Award Information
This project proposes to conduct archaeological excavation on Goree Island, Senegal, a major 16th-19th century slave port, trade nexus, and home to one of the earliest multicultural communities of the transatlantic world. My research focuses on resident slave life, though Goree Island is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the purported 10 million transient captives exported to the New World through its infamous slave warehouse. Excavation centers on, but is not limited to, Goree' s earliest slave quarters, the Village des Bambaras, and its settlement trajectory from centralized to dispersed, and ultimately to its integration into the increasingly Europeanized landscape. I will be examining from a material perspective how the quality of life changed for enslaved Africans through this urbanization and how this cultural, economic, and spatial urban metamorphosis was driven by Goree's increasing access to global trade networks. I will be directing a small crew of student volunteers from the Universite de Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Dakar, and working under the mentorship of Dr. Ibrahima Thiaw of the Institut Fondamentale d'Afrique Noire at UCAD.