An Archaeological Glimpse of the Slave Trade in Late-Seventeenth-Century Panama

While the development of slave societies in Spanish America has long been a popular and well-researched topic in Western historiography, archaeological accounts of this process outside the direct area of influence of African American archaeology are still rare. In Spanish-speaking Latin America, few studies have looked into the material universe in which the foundations of a racially based system of inequality were laid. An outline is offered here of the preliminary results of the first project specifically addressing the materiality of the slave trade in the late-17th-century city of Panama, one of the main centers of human traffic in the Spanish colonial world. Detaching itself from traditional perspectives of the African experience in the New World, this investigation analyzes the lived space of local slave traders, seeking to identify evidences of their cultural vulnerability vis-à-vis the commodified African people these merchants bought and sold. This evidence, it is hoped, may contribute to the future development of effective, empowering narratives of the slave trade for African-descendant communities in Latin America and elsewhere.