The Middle Passage Re-membered

Abstract

Abstract The concluding chapter opens with a discussion of recent work on the ‘ship family’: fictive kin networks forged by captives during the Middle Passage. It then uses three things—Olaudah Equiano’s account of his own captive passage, a sketch of the scarification marks on the body of an African-born soldier in the Caribbean, and a string of waist beads from the New York African Burial Ground—to explore why the African Middle Passage experience always seems to be just beyond reach of scholars of the slave trade; glimpsed, but shadowy, and found mainly in ritual contexts. This chapter also considers the growing role of bioarchaeology in identifying African-born individuals in the Americas and asks why the Middle Passage is today largely remembered through ritual.