|
The Barbados Cricket Buckle is a repoussé engraving on a belt buckle of a slave playing cricket in Barbados circa 1780–1810. It is believed to be the only known image of a slave playing cricket and the oldest known image depicting cricket outside the British Isles. ''"That the belt buckle depicts the slave, unmistakably in bondage, with bat in hand, suggests that the creator must have detected in their cricketing endeavours the germ of the quest for self-expression, if not liberation."'' Professor Clem Seecharan, Muscular Education. == History == The Buckle was found in a gravel spit in the River Tweed in 1979 and depicts a “well-muscled mulatto probably the offspring of a white overseer and a black slave mother” at the wicket being bowled out. He is carrying a spliceless bat and has a navy slave chain collar around his neck. To his left a wattle and daub slave hut can be seen and to the right a cane crushing windmill by an Roystonea oleracea cabbage palm tree. The engraving is believed to be portraiture although the identity of the slave is unknown.〔 Metallurgical analysis of the Buckle by Oxford University placed its manufacture in the "early Victorian period or before".〔 The earliest dated reference to cricket in Barbados is 1806 however cricket had been played in “all the West Indian islands from a quite early time”. Freed slaves played cricket from mid-18th century and there are reports of plantation owners encouraging slaves to play cricket. Barbados suffered a huge hurricane in October 1780 which obliterated most palms, windmills and slave huts. The Buckle engraving predates that event. However the three stumps indicate a date after 1777 when the middle stump was added to the wicket.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Barbados Cricket Buckle」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|