R.  A. (1978). A Viking-age grave at donnybrook, Co. Dublin. Medieval Archaeology, 22, 64–83. Harrison, S. H., & Ó Floinn, R. (2016). Viking graves and grave-goods in Ireland. Dublin: National Museum of Ireland. Henning, J. (1992). Gefangenenfesseln im slawischen Siedlungsraum und der europäische Sklavenhandel im 6.-12. Jahrhundert. Germania, 70, 403–426. Henning, J. (2008). Strong rulers, weak economy? Rome, the Carolingians, and the archaeology of slavery in the first millennium ad. In J. R. Davis & M. McCormick (Eds.), The long morning of medieval Europe (pp. 38–53). Aldershot: Ashgate. Hills, C., et al. (1984). The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elmham. Part 3. Dereham: Norfolk Archaeological Unit. Hirst, S. M. (1985). An Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemetery at Sewerby, East Yorkshire. York: University of York. Holm, P. (1988). The slave trade of Dublin, ninth to twelfth centuries. Peritia, 5, 317–345. Hope, W.  H. S.  J. (1914). Old Sarum: Report on excavations. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 26, 100–119. Kelly, E. (1991). Some recent observations on Irish Lake dwellings. In C. Karkov & R. Farrell (Eds.), Studies in insular art and archaeology (pp. 81–98). American Early Medieval Studies: Oxford. Kelly, K. (2011). Contrasts in time and space in Benin and Guinea. In P. J. Lane & K. C. MacDonald (Eds.), Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and memory (pp. 127–146). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelly, E., & Maas, J. (1995). Vikings on the Barrow: Dunrally fort, a possible Viking Longphort in county Laois. Archaeology Ireland, 9(3), 30–32. Kelly, E., & O’Donovan, E. (1998). A Viking Longphort near Athlunkard, Co. Clare. Archaeology Ireland, 12(4), 13–16. Kenny, M. (1987). The Geographical distribution of Irish Viking-age coin Hoards. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, 87, 507–525. Kruse, S., & Tate, J. (1995). XRF analysis of Viking age silver hoards in Scotland. In J. Graham-Campbell (Ed.), The Viking-age gold and silver of Scotland, ad 850–1100 (pp. 73–79). Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland. Maas, J. (2008). Longphort, Dún, and Dúnad in the Irish annals of the Viking period. Peritia, 20, 257–275. McCormick, M. (2001). Origins of the European economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5  The Archaeology of Slave Trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A Methodological Approach Mytum, H. (1992). The origins of early Christian Ireland. London: Routledge. Naismith, R. (2005). Islamic coins from early medieval England. The Numismatic Chronicle, 165, 193–222. Naumann, E., et al. (2013). Slaves as burial gifts in Viking age Norway? Evidence from stable isotope and ancient DNA analyses. Journal of Archaeological Science, 41, 533–540. O’Sullivan, A., et  al. (2007). Coolure Demesne Crannog, Lough Derravaragh: An introduction to its archaeology and landscapes. Wordwell: Bray, Co. Wicklow. Pelteret, D. (1981). Slave raiding and slave trading in early England. Anglo-Saxon England, 9, 99–114. Pelteret, D. (1995). Slavery in early-medieval England: From Alfred the great until the twelfth century. Woodbridge: Boydell. Raffield, B. (2019). The slave markets of the Viking world: Comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’. Slavery & Abolition, 40(4), 682–705. Redknap, M. (2004). Viking-age settlement in Wales and the evidence from Llanbedrgoch. In J.  Hines, A.  Lane, & M.  Redknap (Eds.), Land, sea and home (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monographs, 20) (pp. 139–173). Leeds: Maney Publishing. Russel, A. D. (2016). Hung in chains: A late Saxon execution cemetery at Oliver’s battery, Winchester. Hampshire Studies, 71, 89–109.

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Scott, B. G. (1978). Iron ‘Slave-Collars’ from Lagore Crannog, Co. Meath. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C, 78, 213–230. Sheehan, J. (2008). The Longphort in Viking age Ireland. Acta Archaeologica, 79(1), 282–295. Thompson, F.  H. (1993). Iron age and Roman slave shackles. Archaeological Journal, 150, 57–168. Valante, M. (1999). Dublin’s economic relations with the hinterland and periphery in the Viking age. In S. Duffy (Ed.), Medieval Dublin I (pp. 69–83). Four Courts: Dublin. Warner, R. (1997). On crannogs and kings. Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 57, 61–69. Janel M. Fontaine earned a PhD in History (2018) and an MA in Medieval History (2013) from King’s College London after studying History and Anthropology at the University of Florida. She held a Past & Present Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research (2018– 2020), where she is now an Alumni Fellow. She has published on historical and archaeological aspects of early medieval slavery and is currently working on a monograph about slave trading in early medieval Europe, with particular focus on the networks centred around the British Isles and east central Europe.  

Part III Scandinavia

6

The Norm and the Subaltern: Identifying Slaves in an Early Medieval Scandinavian Society Anna Kjellström

Abstract

It has been acknowledged that the transnational economic system in the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages was to a large extent based on slave trade. The duties of the unfree intersected all aspects of everyday life and slavery is believed to have significantly contributed to the economy. From a Swedish perspective, although these ideas are accepted by the scholars, there is little scientific archaeological evidence to substantiate them. How can this subaltern group, excluded from hegemonic power, be identified? Few written sources deal with the life of the unfree and the material culture is ambiguous. Only in a few burials does the archaeological context suggest the presence of unfree individuals, but recognising the thralls is difficult since their hierarchical position could vary greatly. This paper approaches the subject through bioarchaeological research. In the last years, it has been demonstrated that the arrangement of the body, the morphological features of the skeleton, and the results of stable isotope analysis and, in some cases, aDNA, do not only help to recognize buried thralls but also add to the debate regarding the different social roles of the unfree in the medieval society. Keywords

Archeology of slavery · Thralls · Stable isotopes · Diet · Sweden

A. Kjellström (*) Osteoarchaeological Research Laboratory, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

6.1

Introduction

Several terms for slaves were current in pre-Christian Scandinavia. The word thrall (þræll) meant a man who could be sold, bought or freed, but other names such as ambátt, bryti, fostri/fostra, deigja, þý, est, and mulslaghumaþer (to mention a few) existed, denoting unfree individuals of different gender, social position and origin (Nevéus 1974: 26; Brink 2012: 121–23). In this paper the word ‘slave’ will be used as a collective term for all types of unfree individuals when exploring the problem of identifying this subaltern group in archaeology, although, as will be discussed, the definition of the term ‘slave’ is complex. It has long been acknowledged that the transnational economic system of the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages (c. late eighth to early twelfth century ad) was to a large extent based on slave trade. Unfree men and women are mentioned in different types of historical sources such as rune stones, Norse texts and sagas (e.g. Landnámabók), monastic annals, testaments, and provincial laws (Nevéus 1974; Olsson 1999). Although slaves very likely existed before the Viking Age in Scandinavia, it is in this era that they become most visible (Iversen 1994: 137; Zachrisson 2014). Arable land is believed to have doubled in size during this period and coerced labour is assumed to have added to the control and economic power of large agrarian settlements (Randsborg 1984; Olsson 1999: 22). In the stratified Viking society, the slaves offered a production of surplus and wealth to the owner. Paradoxically, the slave system is assumed by some researchers to have expanded as a result of egalitarian ownership structures of land among free men which prevented further social differentiation in this group (Olsson 1999: 24). A need for new labour arose in order to allow for further exploitation, and provincial laws show that nobles as well as peasants could own slaves. Free men had the right to bear arms and (at least in theory) to attend the assembly (thing). Since ancestral history was of great importance not only for the ownership of land but also for judicial decisions

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 F. Biermann, M. Jankowiak (eds.), The Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe, Themes in Contemporary Archaeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73291-2_6

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and in social life, the lack of family ties of many slaves meant an unsettled life situation. As implied by multiple terms for the unfree, their duties and status varied greatly, from one similar to the livestock to categories such as bryte or deigja, denoting men or women responsible for property and administration of the master’s farm (Nevéus 1974: 26). Both the saga material and place names show that slaves could redeem themselves (e.g. Óláfs saga helga in Heimskringla, II: 18; Iversen 1994: 404). Even though a slave could be released, a distinction was made between freeborn (bændr and leiglendingar) and freed men (leysingjar) (Hastrup 1985: 109). Additionally, the social status varied depending on whether an individual was born into slavery (fostri/fostra) or forced into it in later years, with the former considered to have a higher social position than the latter (Brink 2012: 149). People were captured during wars or Viking raids as a way to increase the profits during travels outside the home region. Some researchers even claim that slave-taking and slave trade was the main purpose of the Viking journeys to the east (Randsborg 1984; Olsson 1999: 26–27) while others state that slave ownership was merely a means of acquiring exotic luxury products (Brink 2012: 87). However, there is no indisputable physical evidence from the Scandinavian sites of a domestic systematized slave organization where slaves were bred to be sold. The living conditions of slaves are not easily defined. Buildings such as the Roman ergastula (i.e. houses for chained slaves) have never been discovered in Scandinavia. Some researchers have suggested that slaves lived in pit houses, barns or small cottages near the farm (Roesdahl 1980: 28; Nordström and Herschend 2003; Eklund 2008), but this has not been firmly established. Instead, lack of graves and grave goods, or poor housing conditions have functioned as indirect hints opening up the possibility that slaves can be associated with the investigated material culture (Skre 1998: 199; Nordström and Herschend 2003; Iversen 2003; Brink 2012). In southern Europe, if we consider the late Iron Age and the early Middle Ages, the material examples of slavery consist of iron shackles, slave collars, and bronze plates (bullae) (Thompson 2003; Henning 2008). In Scandinavia these direct artefacts are less common, although examples of iron shackles have been found at some sites (Henning 2008; Gustafsson 2009; Zachrisson 2014). Zachrisson (2014, and Chap. 8, this volume) suggests, based on portrayals of everyday life in Icelandic sagas, that rotary querns could be treated as indications of bonded people. Roslund (2013, and Chap. 7, this volume) states that the technical and aesthetic features of certain Baltic ceramics in the Mälaren Valley make it likely that they were created by female slaves. Hence, the material culture most easily associated with slaves is everyday items which, based on theoretical arguments, are connected to this group. In some studies the physical bodies of buried individuals have been

A. Kjellström

of interest in attempts to identify subjugated individuals. Unusual body positions such as prone burials have been proposed as an indication of slaves (Randsborg 1984; Zachrisson 2003, 2014). Less ambiguous are double graves where one individual has been killed and deposited together with personal objects with a master or mistress (Bennike 1985; Zachrisson 2003, 2014; Seiler 2003). In recent years biological traits from the bodies in the form of stable isotopes and mitochondrial DNA have been used to discuss the possible identification of slavery (Price et al. 2011; Christensen and Lynnerup 2004; Barrett and Blakey 2011; Naumann et  al. 2014). For example, Naumann et al. (2014) showed that presumed slaves in multiple graves (together with commoners in single graves) from the Viking-Age burial ground in Flakstad, Norway, had a different diet than individuals of high social status. In southern Europe, and later in Scandinavia, the hierarchal system was supported by the church which emphasized the tripartite social order of oratores (clergy), bellatores (fighters), and laboratores (labourers), making it possible for the slave system to survive into the Middle Ages. In Sweden, the latest written records dealing with regulations for thralls are the provincial laws and wills dating from the end of the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century (Lindkvist and Sjöberg 2010: 110). The main reason for the abandonment of slavery is believed to be a combination of an improved military protection of populations exposed to raids with, more importantly, the growing importance of the more economically beneficial system of tenant farmers (Olsson 1999: 48–50). However, Iversen (1994: 464–65), when discussing the end of slavery in Norway, states that a complex interplay of not just economical, but many different social factors needs to be explored in order to fully understand the dissolution of bondage due to the many different roles of slaves. In this paper, the identification of slaves using bioarchaeological data from the Mälaren Valley in the period from ad 750 to the early twelfth century will be addressed. These results come from a larger project, the Atlas Project (www. theatlas.se), which started during spring 2014 and aims to genetically and archeologically analyze several hundred Iron Age individuals. The sample in this study is small, but the results should be considered as a tentative summary of ongoing research and a first attempt to investigate the subaltern in the early Christian era in the Mälaren Valley.

6.2

Slavery in the Mälaren Valley

Several hundred skeletons, dating from the eighth to twelfth century, from the Mälaren Valley, in east central Sweden, have been osteologically analysed (Kjellström 2016) (Fig. 6.1). This was a time of change – in political, economic, and religious terms  – to the medieval Christian society

6  The Norm and the Subaltern: Identifying Slaves in an Early Medieval Scandinavian Society

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Fig. 6.1  Map of investigated samples from the Mälaren Valley. (Modified from Ahlin Sundman and Kjellström 2013)

already formed in southern Europe. With few exceptions, people lived in agrarian settlements scattered near the waterways. The exceptions were the heterogeneous Viking proto-­ town of Birka, and the somewhat later early medieval town of Sigtuna. The iron shackles found at Birka that are interpreted as thrall collars (Gustafsson 2009) imply that one of the centre’s many functions was as a market for slaves, but other clear material imprints of the unfree are non-existent. One way of attempting to identify slaves in this region is to start with individuals who can reasonably be perceived as slaves, for example individuals that were killed and deposited in multiple graves. Excavated graves of this type with uncremated skeletons are rare, but there are at least two well-­ documented burials. The first, grave 129 from Birka, contained an adult man buried with his head placed on an elk antler (dubbed for this reason the ‘Elkman’), grave goods, and a young adult man interpreted as a slave (Holmquist 1990). The second grave, burial A29, comes from a family burial ground at Grimsta, only 40 kilometres from Birka (Hemmendorff 1979, 1984). The grave, which is a burial

mound with a funeral pyre in the centre, included a cremated man with grave goods and two decapitated uncremated men lying prone head to foot. The uncremated men have been interpreted as ritually killed slaves (Hemmendorff 1984; Zachrisson, Chap. 8, this volume). At the same cemetery several other burials were excavated dating from the late eighth to the eleventh century. The osteological analysis did not show any clear difference between the skeletons of the slaves from Birka and Grimsta and those of the rest of the buried population at each site. Since the diet is reflected in the isotopic composition of teeth and bone, and as the diet can been used to expose different social strata, a stable isotope analysis of carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur was carried out. The main aim was not to identify specific food sources or even to determine provenance but merely to investigate patterns and differences between the sampled individuals in relation to the archaeological context. In the analysis the isotopic data of individuals from both sites and ten other contemporary family burial grounds in the same region were compared (Table 6.1).

Species Bos taurus Felis catus Esox lucius Sus scrofa

Sknr. A1 A29F58 A8

A5(D) A10 A1 A29F58 A29F59 A29F59 A9 A161F969 A19F933 A40F972 A9F86:1 A1F24:1–25 A3 A62 A12F1 A2 A3

ID A3 AII

Sex F M

Sex F M F F M F M M M M M M M M F M M M M M Age Maturus Juvenilis Infans II

Age Senilis Adultus Senilis Maturus Maturus Maturus Juvenilis Adultus Adultus Maturus Senilis Adultus Maturus Maturus Maturus Adultus Adult Maturus Maturus Juvenilis

Element Bone Bone Bone Bone

Element M1 sin M1 dx Pd1

Elementa Mand. Ulna Mand. Mand. Talus Maxilla Radius Talus Mand. Mand. Mand. Maxilla Mand. Ulna Ulna Mand. Ulna Os temp. Ulna Ulna

%Coll.

%Coll. 2.9 3.7 3.2

%Coll. 2.3 3.5 1.4 6.4 4.1 3.7 3.1 2.1 2.1 4.7 6.0 1.8 7.4 1.8 2.3 1.8 9.4 3.1 3.6 3.5

b

a

Mand = mandible; Os Temp = temporal bone; M1 = first molar; Pd1 = first deciduous molar mv = missing value c Yr = year of analysis

Bone samples Site Broby bro, Såsta Edsvägen. Upplandsväsby Ekeby, Storvreta Enbacken, Årsta Grimsta Grimsta Grimsta Grimsta Grimsta Grimsta Görla 9:2 Görla 9:2 Görla 9:2 Häggvik 3:48. Skälby Häggvik 3:48. Skälby Kåsta by. Roslagsbro Skälby. Skälbyvägen Stav Öresundsbro Öresundsbro Samples from teeth Site Grimsta Grimsta Broby bro Animal reference Site Sigtuna Sigtuna Sigtuna Sigtuna δ15N (‰) 14.3 14.0 13.2 14.4 13.0 13.6 12.4 11.9 11.7 14.4 12.9 14.1 13.5 14.3 13.7 mv 13.7 12.3 14.1 14.2 δ15N (‰) 12.8 13.2 13.8 δ15N (‰) 5.2 10.7 13.1 9.5

δ13C (‰) −19.6 −19.7 −20.1 −20.0 −20.9 −20.5 −19.8 −19.7 −19.6 −20.5 −18.8 −19.2 −19.9 −19.8 −19.9 mv −20.5 −20.2 −20.1 −20.5 δ13C (‰) −20.2 −19.4 −18.9 δ13C (‰) −22.5 −22.1 −20.4 −21.9

Table 6.1  Distribution of samples from Grimsta and the settlement sites used in the present study

d34S (‰) 1.4 5.6 6.7 6.5

δ34S (‰) 5.9 11.5 7.4

δ34S (‰)b mv 0.8 mv −0.6 3.3 5.1 mv 0.00 mv 3.0 2.3 mv 3.9 mv mv 3.2 2.6 5.2 3.8 2.1

%C 41.2 41.1 36.5 37.9

%C 38.7 39.1 39.9

%C 34.3 34.2 32.7 35.8 34.3 40.7 38.2 37.8 41.8 40.7 44.1 40.3 43.8 38.7 39.3 mv 42.7 41.4 34.2 40.0

%N 14.9 14.4 14.2 15.5

%N 13.7 14.0 14.4

%N 12.3 12.5 11.6 12.8 12.0 14.5 13.8 13.4 15.1 14.6 15.9 14.249 15.8 14.0 14.1 mv 15.3 15.3 12.6 14.6

%S 0.3 0.3 0.6 0.3

%S 0.2 0.2 0.2

%S mv 0.4 mv 0.2 0.2 0.2 mv 0.00 mv 0.2 0.4 mv 0.3 mv mv 0.2 0.3 0.6 0.4 0.2

C/N 3.2 3.3 3.0 2.9

C/N 3.3 3.3 3.2

C/N 3.3 3.2 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.3 3.2 3.3 3.2 3.2 3.2 3.3 3.2 3.2 3.3 mv 3.3 3.2 3.2 3.2

C/S 390 343 161 363

C/S 449.1 496.5 532.1

C/S mv 130.1 mv 217.2 572.5 542.5 mv 0.00 mv 602.9 140.1 mv 208.5 mv mv mv 203.2 95.1 113.9 232.1

Yrc 2011 2011 2011 2011

Yrc 2014 2014 2014

Yrc 2012 2012 2012 2012 2014 2014 2012 2014 2012 2014 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012

70 A. Kjellström

6  The Norm and the Subaltern: Identifying Slaves in an Early Medieval Scandinavian Society

6.3

Material and Method

Analyses of stable isotopes for dietary reconstructions have been made in archaeology regularly since the 1990s (for a review, see Katzenberg 2008). The isotopic composition of bone or teeth reflects chiefly the intake of protein. Carbon isotopes discriminate between plants using different photosynthetic pathways. C3 plants, common in Scandinavia, exhibit an average value of δ13C –26‰ while C4 plants, usually growing in tropical or subtropical climates, have enriched values with an average δ13C around −12‰ (Lambert 1997: 215). Also marine resources exhibit enriched carbon values in comparison to terrestrial C3 plants, making it possible to separate a diet based primarily on marine protein from a diet of mainly terrestrial C3 resources (Schoeninger and DeNiro 1984). According to Lidén and Nelson (1994), a purely terrestrial diet in Scandinavia would result in δ13C values around −21 to −20‰. A diet based purely on marine resources from the Baltic Sea would result in δ13C values between −15 to −14‰ (with some chronological differences due to salinity) (Eriksson and Lidén 2002). Analyses of nitrogen make it possible to distinguish the trophic level of the protein in the food since δ15N is enriched by 3–5% for each step up the food chain (Bocherens and Drucker 2003; Sponheimer et  al. 2003). Marine and freshwater resources show higher δ15N values because they tend to have longer food chains than terrestrial sources. On a general level terrestrial herbivores have an average δ15N value around 6–8‰ while predatory marine mammals may exhibit values around 20‰ (Schoeninger et al. 1983). The analysis of sulphur offers the possibility to investigate both diet and mobility since δ34S reflects the isotopic value of the local bedrock or the geological environment from where the food originate (Nehlich 2015). The δ34S values may vary greatly in terrestrial freshwater environments. The European granite rocks range from −4 to +9‰ (Krouse 1980; Faure and Mensing 2005), marine vegetation +17‰– 21‰ (Peterson and Fry 1987) and in freshwater regions the observed range is −22‰ to +20‰ (Krouse 1980; Faure and Mensing 2005). The animal reference data for sulphur comes from Sigtuna, which is located in the same region as the two burials, and was published by Linderholm and Kjellström (2011). A two-sample t-test was used in the comparison of stable isotope values between samples. For the statistical analysis SPSS for Windows (version 22.0) was used and P value 1%) and fall within the accepted C/N ratio were included in the analysis (DeNiro 1985; Ambrose 1990). For sulphur the quality criteria for the bone collagen was the C/S ratio 600  ±  300 (Nehlich and Richards 2009). The results showed that the preservation was very poor (Table  6.1). The bone samples from the ‘Elkman”s grave and the rest from Birka had to be omitted and only 18 individuals provided sufficient collagen and an acceptable C/N ratio for carbon and nitrogen isotopes to be measured. Grimsta is represented by the slaves (A29F58 and A29F59) and three other adult individuals (A1, A9, A10). Additionally, 13 individuals from family burial grounds near Grimsta exhibited trustworthy mean values from bone samples. For all the sampled bones the δ13C values range from −20.9‰ to −18.8‰ (−20.0  ±  0.5‰, mean ± s.d.), and the δ15N values range from 11.7 to 14.4‰ (13.5 ± 0.82‰, mean ± s.d.) (Table 6.2). Lovell et al. (1986) have advocated that a population with a standard variation of less than 0.3 for δ13C could be seen as having a homogeneous Table 6.2  Distribution of δ13C and δ 15N values from bones and δ 34S Values from bone and teeth in Grimsta and at other family burial sites Grimsta Family burial grounds Total Grimsta Family burial grounds Total Grimsta Family burial grounds Total

N 5 13

δ13C (‰) mean −20.2 −19.9

Min −20.9 −20.5

Max −19.6 −18.8

S.d. 0.53 0.47

18 N 5 13

−20.0 δ15N (‰) mean 13.0 13.8

−20.9 Min 11.7 12.3

−18.8 Max 14.4 14.4

0.50 S.d. 1.05 0.64

18 N 5 10

13.5 δ34S (‰) meana 5.7 3.1

11.7 Min 3.0 −0.6

14.4 Max 11.5 7.4

0.82 S.d. 3.42 2.23

15

4.0

−0.6

11.5

2.87

For sulphur one individual is represented by both a tooth and a bone sample

a

72

diet. In the present case the standard deviation was 0.5, hence indicating quite a homogeneous diet but with some deviations. Focusing only on the individuals from the Grimsta sample, the results indicate an apparent difference in consumed source of protein between the presumed slaves and individuals in the other graves (Fig.  6.2, top). In comparison, the other individuals at the same cemetery (A1, A9, A10) show higher nitrogen and lower carbon values, which suggests a higher intake of freshwater fish. However, the difference is

A. Kjellström

small and is less than one trophic level for nitrogen, even in the case of the old slave (A29F59) with the lowest δ15N value (11.7‰) in comparison with the man in grave A9 with the highest (14.4‰). When the values for the people from Grimsta are compared to other cemeteries, both slaves (especially the older one) still demonstrate comparatively low nitrogen values, implying a diet with less animal protein than several of the individuals from the other burial grounds (with the majority having δ15N values above 13.5‰) (Fig.  6.2, bottom). Nevertheless, at least one individual from one of the

Fig. 6.2  The distribution of δ13C and δ15N values at Grimsta (top) and at Grimsta and different sites in the Mälaren Valley (bottom). The young slave’s values come from the bone sample. (Graphics author)

6  The Norm and the Subaltern: Identifying Slaves in an Early Medieval Scandinavian Society

other settlement sites has similar values to that of the slaves, while the others fall between that of the slaves and of the remaining Grimsta individuals. Other complicating factors could be a difference in sampled bone elements (i.e. a difference in turnover rate of bone rebuilding), small sample size, and possible chronological differences. Consequently, the difference in mean carbon and nitrogen values between the two presumed slaves and the rest of the individuals (from Grimsta and from the settlement sites) is not significant for either carbon or nitrogen. There is a statistically significant (P = 0.044) difference for the δ15N values of the three non-­ slave individuals from Grimsta in comparison to the other family burial grounds (Table 6.1). Hence, it is possible that the isotopic values for carbon and nitrogen from the slaves are part of a normal variation. To investigate whether the diffuse difference in the diet between the slaves and the other individuals in Grimsta could be associated with a difference in geographical origin, sulphur stable isotopes were analysed. Again the poor preservation caused a sample fall-off. Only one of the slaves, the younger one, and three of the other individuals had reliable values in Grimsta (Table  6.1). The δ34S values for the five Grimsta samples (two samples from individual A1) range from 3.0 to 11.5‰ (5.7 ± 3.42, mean ± s.d.) (Table 6.2). Two adult men (A9 and A10) were represented by collagen samples from bone reflecting the diet of the last five to twenty years in life. One individual, a woman (A1), was represented by samples from both a bone and a first molar. Since the tooth roughly reflects the first eight years of life when the tooth was forming, a ‘diet and mobility history’ from childhood to adulthood is presented. The younger slave (A29F58) was represented only by a first molar. The bone samples from the two men (A9 and A10) exhibited a δ34S value of 3.0‰ and 3.3‰ (Fig. 6.3). The woman in grave A1 showed somewhat higher sulphur values, 5.9‰ in the tooth and 5.1‰ in bone. It is difficult to evaluate whether this difference between the men and the woman reflects a difference in origin or falls within a normal local range of distribution since no faunal references are available from Grimsta. However, with the large variation in sulphur values in terrestrial freshwater environments in mind, the difference is small. Furthermore, the low degree of variation between isotopic values in the tooth and bone of the woman does not signal any radical shifts in diet or movement during her life. The small change from the tooth to the bone, with a slightly lower carbon value and a higher nitrogen value, only indicates a higher intake of freshwater fish with time, which may be associated with short-range mobility or socio-cultural changes. In comparison with these individuals the slave at Grimsta exhibits a much higher δ34S value (11.5‰). The difference of >5.5‰ suggests that the slave originated from some other region, at least in comparison to the women in grave A1 since she is also represented by a first molar.

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The results from Grimsta were also compared to those of ten individuals from other settlement sites in the Mälaren Valley (Fig. 6.4). The ten samples range from −0.6 to 7.4‰ (3.1 ± 2.23, mean ± s.d.). Nine individuals were represented by bone and a child (A8 from Broby Bro, Såsta) by a deciduous tooth formed during the foetal period and reflecting the diet of the mother. The bone samples exhibited varying sulphur values but all were lower than that of the woman (A1) in Grimsta; only the sulphur value from the child’s tooth was higher (7.4‰). Again, it is not possible to identify a common origin among the studied individuals. Nevertheless, in comparison with the δ34S values from faunal remains in Sigtuna, values at the lower end of the scale (