Investigating Identity and Life Histories: Isotopic Analysis and Historical Documentation of Slave Skeletons Found on the Cape Town Foreshore, South Africa

Isotopic analysis of skeletons excavated during the 1950s has confirmed that they are the remains of shipwreck victims: slaves on board the Portuguese slaving brig Pacquet Real when it sank on 18 May 1818. Twenty-five slaves drowned and the remaining 133 became Prize Negroes at the Cape. The isotopic signatures are consistent with values expected for people living in an African village eating a terrestrially based diet. Analyses of different skeletal elements, i.e., teeth, long bone, and rib, are shown to be a valuable tool in tracing change or consistency in diet during a person's life, because different skeletal elements form at different stages of life and, subsequently, remodel at different rates. A comparison of isotope ratios from different skeletal elements indicates a change in diet in all these individuals, probably coincident with their enslavement. Variation between individuals in the isotopic composition of diets eaten early in life is sufficiently large to deduce heterogeneous origins for the group.