Cemitério dos Pretos Novos

Coordinates: 22 ° 53 ′ 45.79 "  S , 43 ° 11 ′ 34.61"  W

Cemitério dos Pretos Novos, slave cemetery memorial

The Cemitério dos Pretos Novos , German cemetery of the new blacks , also called Memorial dos Pretos Novos , is a burial place with mass graves for perished slaves from the end of the 18th century from around 1760 during the colonial period, the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve and the 19th century of the Brazilian Empire until around 1830. Today's memorial and research center was built in 1996 in the Bairro Gamboa of the Zona Central of Rio de Janeiro in the area of ​​the harbor district on the historic Gamboa Street. The slave cemetery was not a fenced off area, but ran along the former Friedhofsstraße, which also affects today's Saúde district . The number of those buried there is estimated at 20,000 to 30,000.

Nearby was the port for slave ships in the former district of Valongo (Cais do Valongo), which also served as a transshipment point for the slave traders , the Mercado de Escravos . Many of the black Africans who were brought here did not survive the first few days, and burying them in the slave cemetery was a hygienic measure. The Irish clergyman Robert Walsh (1772-1852) reported in 1828 and the writer Maria Graham (1785-1842). The terrain of the port and cemetery was built over in the course of the urbanization of Rio, so that in recent times on the occasion of the beautification work in Rio de Janeiro human remains have come to light on private property.In 2010, the alleged remains of the pier of the slave ships in Valongo were excavated. The Cais do Valongo have been World Heritage in Brazil since July 2017 .

In addition to the memorial, the Cemitério is also an archaeological research site. Over 5500 bone fragments were exhumed . Since these are not complete skeletons, research relies on dental examinations using strontium isotope analysis . The investigating scientists and research institutions include a. Murilo Quintans Bastos from the Universidade de Brasília , Sheila Mendonça de Souza and Ricardo Ventura Santos from the Escola Nacional de Saúde Publica Sergio Arauca (ENSP) of the Fundação Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz). They found that the origins of Afro-Brazilians from the Atlantic and east coast of Africa are significantly more diverse than is generally assumed, which corresponds to comparable finds from Salvador in Bahia, the other slave center in northern Brazil. The ENSP has set up the research program Por uma antropologia biológica do tráfico de escravos africanos para o Brasil: análise das origens dos remanescentes esqueletais do Cemitério dos Pretos Novos, Rio de Janeiro . By examining the tooth modifications, especially tooth filing, it is possible to distinguish pre-Columbian techniques from the originally African and the modern ones from the Afro-Brazilian, which enables a clearer assignment of finds.

The Memorial dos Pretos Novos is a private foundation belonging to the Instituto de Pesquisa e Memória Pretos Novos (IPN).

literature

Monographs

• Júlio César Medeiros da Silva Pereira: À flor da terra. O cemitério dos pretos novos no Rio de Janeiro. Editora Garamond, IPHAN , Rio de Janeiro 2007, ISBN 978-85-7617-123-2 . (PDF; 1.9 MB; Portuguese).
• Reinaldo Bernardes Tavares: Cemitério dos Pretos Novos, Rio de Janeiro, século XIX: uma tentativa de delimitação espacial. UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro 2012 (also dissertation, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu Nacional, Departamento de Antropologia). (PDF; 11.8 MB; Portuguese).

Science contributions

• Della Collins Cook, Murilo QR Bastos, Sheila MF Mendonça de Souza, Ricardo Ventura Santos, Claudia Rodrigues-Carvalho, Roberto Ventura Santos: Da África ao Cemitério dos Pretos Novos, Rio de Janeiro: un estudo sobre as origens de escravos a partir da anályse de isotopes de estrôncio no esmalte dentário. In: Revista de Arqueologia , 24, 2010, No. 1, pp. 68-97.
• Della Collins Cook, Sheila Mendonça de Souza, Murilo Quintans Bastos, Ricardo Ventura Santos: Cemitério dos Pretos Novos. Questões da escravidão revisitadas. In: Ciencia Hoje , 49, 2012, No. 219, pp. 22-27.

Press

• Tom Phillips: Rio's Cemetery of New Blacks sheds light on horrors of slave trade. In: The Guardian of December 20, 2011 (English).
• Angelika Franz: Cemetery of the Deported. In: Spiegel Online from February 14, 2012.
• Ana Lucia Azevedo: To drama sob o chão da cidade. Análise do Cemitério dos Pretos Novos destaca colossal dimensão da escravidão no Rio. In: O Globo of November 19, 2011 (Portuguese).

Web links

• Portal Arqueológico dos Pretos Novos
• Museus do Rio: Memorial dos Pretos Novos

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mercado de Escravos ( Memento of the original from November 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Portal Arqueológico dos Pretos Novos, [accessed October 30, 2016] (Portuguese). 
2. ^ Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829. London 1830; Boston: Richardson, Lord & Holbrook 1831. ( Volume 1 online , Volume 2 online ).
3. ^ Journal of a voyage to Brazil, and residence there, during part of the years 1821, 1822, 1823. (1824) ( Facsimile online ).
4. ↑ Tom Phillips: Brazilian slave port ruins unearthed in Rio's Olympic facelift. In: The Guardian of March 4, 2011 [accessed October 30, 2016].
5. ↑ Pesquisa Archeológica ( Memento of the original from November 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Portal Arqueológico dos Pretos Novos, [accessed October 30, 2016] (Portuguese). 
6. ↑ Derek Kubaski: Dentes esculpidos pela tradição. In: Gazeta do Povo, February 24, 2012 [accessed October 30, 2016] (Portuguese).