1. 18th Century New York
African Burial Ground

2. African Burial Ground Burial # 6

3. Plan view of burial sites at the New York African Burial Ground showing the location of excavated burials (419)

4. Research questions: culture & power, not race (see Perry and Blakey pp
What are the cultural and geographical roots of the individuals interred in the African Burial Ground?
What biological characteristics and cultural traditions remained unchanged and which were transformed during the creation of African American society and culture?
What was the physical quality of life for Africans enslaved in New York City during the colonial period and how was it different from the quality of life in their African homeland?
What were the modes of resistance and how were they creatively reconfigured and used to resist oppression and to forge a new African American culture?

5. Cluster Diagram based on concentrations of trace elements found in teeth and other sources suggests many adults were African born while children were American

6. Strontium isotopes

7. Burial 101

8. Burial 340 waist beads

9. Detail of Southeast section of the New York African Burial Ground showing the location of excavated burials
371
377
375
383
365
335 & 356
340

10. Burial 375

11. Promotional Illustration for New Amsterdam, 1623
African Labor
Skeletal Traumas
Dental enamel hypoplasia
High Lead levels
Hypertrophy/ Enthesopathies
Lipping (sexed)
Promotional Illustration for New Amsterdam, 1623

12. Burial 25: gunshot trauma

13. Burial 323: Autopsy Victim
1788 Doctor’s Riots
Usually, the students had contented themselves with ripping open the graves of strangers and negroes, about whom there was little feeling; but this winter they dug up respectable people, even young women, of whom they made an indecent exposure.

14. Plan view of burial sites at the New York African Burial Ground showing the location of excavated burials in color

15. African Burial Ground Research and Recommendation Reports

16. Changes in the burial of Africans in Early New York
‘That after the Expiration of four weeks from the dates hereof no Negroes be buried within the bounds & Limits of the Church Yard of Trinity Church, that is to say, in the rear of the present burying place & that no person or Negro whatsoever, do presume after the terme above Limited to break up any ground for the burying of his Negro, as they will answer it at their perill’
Trinity Church Vestry Minutes, October 25, 1697
(cited in Perry et al 2006:42)

17. St. Paul’s colonial cemetery in modern New York City

18. Plan view of burial sites at the New York African Burial Ground

19. Common burial position at African Burial Ground

20. Copper alloy straight pins
replicas