The abolition myth: how slavery survived by changing shape

That is the basis of new research led by Dr Rui Gomes Coelho from our Department of Archaeology. His latest work uses archaeology to examine the evolution of slavery beyond the age of abolition.

Rebuilt, not abolished

Drawing on cases from Brazil, the United States, Australia, Angola, Germany and Spain, the research shows that convict labour, colonial forced labour and contemporary human trafficking are not leftovers from an older world.

Their roots lay in the transatlantic slave trade of the 15th and 19th centuries and the related European colonial systems.  Both enslaved and exploited millions.

However, post-abolition, these were still built into modern societies, and shaped by race, ethnicity and gender. In some cases, such as in Nazi Germany, these were used as a genocidal practice.

In places such as contemporary Spain, sexual exploitation relies on human trafficking networks that affect primarily foreign, poor and racialised women, echoing colonial mechanisms that emerged to enforce inequalities.

The research argues that the idea of “modern slavery” as an oddity that will fade hides how capitalism and empire keep producing unfree workers.

Specific materialities needed for this process, from plantation layouts and company villages to brothel architectures, made subjugation routine, and therefore tolerable within a society that considers itself liberal and post-slavery.

By analysing these material traces, archaeology shows that there is continuity from the last decades of plantation slavery until today.

Why it matters

For unfree labour to be accepted, the team argues, it must first be made to seem normal, anchored in physical things: the layout of a plantation, a company village, a prison.

Archaeology can recover those traces and connect cases that would otherwise seem unrelated.

Recording these places, they suggest, is not neutral. It is a way of bearing witness, and of insisting that unfree labour remains central to the world we live in now.

Find out more

• Read the chapter, “Archaeologies of Unfree Labour and Liberal Fantasies of Abolition”, in The Oxford Handbook of the Comparative Archaeology of Slavery (Oxford University Press), edited by Jane Webster and Mark Leone. The handbook is available online, with a print edition to follow.
• The chapter was led by Dr Rui Gomes Coelho, in our Department of Archaeology, with co-authors based in Spain, Germany, Australia, Portugal and the United States.
• Find out more about Dr Rui Gomes Coelho’s work. He is also a member and Co-Director of Durham’s Centre for Heritage (CHeri).
• Our Department of Archaeology is ranked fifth in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 and third in the Complete University Guide 2027.
• Visit our Archaeology web pages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. 

Image information and insights:

• Image shows the Monte Alegre plantation, Barra do Piraí, Brazil (credit Rui Gomes Coelho).
• Nineteenth century plantations such as this one in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are key to understanding the materiality and mechanics of unfree labour beyond the age of abolition.
• It is a simple plantation layout, yet carefully designed. It is centred on a “functional square” that brings together the planter's house, the quarters where enslaved workers lived, and the plaza where they worked.
• It shows how planters used spatial design and routine surveillance to naturalise and legitimise slavery on the eve of formal abolition, mechanisms that were later perfected in post-abolition processes.
• Built material environments like this one are key to understanding the sustained persistence of unfree labour, and strategies to make it look normal in “liberal” societies.