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Analysis Of Written In Bone By Sally Walker

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Can one imagine living in colonial Maryland during the 1600 and 1700’s, dealing with slavery and inequality, and fighting off soldiers to save one’s life? For many in those times, this image was a reality. The book Written in Bone by Sally Walker takes the reader through the scientific, historic, and literary aspects of the daily life of the inhabitants of Jamestown and Chesapeake Bay. The novel uncovers the lives of the settlers in colonial Maryland by exploring ancient ruins and cemeteries and analyzing them in hopes to find an insight into the past. Through extensive research and investigation of graves, scientists are able to receive lots of data about the people living at the time. The author presented the information about the …show more content…

The historians involved in the excavation of the archaeological sites at colonial Maryland and Chesapeake Bay discovered the remains of many people around the Jamestown area, all with very unique backgrounds, social standings, and lives. Some of the corpses belonged to slaves and servants, who lived a life full of hard work, and who were treated with abuse and disrespect. Lots of these souls were buried messily, with no intention of preserving or caring for the corpse. This is shown in the book through the story of an indentured servant. The author states, “Like Jamestown’s earliest settlers, the English who came to Maryland hoped to find a wealthier life in North America, but they weren’t looking for gold or silver. They planned to make money by growing and selling tobacco.” (Walker, 54) Although it was a very popular source of income for settlers in Jamestown, tobacco is a very labor-intensive crop that requires many workers to plant, cultivate, and sell. A corpse was found in a trash pit in the house of a tobacco farmer. The body appeared to be shoved carelessly into a small hole with a shard of broken pottery. Through testing, the scientists and historians concluded that the skeleton most likely belonged to an indentured servant. “In short, indentured servants did any job the master demanded. And if they died before their term of service ended, their remains met with whatever fate their master chose. At times, masters “treated their dead servants like a waste product,” said Luckenbach.” (Walker,

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“ ‘And now famine beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face that nothing was spared to maintain life and to do those things which seem incredible, as to dig up dead corpse out of graves and to eat them, and some have licked up the blood which hath fallen from their weak fellows’ “, reads a firsthand account from George Percy who was an eyewitness of cannibalism in Jamestown, during the “Starving Time” in 1609-1610. In the spring of May 1607, three English ships carried about 110 Englishmen who sailed to the mouth of a substantial bay on the coast of Virginia known as the Chesapeake Bay. Additionally, this was the first permanent English colony/settlement in the New World, United States. However, little did they know that the first year

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Written in Bone is a work describing the past lives of Maryland and Jamestown colonists through forensic analysis. The past is truly written in the bones of people long ago. Although it is closely intertwined with the academic subjects of Literature, Science, and Social Studies, the book is most exactly related to history. Textual evidence proves this statement. After reading Sally M. Walker’s Written in Bone, one can understand this by looking at the book 's formatting, the message sent by the author, and the actual content.

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