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The New York African Burial Ground Project: An Examination of Enslaved Lives, A Construction of Ancestral Ties

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... I argue that the severely marginalized social positions of Black persons in historical contexts often restricted their agency to perform burial rites that emphasized the former personhood of their deceased kin (Patterson 1982). Consequently, burial processes of Black decedents were led mainly by those who conceived of decedents' remains as objects that did not require individual reverence or burial in consecrated ground, making unmarked mass graves a salient feature of African Diaspora burial grounds (Blakey 1998). I also argue that Black decedents were conceived of as unworthy of sustained protection, leaving their remains vulnerable to unburial and dislocation. ...
... Anonymity and readily displaced decedents are salient features of historic Afro-descendant burials across sites of the African Diaspora (Blakey 1998;Bruwelheide et al. 2020;Fett 2016;Okumura 2011;Pearson et al. 2011;Wasterlain, Neves, and Ferreira 2015). One example among countless others is the burial site of Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American poet, whose precise burial site remains unresolved in modern history. 1 Similarly, the grave of now-celebrated anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston lay unmarked for over a decade until writer Alice Walker identified and marked the site with a headstone in 1973, demonstrating Walker's conception of the burial as requiring material markers that signaled Hurston's former personhood (Hill Collins 1990, 4). 2 Although this linkage across diaspora sites is clear, there was and continues to be considerable variation in socioeconomic structures and geographic landscapes across the African Diaspora. ...
... The shifting power dynamics that can produce disparate burial outcomes reveal that the ascribed value for the same set of remains can be contested. It also shows how apathetic or negative conceptions can result in extreme consequences (e.g., burial desecration, black-market sale), a phenomenon that is salient for numerous Black decedents (Blakey 1998). ...
... En base a los parámetros conceptuales y metodológicos planteados desde conamune-Carchi, y de forma específica desde Barbarita Lara, la propuesta arqueológica histórica de carácter colaborativo y con estándares éticos de interpretación del pasado, en el Jardín de la Memoria Martina Carrillo, propuso resguardar el bienestar de las comunidades y sus creencias para las cuales el cementerio es el espacio sagrado donde habitan los ancestros. Este no es un caso único en el contexto de la arqueología de la diáspora africana, ejemplos relevantes incluyen el African Burial Ground (Cementerio Africano) en Nueva York, Estados Unidos (Blakey, 1997(Blakey, , 1998(Blakey, , 2008 y el Cementerio dos Pretos Novos (Cementerio de los Negros Nuevos) en Río de Janeiro, Brasil (Da Silva Pereira, 2007). Estos proyectos muestran cómo la arqueología ha servido de mediadora entre la comunidad afrodescendiente, el Estado, gobiernos seccionales, proyectos de desarrollo urbano y otros grupos. ...
... En base a los parámetros conceptuales y metodológicos planteados desde conamune-Carchi, y de forma específica desde Barbarita Lara, la propuesta arqueológica histórica de carácter colaborativo y con estándares éticos de interpretación del pasado, en el Jardín de la Memoria Martina Carrillo, propuso resguardar el bienestar de las comunidades y sus creencias para las cuales el cementerio es el espacio sagrado donde habitan los ancestros. Este no es un caso único en el contexto de la arqueología de la diáspora africana, ejemplos relevantes incluyen el African Burial Ground (Cementerio Africano) en Nueva York, Estados Unidos (Blakey, 1997(Blakey, , 1998(Blakey, , 2008 y el Cementerio dos Pretos Novos (Cementerio de los Negros Nuevos) en Río de Janeiro, Brasil (Da Silva Pereira, 2007). Estos proyectos muestran cómo la arqueología ha servido de mediadora entre la comunidad afrodescendiente, el Estado, gobiernos seccionales, proyectos de desarrollo urbano y otros grupos. ...
... En base a los parámetros conceptuales y metodológicos planteados desde conamune-Carchi, y de forma específica desde Barbarita Lara, la propuesta arqueológica histórica de carácter colaborativo y con estándares éticos de interpretación del pasado, en el Jardín de la Memoria Martina Carrillo, propuso resguardar el bienestar de las comunidades y sus creencias para las cuales el cementerio es el espacio sagrado donde habitan los ancestros. Este no es un caso único en el contexto de la arqueología de la diáspora africana, ejemplos relevantes incluyen el African Burial Ground (Cementerio Africano) en Nueva York, Estados Unidos (Blakey, 1997(Blakey, , 1998(Blakey, , 2008 y el Cementerio dos Pretos Novos (Cementerio de los Negros Nuevos) en Río de Janeiro, Brasil (Da Silva Pereira, 2007). Estos proyectos muestran cómo la arqueología ha servido de mediadora entre la comunidad afrodescendiente, el Estado, gobiernos seccionales, proyectos de desarrollo urbano y otros grupos. ...
Article
Este artículo explora las estrategias históricas a partir de los procesos de memoria en base a las luchas de cimarronas, mujeres afrodescendientes del Valle del Chota-Mira (Ecuador), en el trabajo de conamune (Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Negras del Ecuador)-Capítulo Carchi. Este proceso nace desde el aprendizaje sobre Barbarita Lara, una de las gestoras y lideresas de conamune y su aplicación en el trabajo emprendido con dos investigadoras en arqueología y antropología cultural, principalmente en el proyecto de colaboración arqueológica y antropológica Jardín de la Memoria Martina Carrillo, en el territorio ancestral afroecuatoriano del Valle del Chota-Mira (provincia del Carchi, Ecuador). La articulación teórica y metodología de este trabajo se teje a partir de prácticas gestadas en conversaciones y propuestas de reparación histórica y transmisión de la palabra. Las acciones de las cimarronas explican la epistemología sobre la cual se desarrolla una memoria política a través de la tradición oral y las actividades cotidianas, en la lógica de procesos de sanación, fortalecimiento identitario de las mujeres afrodescendientes, defensa de sus derechos humanos y resistencia al legado colonial del racismo y la violencia de género.
... [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Meanwhile, archaeologists have stressed the importance and value of involving descendant communities in study design and research, as modeled on the New York African Burial Ground Project and others. [15][16][17][18] The island of St Helena in the South Atlantic played a crucial role in the history of the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition. Between 1840 and 1867, St Helena received approximately 27,000 ''liberated Africans'' who had been rescued from slave ships by the Royal Navy ( Figure 1; Table S1). ...
... We used five different reference datasets for our analyses: 1) an mtDNA reference panel containing frequency distributions of mtDNA hapologroups across 47 regions in Africa compiled by Silva et al. 16 (Table S8), 2) a Y-chromosome panel containing frequency distributions of Y-chromosome haplogroups across five regions in sub-Saharan Africa compiled by Poznik et al. 17 (Table S9) (Table S10). [19][20][21] The genome-wide datasets were merged using Plink 28,29 , removing related individuals and individuals with >3% missing genotypes. ...
... While historians and archaeologists have known about the broad patterns of the Atlantic slave trade, including those areas in Africa from which trading countries exported enslaved individuals, specific origins for skeletal remains recovered from archaeological sites in the United States can rarely be determined. A particular African cultural group is sometimes suggested by housing, foods, religious and personal artifacts, preserved historic documents, mortuary practices, and other cultural indicators if such information is available (Blakey, 1998;DeCorse, 1999;Fennell, 2011;Ogundiran & Falola, 2007;Singleton, 1995Singleton, , 1999. Traditionally, features of the skull and dentition have been used to assess the ancestral origins of skeletal remains (Blakey and Rankin-Hill, 2009;Gill & Rhine, 1990;Jantz & Ousley, 2005;Spradley, 2006), but these methods do not distinguish first generation Africans from those born in North America of African parents. ...
... Intentional dental modification has arguably been the only other means used to determine recent arrival to the Americas on the basis of skeletal remains. This practice has been noted in studies from North and Central America, and the Caribbean (Blakey, 1998;Blakey & Rankin-Hill, 2009;Handler, Corruccini, & Mutaw, 1982;Handler, 1994;Ortner, 1966;Price et al., 2012;Schroeder, Haviser, & Price, 2014;Stewart & Groome, 1968;Tiesler, 2002). However, the historic occurrence of distinctive dental modification patterns overlaps across African regions, varies through time, and has not been studied adequately to allow a definitive determination of regional origin. ...
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Objectives: Stable isotope values for historic period human remains from Elmina, Ghana, are compared to isotope data from 18th- and 19th-century North American sites as a test case for examining African origins and identifying first generation Africans in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Materials and methods: Stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotope values were measured in skeletal remains. Values from the cosmopolitan port city of Elmina provide the first available reference data from Africa during this time period and region. These values serve as a proxy for West African groups in general which are statistically compared to Euro-Americans and African Americans. Results: Elmina carbon isotope values are relatively higher than those of North Americans, and African Americans show greater statistical similarity to West Africans. Elmina nitrogen isotope values are higher than those of North Americans. Elmina oxygen isotope values are notably higher than those in all Mid-Atlantic North American sites in this study. Discussion: Similarity in carbon isotope values between Elmina and African Americans suggests commonalities in food availability or food preferences between these groups. Elevated nitrogen isotope values in Elmina individuals support the documented reliance of the local population on marine dietary resources at this coastal port. While carbon and nitrogen isotopes provide insight into foodways, oxygen isotope data, sourced from drinking water, provide better geographical information. The higher oxygen values from Elmina not only differentiate this group from North American Mid-Atlantic sites, but also make it possible to identify outliers at these sites as potential recent arrivals from West Africa.
... [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Meanwhile, archaeologists have stressed the importance and value of involving descendant communities in study design and research, as modeled on the New York African Burial Ground Project and others. [15][16][17][18] The island of St Helena in the South Atlantic played a crucial role in the history of the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition. Between 1840 and 1867, St Helena received approximately 27,000 ''liberated Africans'' who had been rescued from slave ships by the Royal Navy ( Figure 1; Table S1). ...
Article
Full-text available
The island of St Helena played a crucial role in the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade. Strategically located in the middle of the South Atlantic, it served as a staging post for the Royal Navy and reception point for enslaved Africans who had been "liberated" from slave ships intercepted by the British. In total, St Helena received approximately 27,000 liberated Africans between 1840 and 1867. Written sources suggest that the majority of these individuals came from West Central Africa, but their precise origins are unknown. Here, we report the results of ancient DNA analyses that we conducted as part of a wider effort to commemorate St Helena's liberated Africans and to restore knowledge of their lives and experiences. We generated partial genomes (0.1-0.5×) for 20 individuals whose remains had been recovered during archaeological excavations on the island. We compared their genomes with genotype data for over 3,000 present-day individuals from 90 populations across sub-Saharan Africa and conclude that the individuals most likely originated from different source populations within the general area between northern Angola and Gabon. We also find that the majority (17/20) of the individuals were male, supporting a well-documented sex bias in the latter phase of the transatlantic slave trade. The study expands our understanding of St Helena's liberated African community and illustrates how ancient DNA analyses can be used to investigate the origins and identities of individuals whose lives were bound up in the story of slavery and its abolition.
... By combining evolutionary theory with insights from the social sciences, our research demonstrates how socioculturally influenced environments are both major contributors and the biggest barriers to good health even in the face of RCC events and other significant environmental challenges. Social forms that promote institutionalized inequality alongside the indisputable consequences of colonialism, chattel slavery, racism, economic inequality, structural violence, and all types of discrimination have been key determinants of health over human history (89,90). ...
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Climate change is a significant threat to human health, especially for societies already confronted with rising social inequality, political and economic uncertainty, and a cascade of concurrent environmental challenges. Archaeological data about climate and environmental change provide a source of evidence about the potential challenges we face and the long-term outcomes of different short-term adaptive strategies employed in the past. Bioarchaeologists and paleopathologists study human health in the Holocene using evidence from archaeological human skeletons and mummified remains. Our research provides a basis for understanding the health impacts of past climate and environmental change within an evolutionary and biocultural framework. Here we provide bioarchaeological case studies from the published literature and discuss their relevance to research priorities outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We discuss the impact of environmental marginalization, famine and nutritional insufficiency, infectious disease, violence, and migration in the past. Although the magnitude and the pace of current global warming exceed the parameters of climate change experienced by past societies, bioarchaeology provides valuable insights into how variation in human historical and socio-cultural circumstances shaped epidemiological patterns across the millennia. It also provides clarity on the constraints of modernity, including limits to mobility and increasingly high levels of structural inequality. By demonstrating how past human societies perceived and experimented with solutions to climate and environmental challenges, bioarchaeology contributes to current prediction, planning, and policy-making efforts for a more equitable and sustainable future.
... An edited volume and a journal issue present research on intersectional colonialism (Frink & Weedman, 2005;Matackney & Palmer, 2016), including Spencer-Wood's (2016) explicitly intersectional article gendering external and internal colonialism and conceptualizing patriarchal economic colonialism, patriarchal domestic colonialism and patriarchal sexual colonialism. Research on African-American lifeways and power dynamics has developed from ungendered (Otto, 1980) to sometimes considering gender Blakey, 1998;Ferguson, 1992;LaRoche, 1994;Orser, 2001b;Singleton, 1999, except three ungendered chapters by Deetz, Emerson and Chappelle), to publications focusing on gender roles, identities, relationships and power dynamics (Delle, 2000;Edwards-Ingram, 2001;Galle & Young, 2004;Wilkie, 2000a;, including some explicitly using Black feminist intersectional theory (Battle-Baptiste, Brandon, 2004;Flewellen, 2017;Franklin, 2001b;González-Tennant, 2018;Morris, 2017). ...
Article
This special thematic issue includes some of the papers presented in two symposia on intersectionality theory and research that were presented at annual conferences of the Society for Historical Archaeology in 2017 and 2018. This introduction provides the historical context of the development of intersectionality theory, and the development of research and theorizing of intersectional identities and power dynamics in historical archaeology. Articles in this issue provide innovative theorizing and research that go beyond Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory, which analyzes the erasure and invisibility of the identity of Black women by intermeshed racism and sexism in the legal system administering anti-discrimination law.
... Bioarchaeological studies have examined the nefarious effects of enslavement in the Americas. They have also narrated life histories to humanize African diasporic communities (e.g., Blakey 1998Blakey , 2001Barrett and Blakey 2011;Dent 2017;Shuler 2011;Shuler et al. 2019). ...
Chapter
In this chapter, I bring necropolitics to the fore. As developed by postcolonial theorist Achille Mbebme, necropolitics grows out of Michel Foucault’s earlier statements about biopower (and biopolitics). Georges Canguilhem’s philosophizing about the normal and pathological served as a prelude to those conversations. Subsequent scholars’ readings of biopower examine it in relation to the Holocaust specifically and genocide more generally. Yet, so many prior treatments, while crucial for intellectual development, rely on discourse analysis. To fully gauge the significance of genocide, biopower, and necropolitics—to wrap one’s brain around the enormity of numbers, the spatial extent of destruction, the effects of interpersonal and structure violences—discursive analysis requires grounding with material evidence. Researchers of contextualized human remains have a unique contribution to make. Here I review mortuary and bioarchaeological studies of genocide in the twentieth century. I also discuss how forensic anthropologists have materialized necropolitical processes. Their excavations of mass graves and identification of the corpses therein, while not without issues, do extend Mbembe’s ideas about dead bodies in important ways. Less clear is how biopower and necropolitics apply to ancient and historic case studies. While bioarchaeological studies attest to structural and interpersonal violences in the past, the phenomena that Foucault and Mbembe concern themselves with signal modernity and not antiquity. For my part, I discuss bioarchaeological and biohistorical studies of enslavement and violent settler colonialism in the nineteenth century. I also tie these examples to the subfield’s origins, tracking complicity from inception into contemporary classrooms.
... Studies of contested heritage have focused on studying the sites in which there are multiple actors involved and the material objects themselves can be of controversial character. In that sense contested heritage can relate to topics such as post-colonial ownership of artefacts [22,101], deciding what is and is not valuable to preserve [113], and how to treat cultural heritage in light of tourism and increased public interest [71]. ...
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This article brings together two distinct, but related perspectives on playful museum experiences: Critical play and hybrid design. The article explores the challenges involved in combining these two perspectives, through the design of two hybrid museum experiences that aimed to facilitate critical play with/in the collections of the Museum of Yugoslavia and the highly contested heritage they represent. Based on reflections from the design process as well as feedback from test users we describe a series of challenges: Challenging the norms of visitor behaviour, challenging the role of the artefact, and challenging the curatorial authority. In conclusion we outline some possible design strategies to address these challenges.
... Reading DNA ancestry portraits against the grain Sarah Abel 1 In recent decades, developments in the field of molecular anthropology have led scientists to regard the genome as a kind of biological archive, which can give access to aspects of human histories that are not retained in collective memory or written records. It has been proposed, for instance, that genetic studies may contribute to shedding light on the regional and ethnic origins of Africans displaced by the transatlantic slave trade, helping to restore ancestral links that were forcibly erased by the dehumanizing process of enslavement and the imposition of racial categories (Blakey 1998;Jackson & Borgelin 2010). A corollary of these scientific developments has been the emergence of a direct-to-consumer DNA ancestry-testing industry, which invites members of the public to learn about their 'ethnic' composition and family history through the lens of their genome (Nash 2004;Abu El-Haj 2012;Bonniol & Darlu 2014;Nelson 2016). ...
... 18th century African-descended individuals unearthed from the site (Blakey, 1998;). This project conducted osteological analyses that revealed important details about population demography Jackson et al., 2009;Rankin-Hill et al., 2009), labor activities, lived experiences (Wilczak, Watkins, Null, & Blakey, 2009), as well as nutrition and disease amongst the buried individuals (Mack, Goodman, Blakey, & Mayes, 2009;Null, Blakey, Shujaa, Rankin-Hill, & Carrington, 2009). ...
Article
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In 2013, the burials of 36 individuals of putative African ancestry were discovered during renovation of the Gaillard Center in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. The Charleston community facilitated a bioarchaeological and mitogenomic study to gain insights into the lives of these unknown persons, referred to as the Anson Street Ancestors, including their ancestry, health, and lived experiences in the 18th century.
... In the 1990s researchers on the New York African Burial Ground Project (NYABGP) were among the first to apply ancient DNA analysis to the study of historical skeletal populations (Blakey 1998(Blakey , 2001Mack and Blakey 2004). 2 The project focused on human remains exhumed from a colonial-era burial ground in New York City, which is now the site of the African Burial Ground National Monument, located at the corners of Duane and Elk Streets in lower Manhattan. The research design was developed through systematic consultation with representatives of New York's African-descendant community, following the African American tradition of scholar activism (Drake 1980) and developments in public engagement (Forman 1995). ...
Article
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In molecular anthropology, DNA is regarded as a kind of biological "archive" that can provide unprecedented insights into human histories. More recently, genetic analysis has been used to explore the origins of African-descendant populations in the Americas. This idea has also been adopted by a burgeoning DNA ancestry testing industry that portrays these technologies as a means of restoring ethnic links effaced by slavery. Despite the popularity of these tests, critics have raised persistent scientific and ethical concerns about how far genomic data can, or should, be used to reconstruct social identities. In this paper, we take stock of these developments, assessing the combined influence of scientists, businesses, and members of the public in defining the scope of genetics for restoring ethnic links between African and African American populations. Drawing on perspectives from social and molecular anthropology, we examine the challenges of translating genetic findings into historically significant terms without reifying the correspondence between genetic and social identities, and we explore how personalized DNA ancestry results are being negotiated and mobilized by test takers "on the ground." Finally, we consider the responsibilities of anthropologists in addressing ongoing biocolonial tendencies and power disparities in the production of genetic ancestry.
... The Valle da Gafaria's osteological collection is extremely important for slavery studies. Not only are there few cemeteries of enslaved people in the world (Cedar Grove cemetery: Martin, Magennis, & Rose, 1987;South Carolina plantation: Rathbun, 1987;Pretos Novos in Brazil: Cook, Bastos, Lopes, Mendonça de Souza, & Santos, 2012;Pereira, 2008; slave burial population in Barbados: Corruccini, Handler, Mutaw, & Lange, 1982;; the black slave cemetery from Montserrat, West Indies: Mann, Meadows, Bass, & Watters, 1987; the cemetery of the "Waterloo" plantation in Suriname: Khudabux, 1991; the cemetery in Campeche in Mexico: Tiesler, 2006;Le Morne Cemetery, Mauritius: Appleby et al., 2012; and the African Burial Ground in the city of New York: Blakey, 1998), but also, until now, Lagos is the older sample to be discovered and studied in the world. ...
Article
In 2009, an excavation carried out in Valle da Gafaria, Lagos, Portugal, allowed for the recovery of the skeletal remains of 158 individuals buried in a dump used during the 15th‐17th centuries. The archaeological context of the findings, the presence of African items associated with the skeletons, the skulls’ morphology, and the presence of intentionally modified teeth, suggest that these individuals were African enslaved individuals. The aim of this work is to analyse how these men, women, and children were inhumed according to their sex and age (adults vs. non‐adults). Adults were mostly buried in supine position (54.3%). However, more women (27.3%) than men (9.5%) were inhumed in prone position. In non‐adults, the most common positions were the supine (36.2%) and the lateralis (38.8%). The foetal position was more commonly found in non‐adults (25.0%) than adults (4.3%, only women). Both adults (79.4%) and non‐adults (80.0%) were mostly buried with an orientation other than the typical Christian canonical practice at the time (head to west and feet to east). More non‐adult individuals (66.7%) appear to have been buried with care than adults (38.8%). Regarding both the orientation and the burial care, no differences were found between the sexes. Pieces of evidence of having been tied were found in four females, one male, and one non‐adult individual. All these results support the hypothesis that these individuals were discarded, bringing light to the way these African enslaved individuals were treated even at their death.
... A very prominent example of the study of children's skeletal remains comes from the African Burial Ground Project in New York City (BLAKEY, 1998;BARRETT & BLAKEY, 2011). The African Burial Ground was a cemetery that was in use from the later 17th century until the end of the 18th century and likely contained up to twenty thousand burials, mostly of enslaved Africans and African-Americans. ...
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Os Estados Unidos é uma nação relativamente jovem, tendo sido estabelecida há menos de 250 anos, mas, neste breve período, o país passou por um crescimento dramático e uma transformação significativa. As crianças sempre foram centrais na cultura americana, e as fontes históricas e populares reconhecem o poder e a importância das crianças nas famílias, nas comunidades e na nação, assim como seu papel fundamental em influenciar a mudança intergeracional. O trabalho arqueológico focado nas crianças está se tornando cada vez mais comum e ilustra como as crianças moldaram e refletiram os valores e ideais dentro das famílias e da nação como um todo. Sítios domésticos, instituições para crianças e estudos mortuários são áreas proeminentes do trabalho atual e das perspectivas futuras na arqueologia da infância nos Estados Unidos.
... 'Remembering' in these spaces may include social processes of events and bodily practices (Connerton 1989), which in turn produce social identities anchored by places (Hoelscher and Alderman 2004, 349). In Black geographies, ritual performance (Connerton 1989) activates and delineates these commemorative landscapes, which in turn honours enslaved ancestors and burial grounds (Blakey 1998). In freedom colonies, these performances, 'reenacted through bodily practice and speech acts' surface when descendants of freedom colonies gather and commemorate ancestors and their heritage during regularly scheduled events (Madison 2011, 154). ...
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From 1870 to 1920, previously enslaved Texans founded more than 540 ‘freedom colonies.’ Since then, descendants left behind seemingly intangible Black geographies where evidence of their placemaking has disappeared. However, in Shankleville, Texas, settlement founder descendants sustained attachments to, and stewardship of, their communities, even as the population decreased and physical manifestations of place dissipated. To understand how place attachments are sustained in Shankleville, I analyze descendants’ stories, storytelling practices, and the spaces in which these performances take place. In these counterpublic spaces, descendants reproduce an identity rooted in a foundational story about their freedom-seeking, fugitive slave founders. Their ritual performances of these stories at a sacred spring in Shankleville cement attachments and catalyze descendants’ involvement in heritage conservation and preservation projects. The meanings and values informing these commemorative practices disrupt commonly held assumptions about Black community formation, Black heritage, and what constitutes legitimate preservation practice.
... The archaeology of historic African American communities throughout the Americas lends to a burgeoning field of study with a culmination of work in history, anthropology, sociology, and Africana studies (see Blakey, 2001). With sites dating from the 18 th to 20 th Centuries, these studies include skeletal material from enslaved plantation laborers in the US and Caribbean (Corruccini et al. 1985;Rathbun, 1987), enslaved industrial iron-work laborers , enslaved urban populations in the South (Owsley et al., 1987(Owsley et al., , 1990, antebellum urban free Black African Americans in the North (Crist et al., 1997;Rankin-Hill, 1997;Blakey, 1998), reconstruction and postreconstruction rural Black African Americans (Rose, 1985, Shogren et al., 1989, Dockall et al, 1996, and reconstruction and post-reconstruction urban Black African Americans (Beck, 1980;Blakey and Beck, 1982;Condon et al., 1998;Davidson, 1999;Hazel, 2000;Crist and Washburn, 2000;Tine, 2000;Peter et al., 2000;Davidson et al., 2002;Davidson, 2004;Wilson, 2005). Bioarchaeological techniques lend significant insight into the complex interactions between these population groups and their social and physical world. ...
Thesis
A child’s growth rate is perhaps the best means to gauge a population’s health and nutritional status. The growth and development of human populations is a direct result of genetic and non-genetic factors acting in conjunction to alter growth trajectories and developmental timing. The purpose of this study is to address the non-genetic factors of human growth and to examine the effect of structural violence in the form of environmental instability and economic disparity on human growth patterns. To do so, this study examines the growth rates of historical African American subadults from Freedman’s Cemetery in Dallas, Texas, Cedar Grove Cemetery in Cedar Grove, Arkansas, and a series of two cemeteries in Chatham County, Georgia, for evidence of growth stunting compared to modern population standards. This thesis addresses the historical circumstance of these populations in relation to its biological consequence on growth and discusses these results in light of literature within structural violence, developmental health, and resilience theory. Results indicate populations of historic African Americans at the turn of the 20th Century underwent episodes of stunting early in life, followed by a stabilization of growth shortly after the weaning period, and catch-up growth that leads to adolescent and terminal adult stature similar to modern comparative populations. Given the immense burden of racism, structural violence, and demographic change, it is surprising that these populations of historic African Americans do not show increased levels of stunting throughout the growth period. These results corroborate recent literature in human biology, economics, and skeletal biology, and expound the need for continued research into the disentanglement of the genetic, cultural, and environmental components of human growth.
... The New York African Burial Ground project fully integrated the local community in both the research design process and the interpretation of the site. Although this project is not unique, and similar activities are occurring in many places around the world, the community engagement undertaken by the New York African Burial Ground project is particularly well documented through traditional scholarly articles (Blakey 1998;LaRoche and Blakey 1997;Mack and Blakey 2004), as well as through web sources sponsored by the National Park Service (www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm). These sources can be incorporated into class presentations, discussions, and projects at a variety of levels. ...
... The New York African Burial Ground project fully integrated the local community in both the research design process and the interpretation of the site. Although this project is not unique, and similar activities are occurring in many places around the world, the community engagement undertaken by the New York African Burial Ground project is particularly well documented through traditional scholarly articles (Blakey 1998;LaRoche and Blakey 1997;Mack and Blakey 2004), as well as through web sources sponsored by the National Park Service (www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm). These sources can be incorporated into class presentations, discussions, and projects at a variety of levels. ...
... The New York African Burial Ground project fully integrated the local community in both the research design process and the interpretation of the site. Although this project is not unique, and similar activities are occurring in many places around the world, the community engagement undertaken by the New York African Burial Ground project is particularly well documented through traditional scholarly articles (Blakey 1998;LaRoche and Blakey 1997;Mack and Blakey 2004), as well as through web sources sponsored by the National Park Service (www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm). These sources can be incorporated into class presentations, discussions, and projects at a variety of levels. ...
... En 1991, durante la construcción de una oficina federal, se encontraron los restos de más de 420 afroamericanos, esclavos y libres, en una zona que formaba parte de un gran cementerio de afroamericanos que pudo albergar los restos de entre 10 000 y 20 000 personas. Aunque el sitio era conocido por las fuentes documentales, el descubrimiento y los posteriores trabajos arqueológicos y antropológicos levantaron fuertes protestas entre la comunidad afroamericana, que se sintió discriminada con la toma de decisiones y finalmente pudo decidir dónde y quiénes estudiarían los restos, así como su destino final (La Rouch y Blakey, 1997;Blakey, 1998;Perry y Blakey, 1999). En 2006 el sitio fue declarado monumento nacional y se creó un museo conmemorativo que se abrió al público en 2010 con el nombre de African Burial Ground Visitors Center. ...
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La mar forma parte de la vida de los seres humanos desde tiempos inmemoriales. Debido a eso posee las infinitas evocaciones que se desprenden de toda relación humana. En sus aguas se encuentran los restos de miles de embarcaciones y de aquellos que se hundieron con ellas. La mar es, por lo tanto, un espacio poliédrico y, como tal, un espacio simbólico y funerario, de modo que el respeto a los restos humanos que alberga debería ser un imperativo ético para cualquier actividad que allí se realice. En este artículo se expone el contexto particular en que se encuentran los restos humanos en pecios históricos, las circunstancias que los rodean y los motivos de una situación que los aboca a su destrucción, la cual resulta más compleja de lo que aparenta a simple vista. / The sea has always been a key part of human life and thus it possesses endless evocations on which all human relationships are based. Its waters contain the remains of thousands of ships and all of those who perished with them. The sea is therefore a polyhedral space and, as such, it is also a symbolic burial space. For this reason, respect for the human remains that it contains should be an ethical imperative for any human activity carried out in it. In this paper we discuss the specific context in which human remains are found in historic shipwrecks, and the circumstances and reasons that lead to their destruction, which is more complex than would appear at first sight.
... Educational activities during slavery were thus more diverse, flexible, and contingent than the rubric "schooling" could ever encompass, even more so because regimes of slavery varied across the Diaspora and within North America. For example, although today slavery is largely associated in school textbooks with the South, the thousands of Africans and African descendants buried in lower Manhattan's African Burial Ground (Blakey 1998) probably had relatively few opportunities for education in reading and writing or skilled trades during their lifetimes of forced labor, compared with those enslaved in a merchant or furniture maker's household in New York, Charleston, or New Orleans. Varying from plantation to plantation, agricultural slavery also offered a wide range of opportunities for the alert amid stark days of toil. ...
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Before 1765, colonial America had no formal medical schools and American physicians were educated in Europe. However, human remains recovered from Richard Charlton’s Coffeehouse in Williamsburg, Virginia provide archaeological evidence for dissection associated with medical instruction and practice during the 1760s. This chapter explores the significance of this dissection performance to Williamsburg’s medical economy and education, and compares this dissection performance with the public displays common in European and later American contexts.
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resumeN El objeto de este trabajo es analizar la gestión actual de los cementerios históricos. Para ello, el artículo se centra en la reciente polémica surgida a raíz de la excavación arqueológica de un cementerio judío en Toledo. La exhumación de las tumbas supuso la ingerencia internacional en una gestión que únicamente recae sobre el estado español y la comunidad autónoma competente. El caso de Toledo es uno más de los acontecidos en otras ciudades patrimoniales de España y del resto de Europa e ilustra la polémica sobre el tratamiento de este tipo de restos y las consecuencias que pueden derivarse de su gestión. PAlAbrAs clAve: Gestión de patrimonio, cementerios históricos, judíos ultra ortodoxos. AbstrAct The aim of this paper is to analyze the current management of historical cemeteries. The article focuses on the recent controversy caused by the archaeological excavation of a Jewish cemetery in Toledo. The exhumation of tombs saw the involvement of the international community in an issue that solely concerns the Spanish state and the particular local authorities to which the remains belong. This case study is one amongst many instances occurring in other Spanish cities as well as in the rest of Europe, and it illustrates the controversy surrounding the treatment of this type of remains.
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Bioarchaeologists must have training and develop expertise in excavation of human remains. This includes understanding as much as possible the environmental, biological, and cultural factors that affect the remains from around the time of death through to recovery and analysis. Ideally, after this long and complex process, the remains are properly curated in a repository, or are reinterred. The lack of detailed taphonomical processes can lead to erroneous conclusions. Not knowing the mortuary context can forever prohibit a full understanding of human remains. Not being able to distinguish culturally modified human remains from field or lab taphonomy will inhibit the ability to make accurate interpretations. Bioarchaeologists can act in many different roles (as consultant, collaborator, or direction), but all of these depend on sound training in excavation.
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The aim of this paper is to analyze the current management of historical cemeteries. The article focuses on the recent controversy caused by the archaeological excavation of a Jewish cemetery in Toledo. The exhumation of tombs saw the involvement of the international community in an issue that solely concerns the Spanish state and the particular local authorities to which the remains belong. This case study is one amongst many instances occurring in other Spanish cities as well as in the rest of Europe, and it illustrates the controversy surrounding the treatment of this type of remains.
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