Liberated African Graveyard Discovered

On 24th November 2006 the following news item appeared in the St. Helena Independent:

“HUMAN REMAINS UNCOVERED: Two sets of human bones were uncovered during trial pit excavations carried out in the Bulk Fuel Farm area in Rupert’s Valley earlier today. The bones have been removed and have been placed in two suitable small caskets. The caskets will be kept at St James’ Church until arrangements have been made for them to be taken to St Paul’s Cemetery for interment.” Sharon Wainwright, St. Helena Access Project Manager, 22nd November 2006.

Nobody knew at the time the extent of the burials that would later be discovered. In May 2008 a team of archaeologists arrived on St. Helena to work as part of the Airport project, their main focus being on Rupert’s Valley and in particular on the slave graves that were known to exist there. The concern at the time was that the extent of the burials was unknown and the airport works there might disturb burials.

By June a large number of graves had been discovered and in August Andy Pearson and Ben Jeffs, archaeologists with the St. Helena National Trust, reported on Saint FM that “we’ve found a great deal more than we anticipated. We’ve more than a hundred bodies out of the ground now and there’s possibly as many as two hundred and fifty in all, just in the section that we’re lifting”.

In the total of ten weeks of investigations a total of 325 skeletons were excavated. Thousands more skeletons are thought still to lie in Rupert’s Valley, but no more digs are currently planned as there is no intention to disturb the other grave sites.

The skeletons were examined by a research team in Jamestown to determine their age, sex, life history and cause of death. The vast majority were males, with a significant proportion of children or young adults, some less than a year old. Often buried in groups, the individuals were occasionally interred with personal effects, jewellery and fragments of clothing, as well as a few metal tags and artefacts that relate to their enslavement and subsequent rescue. The dry conditions in Rupert’s Valley contributed to an extremely high level of preservation; hair was found on some skulls.

In March 2012 one of the archeologists, Dr. Andrew Pearson, published a book “Infernal Traffic – Excavation of a Liberated African Graveyard in Rupert’s Valley, St. Helena”. Andrew Pearson observed at the time that one of the reasons the excavation in St. Helena was so important was that “studies of slavery usually deal with unimaginable numbers working on an impersonal scale and in so doing overlook the individual victim. In Rupert’s valley, however the archaeology brings us face to face with the human consequences of the slave trade.”

Finds from the excavation are currently on show at the International Slavery Museum, in Liverpool, UK.

More information can be found at www.pearsonarchaeology.com

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