African Burial Ground Research Articles

The African Burial Ground National Monument. 290 Broadway, 1st Floor, New York, N.Y. http://www.nps.gov/afbg/

Permanent memorial, opened Oct. 5, 2007. 14,520 sq. ft. Visitor learning center, opened Feb. 27, 2010. 6,700 sq. ft. National Park Service Staff, curators, and museum and memorial guides; Tara Morrison, superintendent; Cherie Butler, chief of interpretation, education, and cultural resources. Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison remarked in 1988 that she had to write the novel Beloved, a mind-wrenching narrative of American slavery and slave resistance, because, “There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves…. There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath, or wall, or park, or skyscraper lobby. There's no 300-foot tower, there's no small bench by the road” (“A Bench by the Road,” World: Journal of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Jan.–Feb. 1989). Twenty years later the African Burial Ground National Monument (abgnm...

Encyclopedia of African American history

A fresh compilation of essays and entries based on the latest research, this work documents African American culture and political activism from the slavery era through the 20th century. Encyclopedia of African American History introduces readers to the significant people, events, sociopolitical movements, and ideas that have shaped African American life from earliest contact between African peoples and Europeans through the late 20th century. This encyclopedia places the African American experience in the context of the entire African diaspora, with entries organized in sections on African/European contact and enslavement, culture, resistance and identity during enslavement, political activism from the Revolutionary War to Southern emancipation, political activism from Reconstruction to the modern Civil Rights movement, black nationalism and urbanization, and Pan-Africanism and contemporary black America. Based on the latest scholarship and engagingly written, there is no better go-to reference for exploring the history of African Americans and their distinctive impact on American society, politics, business, literature, art, food, clothing, music, language, and technology. * Contributions from over 100 specialists on African America and the African diaspora * A spectacular selection of illustrations and photographs, such as a Kongo cosmogram, the African burial ground in New York City, and maps of the Triangular Trade and the Underground Railroad

African Burial Ground Project: paradigm for cooperation?

The eighteenth‐century African Burial Ground in New York City began as a municipal cemetery in which the remains of 15,000 enslaved Africans were buried. It was abandoned to urban development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but rediscovered at the turn of the twenty‐first, its location in the heart of downtown Manhattan becoming the site of extraordinary religious, political and scientific conflict and collaboration. The site went from desecration in 1991 to becoming a US National Monument in 2007, representing a successful example of bioarchaeology in the service of a descendant community’s human rights struggle. This article suggests lessons from that struggle and points to the ethical and epistemic value of publicly engaged anthropology.

Abrading Boundaries: Reconsidering Barbara Chase-Riboud's Sculpture, Fiction, and Poetry

Abrading BoundariesReconsidering Barbara Chase-Riboud's Sculpture, Fiction, and Poetry Suzette A. Spencer (bio) and Carlos A. Miranda (bio) Edgy, epic, oft-times controversial, always boundary-crossing—Barbara Chase-Riboud has attracted international attention as a sculptor, novelist, and poet for the past fifty years. This issue of Callaloo features creative work by Chase-Riboud alongside critical engagements with her creative writing, poetry, and sculpture. Few Americans, certainly few women or African Americans, have excelled across the genres of sculpture, poetry, and fiction simultaneously and received the acclaim Chase-Riboud has consistently garnered. While there is an overwhelming tendency to concentrate primarily on her sculpture, the time has now come, we believe, to reconsider Chase-Riboud as more than a sculptor. The critical essays assembled here in Callaloo navigate across Chase-Riboud's capacious oeuvre. One of our central aims in this gathering of creative and scholarly work is to impress the dynamism, diversity, and breadth of Chase-Riboud's artistic compositions. We aspire to abrade the boundaries that have compartmentalized her work. To date, Chase-Riboud has published two books of poetry and five historical novels, in addition to sculpting and drawing. Her poetry books include From Memphis & Peking and Portrait of a Nude Woman as Cleopatra, both of which bear a synthetic relation to her sculptural work. Her novels include Sally Hemings (on Thomas Jefferson and his slave mistress), Valide: A Novel of the Harem (on gender and power in the Ottoman Empire), Echo of Lions (on the 1839 Amistad ship mutiny), The President's Daughter (sequel to Sally Hemings), and Hottentot Venus (on the life of Sarah Baartman), a complement to her prizewinning sculpture Africa Rising at the African Burial Ground in Manhattan, New York. In 1986, Chase-Riboud won the Carl Sandburg Award for her poetry, an honor she shares with notables such as Nikki Giovanni. In 1989, the Connecticut State Legislature and the governor of Connecticut recognized Chase-Riboud's Echo of Lions for outstanding contribution to Connecticut state history. Most recently, in 2004, her novel Hottentot Venus won the American Library Association's Black Caucus Award for fiction and was nominated for the prestigious Zora Neale Hurston-Richard Wright Legacy Award, alongside novels by Austin Clarke, Nalo Hopkinson, Edward P. Jones, Mat Johnson, and Caryl Phillips. Chase-Riboud's sculpture Africa Rising at the African Burial Ground was awarded the Best Public Arts Design Award for art produced between 1993 and 1998. Barbara Chase-Riboud's work is as challenging as it is inspiring. She is an artist who is unafraid of contradiction, conflict, and multiplicity. "If you have to have acceptance," she says, "then you shouldn't be an artist. There is no such thing as an 'acceptable artist.'"1 Her literary and sculptural provocations are thus as unsettling as they are revelatory of the [End Page 711] silences, hauntings, and paradoxes that shape the making of the past, whether we think of Africa or the Americas. In this Special Issue we revisit these provocations by juxtaposing excerpts from Chase-Riboud's novels alongside selections from her poetry, images of her sculptures, and critical essays from an interdisciplinary group of intellectuals who address all of these key areas. We also include a comprehensive interview with Chase-Riboud in which she talks frankly about the relationship between her sculpture and her creative writing and the intricacies of her craft. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1939, Chase-Riboud divides her time between Paris, France, and Rome, Italy, and has lived in France for the past forty years. She is part of a long line of cosmopolitan African American artists who, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, have traveled to Europe in search of artistic opportunities and training and in contestation of United States racial proscriptions. In fact, she is part of a trajectory of African American women artists—several also from Philadelphia—for whom Europe represented possibilities that far exceeded those available in the United States. This trajectory includes artists such as Anne E. Anderson Walker (1855–1929), Mary Edmonia Lewis (1843–1911), Meta Warrick Fuller (1877–1968), Laura Wheeler Waring (1887–1948), Lois Mailou Jones (1905–1998), Augusta Savage (1892–1962...

Contesting “Nation” Through the Local: The New York African Burial Ground in 2005

Contesting “Nation” Through the Local: The New York African Burial Ground in 2005

Inductively coupled plasma-mass (ICP-MS) and atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES): Versatile analytical techniques to identify the archived elemental information in human teeth

Human dental enamel is composed of sequentially calcifying growth layers that can provide an archival record of temporal changes such as past pollution events and changes in elemental nutrition. Human teeth and bones alike are mainly made out of calcium and a phosphorous rich crystalline building block called hydroxyapatite [Ca 10(PO 4) 6(OH) 2]. Divalent cations such as Zn 2+, Pb 2+, Sr 2+, and Mg 2+ can replace isovalent calcium sites, and phosphate and hydroxyl sites can substitute with anions, such as carbonate and fluoride, respectively. In this investigation inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission (ICP-AES) and mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was used to determine lead, zinc, and strontium concentrations in deciduous teeth from contemporary populations from Solís, Mexico and Kalama, Egypt and permanent teeth from Bronze age Tell Abraq, United Arab Emirates and the 18th century New York African Burial Ground (NYABG) from Lower Manhattan. The concentration of lead in children's teeth from a semi-urban village in Egypt (ranged from 162 to 2.6 μg g − 1 ; n = 10) and NYABG individuals (range 112–1.2 μg g − 1 ; n = 6) showed the elevated lead levels while the ancient population from Tell Abraq had the lowest level (1.34 to 0.03 μg g − 1 ; n = 10). Lead isotope ratios (i.e., 208Pb/ 206Pb and 207Pb/ 206Pb) of above individuals' teeth were measured using ICP-MS to discern their domicile. Zinc and Sr concentrations of teeth reflect the diet, nutritional and environmental history of individuals. The versatility of ICP-AES and ICP-MS as trace metal analytical techniques in unraveling elemental information embedded in hard tissue, like teeth, is demonstrated.

The New York African Burial Ground Project: Past Biases, Current Dilemmas, and Future Research Opportunities

The recent excavation of skeletal remains from the African Burial Ground in New York City and their current bioanthropological study and analysis at Howard University is contributing to our understanding of the conditions faced by Africans and their descendants in colonial North America. The complex nature of African enslavement points to the need for interdisciplinary and comparative research on African origins, as well as the biocultural interaction of members of the African Diaspora in the context of European enslavement practices. Research on variation in the biological health status of African-descent communities in the Americas is shown to contribute to knowledge of their social and cultural histories. Through public approval and support, our research team has been able to pursue a more sophisticated and extensive research plan than is usually allowed. The identities thus constructed are complex and compel novel questions. Additionally, our methodological approach empowers the descendant community to engage in its own cultural and historical construction.

Application of diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) for the identification of potential diagenesis and crystallinity changes in teeth

During burial, diagenetic alteration can invalidate the paleodietary signature, which the hydroxyapatite (Ca 5(PO 4) 3OH) matrix in incremental tissues, such as tooth enamel, provides. Thus, analytical methods that can evaluate diagenetic changes are crucial in anthropological and archaeological investigations. Modern deciduous tooth enamel (exfoliated) from Solis, Mexico and Kalama, Egypt, as well as Bronze Age (circa 2200 B.C.E.) adult enamel from (present-day) Tell Abraq, U.A.E. and adult enamel from the New York African Burial Ground (NYABG) in lower Manhattan, were analyzed using diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS). The samples were compared to synthetic hydroxyapatite powder and bone ash samples. The DRIFTS spectra of tooth enamel yielded similar infra red finger print pattern to previous pellet-based FTIR spectra in both absorbance and Kubelka–Munk units. The study demonstrates that DRIFTS is a convenient alternative to pellet-based transmission FTIR in testing diagenetic changes in hard tissue for archaeological investigations. Tooth enamel samples contained a higher carbonate–phosphate ratio than synthetic hydroxyapatite and bone ash standard samples. Correlations are reported between Crystallinity Index (CI Ab) and carbonate–phosphate ratio, strontium–calcium ratio, and fluoride peak appearance. Crystallinity indexes (CI Ab) were in the range of 2.6–3.8 (in absorbance units) and Kubelka–Munk Crystallinity indexes (CI KM) were in the range of 3.1–4.9.

Bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora in the Americas: Its Origins and Scope

▪ Abstract The results of over 70 years of African Diasporic bioarchaeology are discussed and explained as emerging from distinct interests and traditions of African Diasporan studies, sociocultural anthropology, history, physical anthropology, and archaeology, in that chronological order. Physical anthropology is the core discipline of African-American bioarchaeology, yet it has been the least informed by cultural and historical literatures. Forensic approaches to bioarchaeology construct a past that fails to be either cultural or historical, while biocultural approaches are emerging that construct a more human history of African Diasporic communities. The involvement of African Americans, both as clients and as sources of scholarship, has begun to transform bioarchaeology as in the example of the New York African Burial Ground. The social history of the field examined here emphasizes the scholarship of diasporans themselves, and critiques a bioarchaeology that, until recently, has had little relevance to the people whose history bioarchaeologists construct.

Messrs. Dinkins, Rangel, and savage in colloquy on the African burial ground: A companion reading

This essay expands the symbolic resources of the African Burial Ground through a dialogical reading of Phillips's essay. It is argued that post‐critique, controversies may be recuperated to recover an expanded sense of coalitional engagement, temporal invention, and deliberative eventfulness.

Critical rhetorics of controversy

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to the many issues raised in Kendall Phillips's (1999a) essay “A Rhetoric of Controversy” and Thomas Goodnight's (1999) essay/response Mssrs. Dinkins, Rangel and Savage in Colloquy on the African Burial Ground: A Companion Reading.” Our interest in “controversy” and “the political,” among other issues they raise, leads us to respond to their arguments, to draw some connections to our own work where relevant, and, hopefully, to expand the terms of the conversation between Phillips and Goodnight in order to encourage other scholars interested in these subjects to participate in the discussion.

A rhetoric of controversy

Efforts to explore the concept of controversy have presumed a relationship between the public sphere and the controversial. The normalizing spatial metaphor of the public sphere, however, provides a limited perspective on the fluidity, multiplicity, and mobility of controversies. This essay suggests an alternative perspective based on the intersection of moments of opportunity and specific sites of discourse. The new perspective is applied to the controversy surrounding the African Burial Ground in New York City.

African Burial Ground Research Threatened

African Burial Ground Research Threatened

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

Transforming AnthropologyVolume 7, Issue 1 p. 53-58 The New York African Burial Ground Project: An Examination of Enslaved Lives, A Construction of Ancestral Ties Michael L. Blakey, Michael L. BlakeySearch for more papers by this author Michael L. Blakey, Michael L. BlakeySearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 January 2008 https://doi.org/10.1525/tran.1998.7.1.53Citations: 52AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume7, Issue1January 1998Pages 53-58 RelatedInformation

Seizing intellectual power: The dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground

The New York African Burial Ground Project embodies the problems, concerns, and goals of contemporary African-American and urban archaeology. The project at once has informed and has been informed by the ever-watchful African Americans and New York public. It is a public that understands that the hypothetical and theoretical constructs that guide research are not value-free and are often, in fact, politically charged. An ongoing dialogue between the concerned community, the federal steering committee, the federal government, and the archaeological community has proved difficult but ultimately productive. The project has an Office of Public Education and Interpretation which informs the public through a newsletter, educators’ conferences, and laboratory tours. The public, largely students, attends laboratory tours which often provide initial exposure to archaeology and physical anthropology. Much of this public involvement, however, was driven by angry public reaction to the excavation of a site of both historical prominence and spiritual significance.

Re: African Burial Ground Memorial Competition

Re: African Burial Ground Memorial Competition