Introduction: A Comparative Approach to Enslavement

Webster, J

doi:10.1093/9780197551295.003.0001

Introduction: A Comparative Approach to Enslavement

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Abstract

This introductory chapter to The Oxford Handbook of the Comparative Archaeology of Slavery sets out the rationale and outlines the key concepts and questions central to the book. In advocating a comparative approach, this chapter offers a framework of cornerstone questions and concepts for readers to keep in mind and references two foundational studies that addressed slavery from an explicitly comparative perspective: Moses Finley’s Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology and Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death. Summary overviews are then provided for each of the seventeen main chapters, introducing their themes, contributors, and case studies. In most cases, these chapters have been coproduced by teams of scholars, each of whom brings to the table their expertise in the history and archaeology of slavery in a specific temporal and geographic context. The case studies they provide individually form the basis for a collective comparative analysis of aspects of the systems and practices of slavery, and the lived experiences of the enslaved, across time and space.