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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

African Origins

The skeletal record traces the Chesapeake African story as no other evidence can. Bones let us evaluate an individual. We see a man or woman, a child or an adult, a person with particular experiences in life and death, whose own story is as relevant to history as any other.

Iron chain, sever feet long, with shackle at each end
Wrought iron shackles, found in an abandoned 17th-century well, with one anklet chiseled apart. Smithsonian photo
Image of a Cowry shell, ivory colored, looks like an open mouth with sharp teeth,
Cowry shell found in a sub-floor pit of a slave quarter. Smithsonian photo.

Bones reveal identity, both individually and within a group. A skeleton's African origin can be identified and sometimes linked to a specific region. For people whose cultural and personal identity was stripped away in life, the skeletal record can be vital in discovering personal history and ancestral ties.

There were relatively few Africans in Virginia or Maryland in the 1600s. Many slaveholders owned only one to two slaves. Blacks and whites lived and worked together, also making it difficult to separate items used, made, or owned by blacks from those of whites.

Cowry shells come from the Indian and Pacific oceans, particularly from the Maldives.  They were used as currency in the African slave trade and often filled slave ships as ballast.

Tooth Notching

Cultural practices that affect appearance can offer clues to identity. Tooth notching, because it modifies the skeleton, persists after death. The front teeth may be filed or chipped along the biting edge, or even extracted. Ethnographic and travel literature from the 1800s reported that peoples in some regions of Africa modified their teeth in particular patterns.

No reports have been found of tooth notching after Africans arrived in North America or were born here. Advertisements for runaway slaves referred to persons with filed teeth as African-born. These documents have supported claims that remains with tooth notching represent first-generation Africans in America.

Frontal view of cranium of African American Woman showing notched teeth.
Composite image of skull and 3D scan of the filed teeth. Smithsonian photos

Cranium Of A Woman With Filed Teeth

Though found hundreds of miles from the Chesapeake, her teeth have the same west central African pattern of modification.