2007 (Jerome S. Handler) “From Cambay in India to Barbados in the Caribbean: Two Unique Beads from a Plantation Slave Cemetery.” African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter. March.
In the early 1970s, archaeological investigations at Newton plantation in Barbados recovered the skeletal remains of 104 individuals, interred from approximately 1660 to around 1820. Twelve of the burials were associated with close to 900 beads. These beads represented a variety of types, including two distinctive large reddish-orange carnelian beads. Despite the excavation of additional burials at Newton in the late 1990s which also recovered some beads associated with several burials, and considerable archaeological work since the early 1970s in African diasporic sites in the Caribbean and North America (including the massive “African Burial Ground” in New York City, as far as I can ascertain the two Newton specimens are still the only examples of their kind from New World sites. They remain unusual and unique material legacies of the transatlantic slave trade to Britain’s American colonies.