Has slavery always existed? Does it come and go? North American plantation archaeology has become one of the foundations for understanding African American culture from the 1960s. Slavery in Antiquity existed in Greece and Rome on large scales and was essential to making commercial agriculture profitable work. Slavery in the Caribbean showed Europeans how to make a profit from African bodies. Trafficking in human persons today is recorded by the U.S. State Department annually and is regarded as modern slavery. These varying contexts of slavery will be compared in an attempt to understand slavery scientifically.