A small cloth sack, containing nails, beads, glass, and a cowrie shell, found under the floorboards of the garret of the oldest house in Newport, Rhode Island, points toward the continuation and adaptation of African practices in New England and throughout the complex "African Atlantic." We discuss with Michael J. Simpson, Phd student at Brown University, who is researching slavery and the slave trade in Rhode Island.
Thank you to the Newport Historical Society for their help on this installment.
Image: Components of the spirit bundle in a museum display -- 2005.12, Collection of the Newport Historical Society.
Suggested further reading: Jason R. Young, "Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery"; Judith Carney, "Black Rice"; Wyatt MacGaffey, "The Personhood of Ritual Objects," Etnofoor, 1990; Woodruff, Sawyer, and Perry, "How Archaeology Exposes the Nature of African Captivity and Freedom in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut," in Connecticut History.
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