Hutchinson’s incisors and Moon’s molars are specific lesions of congenital syphilis. The extensive but fragmentary clinical literature on these conditions describes reduced dimensions and thin enamel in the permanent incisors and first molars, crowding and infolding of the first molar cusps, notching of the upper incisors, and apical hypoplasias of the permanent canines. A Barbados slave cemetery (ca. 1660-1820 m) includes three individuals with these features, suggesting a frequency at birth of congenital syphilis in the population approaching 10%. These three cases show triple the frequency of all hypoplasias and more than seven times the frequency of pitting hypoplasia present in the remainder of the series.  The recognizable congenital syphilis cases account for much of the remarkably high frequency of hypoplasias in the series as a whole. We infer that syphilis contributed substantially to morbidity, infant mortality, and infertility in this population. Presence or absence of congenital syphilis may account for much of the variability in health and mortality seen among nineteenth century African-American populations.

Congenital Syphilis in the Past: Slaves at Newton Plantation, Barbados West Indies

Fertility (crude birth rate) was estimated from skeletal and corresponding historical relative mortality ratios for a seventeenth- to eighteenth-century Barbados slave population. The estimates varied widely among themselves according to which data source and mortality ratio was used; they also varied from the actual historicalfertility rate. In addition, we have raised logical objections to the use of stable model life tables for inferring nonstable vital rates in archaeological populations. These points are problematic for the broad use of relative mortality to infer relative fertility.

Inferring Fertility from Relative Mortality in Historically Controlled Cemetery Remains from Barbados

Lead concentration patterns have proven useful in interpreting some aspects of slavery in colonial North American sites. In this paper we analyze bone lead content from skeletal remains archaeologically recovered at Newton plantation, and discuss its implications for understanding and interpreting
various new dimensions of Caribbean slave life.

Lead contact and lead poisoning have received scant attention in discussions of early West Indian societies but are potentially important issues in considering the health and medical problems of blacks. Although our discussion focuses on Barbados, the West Indian historical literature strongly suggests that our general findings are applicable to other Caribbean areas and have implications for understanding some of the disabilities of early white populations as well. In this paper we also seek to illustrate how bioanthropological and chemical analyzes of slave skeletal remains and historical data can complement one another in defining and investigating various dimensions of slave life.

Lead Contact and Poisoning in Barbados Slaves: Historical, Chemical, and Biological Evidence

Dental enamel hypoplasia is a putative marker of childhood morbidity (nutritional or infectious stress) which can he analyzed by age-of-occurrence using a calcification standard. We have recorded age-specific occurrence of (a) minor linear hypoplasias, (b) pits, (c) major growth-arrest lines, and (d) combined hypoplasias in 103 specimens of 17-19th century Caribbean slaves. This population is probably unique in terms of environment, nutritional deficiency and other severe environmental stresses, and (especially) association with historical resources that might allow more specific correlation of stresses with hypoplasia chronology.

Chronological Distribution of Enamel Hypoplasias and Weaning in a Caribbean Slave Population

In this paper we utilize physical anthropological data, recovered archaeologically from a plantation slave cemetery in Barbados, to treat various dimensions of slave life and illustrate a particular interdisciplinary approach in historical inquiry: how the methodology and techniques of physical anthropology can be applied to historical issues; and how a different type of data base than is normally employed in slave studies, when combined with archaeological and documentary data, can generate new information and perspectives on slave life. We illustrate this approach by specifically addressing issues such as disease, nutrition, and famine, and the cultural practices of dental mutilation, dentistry, pipe smoking, weaning and infant care, and family burial plots.

Plantation Slave Life in Barbados: A Physical Anthropological Analysis

A unique seventeenth-nineteenth century slave cemetery population from Newton plantation, Barbados, allows examination of craniodental characters in relation to ethnohistorical data. Age-at-death estimates suggest life expectancy at birth of 29 years and low infant mortality; historical demography, however, suggests life expectancy of 20 years and very high infant mortality. Tooth decay, bilateral tooth loss, periodontal disease, root hypercementosis, and severe enamel hypoplasia are high in frequency. The teeth yield evidence of such cultural practices as pipe-smoking and incisor mutilation. Several skeletal features reflect periodic near-starvation. Directional and fluctuating dental asymmetry, relative tooth size, and hypoplasia distribution suggest slaves experienced considerable weaning trauma; metabolic stress at this time exceeded that of prenatal and immediate postnatal periods. Odontometrics and dental and cranial nonmetric traits indicate that modern Blacks are intermediate between the ancestral slaves and modern Whites but more similar to the latter, suggesting effects of environmental covariance exceed those of genetic admixture. Nonmetric trait distributions show nonrandom patterns according to area of burial in the cemetery,
a possible result of family segregation.

Osteology of a Slave Burial Population From Barbados, West lndies

Dental mutilation on slave burials excavated from a sugar plantation cemetery on the Caribbean island of Barbados reflects on the question of African slaves and their New World born slave descendants perpetuating this widespread African practice in the New World. Physical anthropological and ethnohistorical evidence from Barbados and other areas leads to the tentative conclusion that dental mutilation (and body scarification) disappeared among New World Black slaves. Reasons relating to adaptive responses to the institution of slavery, and changes in esthetic values as a result of the creolization process, are offered to help account for this disappearance.

Tooth Mutilation in the Caribbean: Evidence from a Slave Burial Population in Barbados

We assume that non-genetic, environmental factors have played the major role in TMJ size decrease; the most likely explanation is decreased chewing resistance (and growth stimulation) provided by the soft processed diets of modern urban individuals.