Since we talk about African slave charms, I post this here.
Sailors were always superstitious. This is why we find all sorts of charms and amulets on the shipwrecks.
The time of the buccaneers and pirates also coincides with the time of the slave ships.
Some pirates even specialized in capturing slave ships.
The slaves brought their own beliefs and superstitions. These, in time became the Voodoo, Santeria and Macumba that still go strong in our days.
When we find charms and amulets on pirate ships, we wonder if they belonged to the European pirates who were often former indenturees, we might just as well call that slavery too, or the former African slaves, now turned pirates, who made up more than half of the crew.
Below is the picture of a small brass container found on a pirate shipwreck.
What could be the origin of this container? There is another one about the same size but a bit different.
What might be the use of the container?
From the archaeologist point of view, we would look at the context to give some indication where to search for answers, but here we have a problem. There are 2 pirate shipwrecks close together.
The one pirate was specialized in capturing slave ships.
The other one came from the “South Sea”.
To me the engravings seem to look kind of African origin.
Any suggestions?
