Revisiting Cultural Transformation from the West Indies to West Africa: Mortuary Practices and Diasporic Belonging

Early African Diaspora archaeologies were informed by anthropological approaches that championed models of cultural transformation. This theoretical model proved useful in explaining how enslaved individuals built community and cultural lifeways despite the barbarity of enslavement. Inspired by academic debates surrounding the cultural lifeways of Afro-Caribbean populations, including Douglas Armstrong’s pioneering work in Jamaica, I explore burial practices in both the Caribbean and West Africa. After reviewing select case-studies from the Caribbean, I briefly provide examples of mortuary practices from slavery to freedom in my own work in Barbados and Liberia. In doing so, I argue that models of cultural transformation and retention still have much to offer archaeologists working in contexts of diaspora, but only if they are attuned to the historic and contemporary racio-politics of transatlantic violence and struggles for belonging.