“Baby Shoe Bundle”
leather, string, ribbons, cloth, natural materials
42 x 12 x 8 in. / 106.7 x 30.5 x 20 cm
© 1999

“Sacred Bundle #2″
dirt, rocks, bones, palm fond, waxed nylon
7 x 24 x 20 in. / 18 x 61 x 51 cm
© 1998

“Sacred Bundle #1″
dirt, rocks, bones, palm fond, waxed nylon
10 x 24 x 20 in. / 25.4 x 61 x 51 cm
© 1998

“Bundle Drawing Grid”
natural materials, ink, paper
(original work destroyed as part of the creative process)
© 1998

Found Bundle

Oct., 2008 – Annapolis, Maryland, is a fascinating Colonial city on Chesapeake Bay. Mark Leone of the University of Maryland and his many colleagues have spent years uncovering the diverse and vibrant city of 300 years ago. Their research has yielded intriguing hints of the traditional African beliefs that thrived underground here during the 18th century—caches of artefacts that once formed ritual bundles. Now Matthew Cochran, a doctoral student at University College London, has found an intact one, a clay container about the size of a football found at a depth of 1.2m in Fleet Street, near the state capital building. Part of a stone axe projected from it. While being excavated, a corner of the bundle split open, exposing iron nails and pins inside. X-rays revealed a jumble of iron nails and copper pins, also lead shot. The 25 cm high container bore impressions of the cloth or leather that once formed the outer wrapping of the bundle. Pottery found nearby dates the bundle to about AD 1700. Interestingly, it once lay in a street gutter, which is a strange place for a supposedly clandestine object. Mark Leone points out that magic and witchcraft were commonplace in Annapolis at the time, even among Europeans, so African practices may also have been more in the open than in later times.

The experts are puzzling over the bundle. Stone axe blades were symbols of Shango, the god of thunder and lightning among the Fon and Yoruba of Benin. Metal worked in fire had, and still has, powerful associations for the Mande, Yoruba, and other West African peoples, which may be why the nails and pins were sealed inside clay. Sacred bundles are still widely used by traditional practitioners in West Africa, a way of rallying spiritual powers at times of personal crisis. Presumably the Annapolis bundle belonged to a recent immigrant, who still valued the spiritual beliefs of his or her homeland. This remarkable discovery gives powerful validation of the importance of ritual activity in early African-American communities.

Photo: Matthew M. Palus

ARTIFACT An X-ray, a photograph and a schematic drawing of a clay “bundle” filled with about 300 pieces of metal and a stone axe. The object dates to 1700 and differs from religious caches previously found in Maryland. (NYTimes.com originally published October, 2008)

Univ. of Maryland Archaeologists Find Unique, Early U.S. Relic of African Worship