Under Maryland Street, Ties to African Past
ARTIFACT An X-ray, a photograph and a schematic drawing of a clay “bundle” filled with about 300 pieces of metal and a stone axe. The object dates to 1700 and differs from religious caches previously found in Maryland.
Over the years of exploring the old houses and streets of Annapolis, Md., archaeologists have uncovered a trove of artifacts of early American slave culture. Among them are humble remains connected with religious practices, which bear the stamp of the slaves’ West African heritage.
Early in the 18th century, as they were being baptized, African-Americans clung to “spirit practices” in rituals of healing and the invocation of ancestral and supernatural powers. Sometimes called black magic, these occult rites would persist in America in modified form, later, as voodoo and hoodoo.
University of Maryland archaeologists have discovered in Annapolis what they say is one of the earliest examples of traditional African religious artifacts in North America. It is a clay “bundle,” roughly the size and shape of a football, filled with about 300 pieces of metal and a stone axe, whose blade sticks out of the clay, pointing skyward.
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