Abstract:
In 1996, during ground-laying work for the construction of MainReef
Road in Krugersdorp, South Africa, human skeletal remains were
inadvertently uncovered. The identities of the people interred in these
graves were unknown. Since these individuals have never been identified
and the context of the cemetery never confirmed, this study
attempts to identify the remains within their historical context by
using techniques derived from bioarchaeology. Archaeological and
archival information suggests that these individuals were buried in a
pauper’s cemetery on the premises of the Lancaster Gold Mining
Company, and that they were most probably interred somewhere
between 1895 and 1914. Individual osteobiological profiles and possible
indicators of trauma and pathology are identified. Results suggest
a MNI of 19 individuals, representative of African men and women of
mostly young adult and adolescent ages. Infectious disease and
non-specific signs of disease indicate the general poor health and harsh
living and working conditions often associated with migrant labour.
Based on the bioarchaeological findings, the Lancaster sample represents
early migrant workers who moved to the Witwatersrand area
prior to the implementation of the closed-compound system. These
people probably worked on gold mines as unskilled mine labourers
or in the low-income sector in the nearby towns, lived in informal
settlements, and died as paupers. Even though these people remain
unnamed, their remains enable us to reconstruct some aspects of their lives, in some sense giving a voice to a small group of people representative
of the millions of migrant workers who shaped South Africa’s
industrial economy.
