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International Journal of Osteoarchaeology

Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. (2010) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/oa.1170

The End of Slavery: Disease Patterns and Cultural Behaviours of African Americans in Suriname
M. OKUMURA*
Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, The Henry Wellcome Building, University of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Street, Cambridge, CB2 1QH, UK

ABSTRACT

There have been few bioanthropological studies related to African Americans, either slaves or free people. The results of an analysis of eight skeletons of African ancestry (ve males and three females) acquired in Suriname at the end of the 19th century by Dr J. Spilzley and currently housed in the Duckworth Collection (University of Cambridge) are presented. Dental abrasion related to habitual pipe smoking was observed in four individuals, conrming the widespread use of pipe to smoke tobacco among slaves observed in other related sites. Our results indicate a very poor state of oral health for these individuals, with females presenting a higher frequency of dental carious lesions and antemortem tooth loss in comparison with males. The presence of cribra orbitalia in some individuals suggests, as observed in other diaspora skeletal series, individuals suffering from severe stress, caused by poor nutrition, infectious diseases, or both. Such appalling life conditions agree with many written records, which describe very harsh work conditions and very deprived diets. Our results, although based in a small sample, contribute to a better understanding of the cultural behaviours as well as the patterns of disease that aficted the African Americans in Suriname in the 19th century. Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: bioarchaeology; South America; dental modication; dental health; pipe smoking; African diaspora

Introduction
From the 17th century to the early 19th century, enslaved Africans were traded from West Africa to the Americas to labour on plantations producing sugarcane, coffee, cacao and cotton. A remarkable change in terms of lifestyle, including work, diet and diseases, certainly happened. However, the study of slavery as an area of research in the historical archaeology of the Americas only began to develop after the 1970s. The research has largely focused on either the material culture of slavery, slave diet and subsistence, and the development and maintenance of slave craft industries, or the archaeological dimensions of slave religions, myths and eschatological symbolism (Orser & Funari, 2001). Most of the information about health, medicine and quality of life for enslaved Africans is inferred

* Correspondence to: Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Av. Prof. Almeida Prado 1466, Sao Paulo, SP, 05508-900, Brazil. e-mail: mmo23@cam.ac.uk

throughout written records like letters and plantation documents. These are often vague, contradictory (some of them reporting quite good life conditions, some of them mentioning very bad lifestyle, including poor diet, precarious settlements and hard labour) and biased (since most of the documents were written by the individuals who enslaved) (Khudabux, 1991; Shuler, 2005: 1). Thus, the quite scarce bioanthropological studies on African skeletons related to the slavery system can be a rich source of information and can offer unique insight into [these] un/under documented populations (Shuler, in press), especially when osteological data can be compared with written records. This allows a clearer picture of the consequences of enslavement in terms of lifestyle and patterns of disease. Furthermore, comparative studies among different skeletal series can be used to test the hypothesis that local environment and social features would have played a major inuence in creating a considerable variability in the lifestyle within and between groups (Rathbun, 1987; Rathbun & Steckel, 2002).
Received 25 September 2009 Revised 2 March 2010 Accepted 17 March 2010

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M. Okumura

Suriname at the end of the slavery period


Suriname, formerly known as Dutch Guiana, is located on the northern coast of South America in the region between the Amazon and the Orinoco. Slavery was rst introduced in the Caribbean region, including Suriname, at the beginning of the 16th century. It is estimated that between 1667 (when Suriname became a Dutch possession) and the early 19th century more than 300 000 Africans were imported to Suriname, most of them from west African regions like Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Angola (Price & Price, 1980: 195). The slavery system was intimately related to the cultivation of coffee, cacao, cotton, indigo and sugar, the last being the basis of the Dutch colonys prosperity in the 18th century due to the great demand for agricultural products in Europe. During this peak period, it is estimated that about 80 000 slaves existed in Suriname (Goslinga, 1979: 109). However, the cultivation of sugar declined during the 19th century due to several reasons, including the attacks of the Maroons (escapee slaves that use to terrorise plantations), slave rebellions, res, weather problems, crop diseases, epidemic diseases among slaves and the growing competition of beet sugar. The legislation concerned with slavery faced many problems due to very intense conicts between the plantocratic oligarchy and the government. In the early 19th century, there were over 33 000 slaves in Suriname and the slave trade was rst restricted and then abolished, although in practice this happened in 1826, when rougher penalties and better rules about the registration of slaves prevented plantation owners to have non-registered African workers (Goslinga, 1979: 102). In the early 19th century, new policies for slave owners were decreed for the colony, specifying working hours, rations and clothing allowances, but in practice it seems that this law was never strictly observed (Goslinga, 1979: 114). The delay in approving the abolition of slavery resulted in many slaves losing their patience and running away during this period. In 1862, after incessant debates in the Dutch Parliament, a plan for the compensation of the slave owners was nally accepted and on the 1 July 1863, the end of slavery system was announced (Goslinga, 1979: 157). Forty-ve thousand two hundred and seventy-ve slaves were freed with the condition that those between 15 and 60 should continue to work for a period of 10 years (Hiss, 1943: 107). Very quickly, slaves realised that they were still stuck to the same occupation, although now it was under state supervision and for wages. Many former
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slaves refused to work and the former owners were dissatised with the inefciency of the new free labourers, because it caused a decrease in production (Goslinga, 1979: 157). The low compensation received by the owners was also a problem, because it did not take into account that the value of slaves varied with age and sex. Regardless the efforts to keep the freedmen on the land, many former slaves left the plantations and went to the capital, despite the increase in unemployment. It is estimated that between 1860 and 1900, the number of plantations decreased in 75% (Goslinga, 1979: 158).

Bioarchaeological studies of African Americans in the circum-Caribbean area


Although the slavery period related to the trade of African individuals to the Americas can be considered a relatively recent episode in Western history, there are very few archaeological studies in this area. Most of the bioarchaeological studies on African Americans from the slavery period (including the immediately after period) were performed in the United States. Those studies outnumber the Central and South American studies not only in terms of excavated sites but also in terms exhumed human remains (Shuler, 2005: 107). In this context, the circum-Caribbean area, which includes the continental zone along the Caribbean coast of Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, is not an exception. Very few (if any) archaeological studies have been developed in these countries and with exception of a single site in Suriname (Plantation Waterloo), no bioarchaeological studies have been carried out so far, although it is well known from documental sources that slavery practices were present for quite a long time and that they must have had a great impact on African populations there. Certainly the results obtained from studies on Plantation Waterloo, in Suriname dramatically increased the knowledge on African American lifestyle during the slavery period in that area (Khudabux, 1991, 1999). Between 1796 and 1861, Plantation Waterloo produced cotton. From mid to late 19th century, records show that there were three kinds of working people there: free people, plantation slaves which could be bought or sold together with the plantation, and private slaves which could be hired or allocated to other plantations, but were personal property. According to the written records (later conrmed by archaeological analysis), a large part of Plantation
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Disease Patterns of African Americans in Suriname


Waterloo was ooded in 1861 and subsequently abandoned (Khudabux, 1999). The cemetery at Plantation Waterloo was found by chance, during a low tide episode, where it was possible to observe that the area had been eroded by the sea. Fifty-seven graves were found, although it is not possible to say which proportion of the total number of graves that represents. All graves presented evidence of cofns and the author speculates that the two different types of lids might be indicative of distinct social status (Khudabux, 1999). The demographic data indicated a peak of death in the rst ve years of life. The average life expectancy at birth was estimated around 40 years. The study of pathological bone modication revealed the presence of anomalies indicative of intense physical strain (osteoarthritis and vertebral osteophytosis not necessarily presenting positive correlation with age), nutritional deciencies (rickets, porotic hyperostosis), traumatic episodes (bone fractures) and infectious diseases (treponematosis) (Khudabux, 1999). It is important to stress that some of the ndings supported what had been described in the literature: that is the case of the mortality peak at age of 5, which had been proposed based on the documental evidence (Oostindie, 1989; Khudabux, 1999). The bone anomalies related to intense physical stress also conrm the description of very harsh life conditions in Suriname during the slavery period (Heilbron, 1993: 82, see Discussion for more details). However, other aspects of the lives of enslaved groups for which the written records were either ambiguous or absent were revealed through the study of human skeletal remains. Although infectious diseases like yaws (a type of treponematosis) have been described as aficting slave populations in 18th century Jamaica (Sheridan, 1985: 192), there is no specic information for Suriname regarding this. That is also the case of the nutritional deciencies inferred through the study of the skeletal material: usually the written records are ambiguous and there is a lot of contradiction among different documents, furthermore, there is no specic information on diet and nutrition of Africans in Suriname during the slavery period. Although our sample size as well as contextual information is far from ideal, the general aim of this study is to further contribute to the current body of knowledge on the African American lifestyles during the slavery period. More specically, we will attempt to help building a less incomplete picture of how 19th century African American individuals of low social status in Suriname were affected by the living conditions at that time. Obviously, our study is limited
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to what can be observed in the skeletal material, which potentially excludes many important aspects related to health and nutrition (Wood et al., 1992). Nevertheless, we will analyse skeletal anomalies that may reveal relevant and/or new information on disease patterns and cultural behaviours in this group. Our data will be compared with the body of data which is available on other African American bioarchaeological studies and lastly, it will be contrasted with the documental evidence which is available for these groups.

Material and methods

Skeletal material
The skeletal material was collected in the late 19th century by Dr J. Spilzley and it is currently housed in the Duckworth Collection at the University of Cambridge. The original information found in the catalogue, as well as written on skulls, indicates African ancestry for all these individuals. It also made us suppose that most of (if not all) these individuals died in the hospital and that nobody claimed their bodies (Table 1). Two individuals (AF 1161 and AF 1168) possibly died before 1863, the ofcial date of slavery abolition in Surinam and ve individuals died after that date1. It is difcult if not impossible to know the specic social status of these individuals, but both nature of the acquisition of these bodies as well as the associated description and date of death suggest that they were either slaves (at least for a period of their lives) or free black people of low socio-economic standing. However, very rarely can any archaeological data be interpreted as an unequivocal indicative of slavery (Handler & Lange, 2006), that is, regardless the presence of indicators of poor health and low social status, no other inferences can be done concerning slave status. This lack of unambiguous indicators can be observed both in terms of physical remains (slave status cannot be undoubtedly associated with any distinctive phenotypes2 or genotypes) as well as the associated material culture, which was possibly available to African slaves, whites and free Africans (Orser, 1990). Locally available raw materials such as wood, clay and gourds, as well as imported items like cloth,
There is no information on date of death for one individual. For example, some characteristics as tooth mutilation have been used to infer African afliation; still, it is not possible to state that such individuals were slaves or free individuals (Handler, 1994). The same can be said about some cranial morphological characteristics which can indicate African ancestry.
2 1

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M. Okumura
Table 1. Original information found in catalogue and written on skull Catalogue number AF 1159 AF 1160 AF 1161 AF 1163 AF 1164 AF 1166 AF 1167 AF 1168 Original catalogue information Surinam negro no.67, bought from Dr J. Spilzley Collection from Guyana Surinam negro, fem, bought from Dr J. Spilzley Collection from Guyana Negro from Barbados, died aged 30 in Suriname on May 24 1888 No 135 Skull, Demerara Negro. No.144 Skull, Suriname mulatto, Fem, aged 30. No. 75 Mulatto (Carbouger), aged 50. No 21 N. Skull (Carbouger) - Aurora Madena, Fem, aged 48, Nov 27, 1885. No. 33N Suriname Negro, No.35N Written on the skull Deettnnbosch A. Negro of Surinam 11 May 1886 Surinam. J.H. Spitzly M.D., aet. 33 (purchased for Mus. Anat. Cant.) 56.56 Dora de Bruto of Surinam Aet. 60 11 March 1886 Surinam. 2HS Delson John negro of Barbados (. . .) 30 24 May 1856 Surinam 2HS On the mandible: 135 135 4204 Bombrey Benjamin typical negro from Demerara AET, 44 31 January 1889 Surinam J.A.S., On the mandible: 144 144 4204 Dr Spitzly Negress Mulatoo (Hospital case) Pernanbuco or Suriname No 6 75 75 21N Dark Mulato Carbouger Aet 50 1885 S Aurora Maclena Carboger woman Aet. 48 17 November, 85 Surinam 33 (. . .) 5 Jos? Kraas? Negro of Surinam aet 65 5 December, 25. JHS

clay pipes, tools and utensils would be available to all segments of society. Slaves would have obtained more expensive or rare items through theft, plantation allocation and rewards, purchase and exchange. Sometimes slaves would reuse such items after they were discarded by free persons (Handler & Lange, 2006). Since material culture and human remains cannot by themselves reveal the presence of slavery, it is critical to use historical records related to archaeological sites to identify the possible presence of slavery. Handler & Lange (2006) add that the lack of mention of slavery in prehistoric contexts is also a result of this phenomenon, since archaeological data cannot identify slave status and slavery. Skulls from eight adult individuals (ve males and three females) were analysed. No associated post-cranial material was available. Although information on sex was present in most of the associated written records; sex was re-assessed based on the cranial morphology (Buikstra & Ubelaker, 1994). Archival data on age were considered instead of attempting estimation from the skeletal remains. Reliable age assessment based on dental wear requires the seriation of an entire biological population (Lovejoy, 1985), which would not be possible given our small sample. The use of cranial sutures to estimate age is still an unresolved matter, as there is a great standard deviation associated to each age range group (Meindl & Lovejoy, 1985; Galera et al., 1998) and there may be important sexual and interpopulational variations (Key et al., 1994).

Activity markers
Several non-masticatory behaviours, such as habitual pipe smoking can leave a distinctive type of dental
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wear: an approximately equal abrasion on the upper and lower teeth, often resulting in an ellipsoid hole observable when teeth are occluded (Scott & Turner II, 1988) that is typically a mirror image of the adjacent tooth. According to Capasso et al. (1999: 157), this wear pattern could be indicative of several activities where an object is habitually held in the month: policemen who hold a whistle, wind instrument musicians, glass blowers, teachers who hold a pen or pencil and pipesmokers. However, whereas policemen, musicians, glass blowers and possibly teachers would present this kind of wear mostly on the incisors, dental wear caused by pipe smoking is not necessarily found in incisors, with canines and premolars sometimes being involved as well (Wells, 1968; Handler et al., 1982). Multiple apertures can also be observed (Kvaal & Derry, 1996). Wells (1968: 379) characterised this pattern of attrition as taking the form of a concavity affecting the occlusal margin of adjacent pairs of teeth. It may be unilateral or bilateral and reach any degree from a slight scalloping of the tooth margin to an oblique erosion which penetrates through most of the crown. Such unique dental feature has been described in several sites associated with enslaved Africans (Handler & Lange, 1978; Corruccini et al., 1982; Handler & Corruccini, 1983; Mann et al., 1987; Khudabux, 1991, 1999; Shuler, 2005: 272273), as well as European skeletal remains recovered from the bombed site of the St. Michael at Thorn Church, Norwich (Wells, 1968) and human remains from the 17th and 18th centuries found in Scandinavia (Kvaal & Derry, 1996). There is virtually no information on pipe manufacture in the New World during the slavery period; however, Kvaal & Derry (1996) provide some interesting information on pipe production in Europe
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Disease Patterns of African Americans in Suriname


from the 17th to the late 18th century. The clay used for the manufacture of pipes consisted almost entirely of aluminium silicate and sand; good quality clay should present a fairly small amount of sand. The quality of the material may vary according to the place, and in Europe, every pipe-making district tried to use local clay, regardless its quality. Because of its lightweight the clay pipe may be held in place by the teeth, leaving the hands free to continue working. Those pipes were cheap, low quality and easily broken, making the supply of new pipes fairly frequent for a mass market. Their fresh rough surface may also have contributed to a greater abrasion of the teeth. Walker et al. (2009) also proposed that subperiosteal bleeding caused by scurvy and rickets could be related to cases of cribra orbitalia. It is also important to mention that diseases like hereditary haemolytic anaemia (e.g. sickle cell anaemia, thalassemia), which are not rare in Africans (Serjeant, 1992), can also be related to both porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia (Angel, 1966, 1967; Angel et al., 1987; Walker et al., 2009). Wapler et al. (2004), through the histologic examination of thin-ground sections from orbital roof lesions in a Nubian sample, found out that almost 70% of cases of cribra orbitalia could be caused by either anaemia or inammation (or both). The authors say that many inammations in the head can lead to orbital involvement, including sinusitis, as well as oral, nasopharyngeal and suppurating skin inammations. Clearly, the frequency of those bone lesions should be viewed as a result of complex interaction among nutrition, disease and environment (Mensforth et al., 1978). Nevertheless, it can be considered a fairly reasonable indicator of stress. Cribra orbitalia was recorded according to the range of manifestation described by Brothwell (1981: 165). Dental carious lesions are a progressive demineralisation of the hard tissue of teeth by the acid resulting from fermentation process of bacteria. Although the etiology of dental carious lesions is still not fully understood, some factors can inuence the development of carious lesions in some individuals, such as oral environment, bacterial ora composition and diet (Buikstra & Ubelaker, 1994; Lukacs, 1996; Hillson, 2005). Carious lesions were observed macroscopically, with help of an odontological explorer. Analyses were carried out using individuals as the unit of analysis (for example, the frequency of individuals presenting at least one carious tooth), as well as considering tooth, alveoli or orbit as unit of analysis (for example, the frequency of carious lesions in teeth in relation to the total number of teeth available). Due to the small sample size, Fishers exact test was used to check if differences between sexes were signicant (Fisher p-value < 0.05).

Pathological assessment
Classic palaeopathological markers, including cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, dental carious lesions (caries in Table 2) and antemortem tooth loss (AMTL in Table 2 and Figure 2)3, were used to assess general health state. Macroscopically, cribra orbitalia can range from small isolated apertures spread over the roof of the orbit to conuent openings that result in the formation of trabecular bone (Brothwell, 1981: 165). Morphologically similar, porotic hyperostosis can be observed in the cranial vault as areas of pitting and porosity (Walker et al., 2009). Both have been traditionally linked to iron deciency anaemia, undernutrition, intestinal parasites and infectious diseases, among other factors (Stuart-Macadam & Kent, 1992). Walker et al. (2009) recently refuted this idea, although the link among anaemia, infectious diseases and undernutrition still persists in their model. In this case, porotic hyperostosis and many cases of cribra orbitalia could be related to megaloblastic anaemia in infants at the time of weaning and the combination between the lack of vitamin B12 and unsanitary living conditions would be responsible for further nutritional impairment caused by gastrointestinal infections.
Table 2. Number of units (U) and individuals (I) affected by pathologies in relation to the total number according to sex AMTL (U) Male Female Total 8/142 12/71 20/213 Caries (U) 13/142 13/71 26/213 Cribra (U) 4/10 2/6 6/16 AMTL (I) 2/5 2/3 4/8 Caries (I) 3/5 2/3 5/8 Cribra (I) 2/5 1/3 3/8

Results
Dental abrasion characteristic of pipe smoking was observed in three males and one female. In the male sample, one individual presented pipe wear on the left side, including maxillary second incisor and canine, as well as mandibular canine, and rst premolar (Figure 1a), another individual presented wear on both the left (Figure 1b) and the right (Figure 1c), maxillary
Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. (2010)

No cranial traumas were observed in any of the individuals.

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M. Okumura

Figure 1. Bucal view of dental abrasion characteristic of pipe smoking. a: individual AF 1163; b and c: left and right side of individual AF1166; d: individual 1168; e and f: left and right sides of individual 1160. This gure is available in colour at www.interscience. wiley.com/journal/oa.

and mandibular second incisor, canine and rst premolar; and the third male presented wear on the mandibular left dentition, second incisor, canine and rst premolar (Figure 1d). One female presented abrasion on both left (Figure 1e) and right sides (Figure 1f), including both maxillary and mandibular canine and rst premolar. Raw data are presented in Table 2, where the number of units or individuals affected by pathologies is shown in relation to the total number. Frequencies of pathologies according to sex and obtained from Table 2 can be observed in Figure 2. Porotic hyperostosis was not observed in any of the individuals of the sample. With exception of cribra orbitalia, the results point to a higher frequency of pathologies in females compared to males. Females present a not quite signicant higher frequency of carious lesions per teeth

(Fisher p-value 0.0744) and a signicantly higher frequency of antemortem tooth loss per teeth (Fisher p-value 0.0118) in comparison with males.

Discussion

Pipe smoking
The unintentional dental modications occurring from pipe smoking were observed in both sexes, with males being the majority of the cases. Pipe smoking related dental wear have been described in skeletal remains of enslaved Africans from many different locations: about a quarter of Barbadian skeletal remains at Newton Plantation (Handler & Lange, 1978; Corruccini et al., 1982; Handler & Corruccini, 1983; Shuler, 2005: 272), three skeletons excavated in South Africa in 1936 and 1981 (Morris, 1988), at the Harney site in Montserrat, where two individuals exhibited pipe wear grooves (Mann et al., 1987), and in virtually all human skeletal remains from Waterloo Plantation in Suriname (Khudabux, 1991, 1999). In fact, the use of clay pipe to smoke was very common among slaves. There is an account from Pinckard (1806: 369; Handler & Lange, 1978: 133) about an evening scene in the negro-yard in Barbados in the late 18th century that describes some people sitting at the door with the pipe in their mouths. In the Newton Plantation, Shuler (2005: 249) describes the presence of facets associated with pipe wear in one adolescent, which can indicate that these individuals were beginning to smoke in a quite early age (Handler & Corruccini, 1983).
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Figure 2. Frequencies of pathological markers according to sex. U: frequency per unit (tooth, socket or orbit); I: frequency per individual.

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Disease Patterns of African Americans in Suriname


Although quite expensive in Europe, tobacco was grown in Suriname by the colonists since the 17th century, making this low quality tobacco available to the lower classes and the enslaved (Hiss, 1943: 139). Pipes and tobacco could be acquired by enslaved through purchase, exchange, theft, or given as rewards (Handler & Lange, 1978: 134; Handler and Corruccini, 1983Handler & Corruccini, 1983). The widespread smoking pipe behaviour at plantation sitesclearly evidenced through the artefacts themselves or through the dental wear associated with this habittogether with the fact that pipes (some of them unused) were found in burials with individuals not presenting signs of pipe wear, suggest that they may have had a symbolic as well as a functional value (Lange & Handler, 1985). In this sense, smoking pipes, among other apparently utilitarian objects, could be promoting group identity and cohesion (Ferguson, 1991; Orser, 1991) and could be considered as examples of the polyvalent nature of material culture, with at least some artefacts being used in muted or ambiguous ways to suggest slave resistance (Orser & Funari, 2001: 62). Women and men experienced similar rates of nonspecic infection, but important differences were observed in activity related patterns and traumatic injury between the sexes, with women being submitted to more stressful situations. Although not much information is available, historical records on morbidity and mortality suggest that, in general, differences in health status between the sexes were not notable, reecting the similar conditions of work and living (Higman, 1984: 343). However, according to Shuler (2005: 320), the multidimensional roles (EdwardsIngram, 2001) involving work in the eld, as well as childbirth and lactation, could explain why women appear to have had a more stressful life according to some osteological activity markers. Furthermore, women may have been less valued than males and may have been occupying a relatively less privileged social position than males, obtaining less access to resources in general (Shuler, 2005: 320). This assumption is well supported by the almost universal positive correlation between health and social status (Walker & Hewlett, 1990; Antoft et al., 1999; Irigoyen et al., 1999; Cucina & Tiesler, 2003). Unfortunately, there are not many human skeletal remains recovered from sites related to enslaved Africans from which we could draw comparisons among them and our sample. In Plantation Waterloo, Suriname, the percentage of individuals presenting carious lesions (not specied by sex) was 35% (9% of teeth), whereas the percentage of individuals that had lost one or more teeth during life was 74% (19% of teeth) (Khudabux, 1991). In Newton Plantation, in Barbados, Corruccini et al. (1982) reported a percentage of 38.5% of individuals presenting carious lesions and 51% affected by antemortem tooth loss. It is well known that individuals working in sugarcane plantation had access and regularly chewed sugar cane during the harvest season, also acquiring syrup from the boilinghouses when at work (Handler & Lange, 1978: 88), which could have contributed to the high carious lesions frequency found in the sample. In an urban slave group from New Orleans from the 18th century, the frequency of affected sockets by abscesses or antemortem tooth loss was almost 32 and 25% of the teeth were affected by carious lesions (Owsley et al., 1987). This quite high frequency of dental carious lesions is explained by the high intake of cariogenic food mentioned in historical reports for that region: corn meal, ne our and molasses (Fossier, 1957; Owsley et al., 1987). Rathbun (1987) reports that the number of teeth lost antemortem in the 19th century Paul Remley Plantation, South Carolina, was 6.5 and 11.57 per individual (males and females, respectively) and the
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Sex and oral health


In general, both sexes presented fairly bad oral health conditions, more than half of the individuals presenting carious lesions, and half of them presenting antemortem tooth loss. Females presented a worse condition in terms of oral health; the frequency of both carious lesions and antemortem tooth loss per teeth is signicantly higher than the equivalent frequencies found in males. The association between these two pathologies is clear: antemortem tooth loss is usually the result of inammatory processes due to either carious lesions or alveolar exposition (Lukacs, 1996; Hillson, 2005). According to the written records (Table 1), there are no important differences in the relative ages between sexes and in fact, the higher frequency of dental pathologies was observed in the youngest individual of the female sample. Therefore, these differences in oral health can be due to differential access to cariogenic food, distinct susceptibilities to oral diseases, different physiological injuries or cultural behaviours, as well as hormonal levels (Slaus, 2000; Lukacs & Largaespada, 2006). In her study of Newton Plantation, in Barbados, Shuler (2005: 319, in press) showed that no important differences were observed between males and females in relation to nutritional and infectious diseases. Dental carious lesions rates were equivalent, but slightly more tooth loss and anaemia were observed in males.
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M. Okumura
number of carious teeth was 3.2 and 5.17. Females also expressed more dental pathologies in general. Also from South Carolina, the 18th century Belleview Plantation data presented ve teeth lost antemortem per male in contrast with 12 per female. The number of cavities per individual was also uneven: two per male and four per female (Rathbun and Steckel, 2002). At the First African Baptist Church from 19th century Philadelphia, Angel et al. (1987) reports an average of 13.8 and 12.5 lesions per individual (females and males, respectively), which included carious lesions, abscesses or antemortem tooth loss. Although the fairly small sample size of this study must be heavily inuencing the frequencies of observed pathologies, still it is possible to say that such frequencies are roughly within the range of observed pathologies in other 18th19th century African American groups and support the idea that those groups were being severely affected by extremely bad oral health conditions. virtually no immunity to the New World species and strains of pathogens (Kiple & Kiple, 1980). The main sources of information on slave diet are historical documents like plantation records, eyewitness accounts and slave narratives (Reitz et al., 1985). Several variables would have been affecting the dietary intake of slaves: the location (farms or cities; coastal or inland places), the size of the farm, the size of the slave family, the presence of children, the ability of the slaves to produce food themselves, the time available to procure wild foods, the amount of food slaves could barter, purchase or steal (Reitz et al., 1985), as well as master-imposed factors (Kelley & Angel, 1987). Besides this, the amount of food acquired daily varied also between blacks and mulattoes, the latter being given better food, better clothes and less physical demanding activities (Blassingame, 1972; Goslinga, 1979: 114). There is also evidence that some categories of slaves (e.g. male industrial slaves) got preferential treatment in recognition of their skills (Kelley & Angel, 1987). Important differences in health patterns were also observed between free and enslaved Africans in the United States, possibly reecting a differential access to good quality food, as well as fairly distinct working conditions between these groups (Rathbun & Steckel, 2002). Kiple & Kiple (1980) estimated that, ideally, Caribbean slave diet allotment would provide about a third of the daily calorie needs and two times more protein as the current recommendation, in the form of half pound of either dried beef or salted sh, and a pint of cornmeal or rice. Whereas some authors (Savitt, 1978; Gibbs et al., 1980) report that the diet of plantation slaves would provide enough calories, less optimistic accounts are given by many authors, like Dickson (1789: 14; Handler & Lange, 1978: 88): when in health, the eld-Negroes never do taste, at least they are not allowed, butchers meat, milk, butter, or any kind of fresh animal substance and Handler & Lange (1978: 87): sh was ideally distributed once a week although, in actual fact, it was sometimes distributed no more than three or four times a year. Such calories decient diet could explain the importance of slave provision grounds to supplement the provided core, although plantation slaves had to produce part of their own food on allotted grounds, but in towns slaves received either rations or cash (Higman, 1979). The poor diet could be directly related to the high incidence of death by marasmus (starvation) observed in one in ten non-adults in Philadelphia during the early-mid 19th century (Blakey et al., 1994). Accordingly, a poor diet must have caused a major negative impact on young children, which were usually given
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Diet and disease


Like other diaspora skeletal series, our data suggest poorly nourished unhealthy individuals. Unfortunately, studies identifying cribra orbitalia in enslaved African skeletal remains are quite few. The individuals from Newton Plantation in Barbados presented a frequency of 13% of orbital lesions; both sexes were equally affected, but such lesions were not observed in non-adults (Shuler, 2005: 228). On the contrary, in the Cedar Grove Cemetery, Arkansas (1878-1930), more than half of the children aged between three and 20 months presented cribra orbitalia (Rose, 1985; Martin et al., 1987). In Cobern Street, a site dated from 18th century in Cape Town, the frequency of cribra orbitalia was very low (Holtzhausen & Slater, 1997; Ledger et al., 2000), but at the South Carolina Plantation the incidence was 35% for adults and 80% for non-adults (Rathbun, 1987). Regardless the lack of a precise etiology for cribra orbitalia, the presence of this indicator of stress and poor life conditions in nearly half of the sample agrees with many historical records on enslaved Africans, describing very harsh conditions of work and very poor diets. Enslaved Africans were subjected to disastrous nutritional circumstances of the Middle Passage, reaching the New World in malnourished condition. It is very well known that malnutrition increases the susceptibility of pathogenic invasion (Scrimshaw & SanGiovanni, 1997) and that these individuals had
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Disease Patterns of African Americans in Suriname


nutritionally poor gruels, decient in protein and frequently contaminate (Steckel, 1986; Blakey et al., 1994). Slave morbidity and mortality (. . .) were related both directly and indirectly to unhygienic conditions, accidents, suicide, punishment, diet and work loads (Sheridan, 1985: 188). According to the written records, the mean age of death of these individuals was 44.4 years for men and 46 for women. This agrees with the fact that in other enslaved series low mean age at death suggested that individuals were dying young (Martin et al., 1987; Shuler, 2005: 221, in press). Life expectancy at birth across several slave schedules show that it varied from 20 to 47 years (Sydnor, 1930; Evans, 1962; Farley, 1970; Vinovskis, 1972; Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Vinovskis, 1975; Steckel, 1979; Sheridan, 1985: 196) and our sample presents individuals that died as young as 30. Slaves had accidents, which were particularly frequent in workers in the mills or boiling houses, resulting in physical deformities and disabilities (Higman, 1984: 294). Sheridan (1985: 192) published information about the health status of slaves on a sugar plantation in Jamaica during the late 18th century (King, 1976; Sheridan, 1985). Roughly 40% of the slaves were suffering some kind of impairment, including ulcers, yaws and bone ache, among others. According to Handler & Lange (1978: 98), slaves suffered and succumbed to a variety of ailments, illnesses and contagious diseases including body sores, colds, consumption, coughs, diarrhoea, dysentery, dropsy, elephantiasis, fevers, inuenza, leprosy, loss of limbs or joints, measles, mumps, ruptures, smallpox, sore throats, stomach aches, tetanus, toothaches, yaws, and yellow fever; dirt-eating, or geophagy, also occurred. Other causes related to a great morbidity and mortality were pneumonia, tuberculosis, respiratory diseases, nervous system disorders and cholera (Savitt, 1978; Higman, 1984: 341; Sheridan, 1985: 200; Bankole, 1998: 115). Malnutrition and infection would have had a major impact in the morbidity and mortality of nonadult individuals. Infectious and respiratory diseases, as well as diarrhoea-related deaths were described as the main causes of death in a sample of enslaved and free African American individuals under age seven in Philadelphia (Blakey et al., 1994). In Suriname, when a slave fell sick he was simply handed over to the local quack, which could explain the extremely high death rate among slaves, especially young children (Goslinga, 1979: 115). According to Heilbron (1993: 82) Slave mortality in Surinam was appalling. (. . .) the Government Secretary made a formal declaration that in no other colony were the
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tasks so heavy, the treatment so strict, and the care of the negroes in general so neglected. This is conrmed by Goslinga (1979: 114), that says that compared to the Dutch Antilles, life on the plantations in Suriname was hellish. Those slaves lucky enough not to have to work a full 7-day week, nevertheless had to utilise the Sundays to cultivate their own little gardensif they wanted to eat that is. Conditions on the sugar and cotton plantations may have been somewhat better than at the logging plantations, where the big trees were cut, sawn by hand into boards, and carried to the river to be soaked. According to Steckel (1979), factors like plantation type (reecting climate and special features of cultivation), as well as size of plantation (large plantations may have facilitated the spread of infectious diseases) would have played an important role in determining the patterns of morbidity and mortality in different groups.

Conclusion
So far, most of our knowledge on the slavery period comes from historical written sources, which, in the same way that bioarchaeological studies, present its own bias and problems. Collaboration between these two disciplines would be highly desirable in order to unravel the impact of slavery on the way of life of African enslaved groups in the New World from the 16th to the 19th century. Despite the small sample size, the results obtained from the skeletal material presented in this paper represent an important contribution in a eld were archaeological studies are still quite scarce, especially when taking into account that the material here presented, together with the one from Waterloo Plantation, represent all skeletal remains which had been analysed and their results published for the whole continental circum-Caribbean area. Our data conrm the popularity of use of pipe to smoke tobacco among slaves described in many written records and also observed in other individuals from African diaspora archaeological sites. Although both sexes presented very bad oral health conditions, females presented a higher frequency of dental carious lesions and antemortem tooth loss in comparison with males. High levels of stress caused either by undernutrition, infectious diseases or both would account for the presence of cribra orbitalia in some individuals, following a trend that has been observed in other related skeletal series and conrming the miserable work conditions to which these individuals were submitted during their lives.
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M. Okumura
I hope this study will encourage future research on human remains from African diaspora archaeological sites. As such, the study of human skeletal remains has much to say about human history.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks Heather Hillenbrand for the English corrections. Suggestions and commentaries from two anonymous reviewers and Terry OConnor greatly improved the former version of this paper, which are deeply appreciated.

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