SB County Archaeological Society Free Lecture

Archaeological Perspectives on the 19th-Century “Illegal” Slave Trade along the Rio Pongo, Guinea, West Africa

This free public lecture by University of South Carolina Professor Emeritus Ken Kelly, Ph.D., is presented by the Santa Barbara County Archaeological Society.

In the early nineteenth century, most European nations began a pivot away from participation in the trade in captive Africans obtained on the West African coast. However, this did not end the slave trade. Instead, the trade continued to be practiced by profit-seekers operating outside of formal international trade. This “illegal” trade was manifestly different from the earlier seventeenth- and eighteenth-century trade, and had profound impacts on areas that had previously been somewhat marginal to the slave trade. Dr. Kelly’s presentation offers some of the first archaeological views of this dynamic and poorly understood setting.