Research
The Silenced Slavery
Between 2.5 and 4.5 million of Indigenous peoples were enslaved in the colonial Americas. This project focuses in particular on the earliest and one of the core regions of human trafficking since AD 1492, the Caribbean, looking at the intersection of Spanish, British, and French empires in the region. The project juxtaposes archival research with archaeological fieldwork, the study of museum collections, and oral testimonies of descendant communities. It brings to the forefront the agency of Kalinago communities in disrupting imperial policies between the 15th and 18th centuries by fleshing out the material remains of captivity, slavery, war, and resistance, reinscribing the silences, and challenging the colonial archive. Fieldwork is co-led with my colleague Dr Reg Murphy and mostly focuses on Antigua, the bridge between the Taíno culture coming from the Greater Antilles and the Cayo/Kalinago and Suazan cultures originated in the southern Lesser Antilles. Our project responds to local and regional demands for 'Indigenising' local history, and thus involves local researchers, schools and communities.
Return to the Island of Souls: Forced Displacement, Colonial Violence, and Archaeology for Social Justice in Chile
This community-based project focuses on the long-term effects of the forced displacement decreed by the Spaniards of ca. 600 people (116 families) from La Mocha Island to the Jesuit mission of San José de la Mocha, near Concepción, in Chile, in 1685. By the mid-18th century, the mission became a marginal neighbourhood of the overgrown city of Concepción, attracting mestizos, enslaved African and Afro-descendants, people of mixed Indigenous and African ancestry ('Zambos'), and poor criollos, who joined the Indigenous communities. Our team is particularly interested in mapping the materiality of coexistence, the violence of architecture and settlement design, and the impacts of captivity and slavery on health, diet, and long-term trauma by pioneering epigenetics studies in historical archaeology. After a long history of colonialism and settler-colonialism, our aim is addressing the past and the continuity of structural violence affecting Mapuche communities in Chile (in this case, the Lafkenche), and supporting the community in healing and re-burying their deceased.
Slavery
Research collaborations
Reginald Murphy
National Museum of Antigua and Barbuda
Co-director of the archaeological fieldwork on Antigua
Pedro Manuel Andrade Martinez
Universidad de Concepción, Chile
Co-I on the project 'Return to the Island of Souls'
Sandra Montón
Research Group 'Colonialism, Gender and Materialities' (CGM)
University Pompeu Fabra
Colonialism, Gender and Materialities (CGM) reunites researchers interested in developing a better understanding of the effects that processes of colonialism and domination have had on sex-gender systems. They all assume that material culture can reveal cultural features unnoticed otherwise. Website: https://www.upf.edu/web/cgym
Sergio Escribano Ruiz
Built Heritage Research Group (GPAC)
Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (University of the Basque Country)
Website: https://gpac.eus/built-heritage-research-group/
Simón Urbina & Leonor Adán
Universidad Austral de Chile
Co-directors of the fieldwork project on the Spanish colonial fortifications in the region of Valdivia, Chile