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By Laurie A. Wilkie, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley
The Clifton Property is a unique, intact, integrated, historical
archaeological landscape that represents a microcosm of New World
history. The archaeological resources on the land depict the first
inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Lucayan Indians-the first Native peoples
of the New World to be victims of genocide at the hands of Spanish
Colonizers. Represented at Clifton is the West African slave trade-a
story that combines both the senseless human tragedy of enslavement and
the cultural triumph of African peoples in the creation of the African
Diaspora.
Clifton's archaeological resources demonstrate the cultural
and familial links between the African peoples of the Caribbean and the
African peoples of the United States. The archaeological resources of
Clifton also incorporate the experiences of Bahamians after the abolition
of enslavement. Archaeological resources tell of Bahamian daily life
through the 1960s. No where else in the Bahamas or the rest of the
Caribbean am I aware of so much New World history compacted into just a
200acre parcel. The archaeological time depth of the Clifton Property
begins at 1000AD-1500AD, begins again in the 1730s, extending through
continuously until the 1960s. It is truly an archaeological treasure.
While the archaeological resources of Clifton Plantation represent a
unique opportunity to study and preserve not just Bahamian, but New World
history as a whole, the experiences of the people who lived and died on
Clifton also make them a spiritual place. As part of the archaeological
remains on the property are the buried loved ones of Lucayan Indians and
enslaved Africans and their ancestors.
Preservation of bone is such in the northern Bahamas that these burials would not be visible to the untrained eye. The outline of a burial pit, the inclusion of grave
goods, human teeth and a small amount of other human bone is probably as
much as remains. The burials are there all the same, and could be easily
missed by those involved in construction activities. It is the practice
of Bahamian and Caribbean people to bury loved ones in houses and
houseyards, around churches, in beach areas, as well as in raised cairns
in fields.
There is no reason to think that a single burial ground or
cemetery exists at the site, but rather, multiple instances of group and
individual burials, in multiple plots scattered across the landscape.
Potentially, any area of the property could be the location of burial
sites. It is inevitable that any number of burials would be desecrated
during massive land-moving activities at the site. Such burials could
only be located through extensive, time-consuming and expensive complete
archaeological excavation of all areas where the subsurface of the land
would be impacted, whether for the creation of the marina or the building
of homes.
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