American slavery is commonly understood to have peaked in the late 18th century and was outlawed by the U.S. in the mid-19th century following the Civil War. The practice of slavery in the 17th century American colonies, however, is less well known. A new DNA study of skeletons from a farmstead on the Delaware frontier has revealed key information about the early transatlantic slave trade.
The Avery’s Rest site in coastal Delaware was excavated by Daniel Griffith of the Archaeological Society of Delaware and the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs over multiple years. Located near the 17th century frontier Dutch settlement of Whorekill, Avery’s Rest is one of the earliest colonial settlements known in Delaware. The 800-acre tract was owned by John and Sarah Avery, who passed down the land to their daughters. Today, the land is owned by Mr. and Mrs. Wayman Harmon, who allowed archaeological excavation to commence on the property.
Archaeologists discovered several structures at Avery’s Rest, along with a fenced garden area, a well, a cellar, numerous artifacts, as well as 11 graves – 8 in a southern cluster and 3 in a northern one. Since very few well-preserved human skeletons have been found on 17th century Chesapeake Bay sites, the discovery of the Avery’s Rest cemetery is rather unique.
Writing in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, a research team led by Raquel Fleskes of the University of Pennsylvania details their osteological and mitochondrial DNA analysis of the 11 skeletons in an attempt to understand who they were and how they came to be buried in colonial Delaware.
Nondestructive analysis of the bones was first done at the Smithsonian Institution by Douglas Owsley, Karin Bruwelheide, and Kathryn Barca, who showed that there were two children, two adult women, and seven adult men buried at Avery’s Rest. All of the adults showed evidence of spine or disk degeneration, suggesting it was hard physical work for anyone in the middling planter class to live on the colonial frontier. Four of the men also had tooth wear from long-term pipe use.
While all of the people were buried in coffins according to Christian burial practices – supine, with an east-to-west orientation, and hands on the pelvis or along the sides – a close examination of the shape of the skulls showed that “eight individuals buried in the southern cluster had biological features indicative of European descent, whereas the three individuals in the northern cluster had features consistent with African ancestry,” the researchers discovered.