African Burial Ground National Monument - African Burial Ground Studies

African Burial Ground Studies

In total, the intact remains of more than 400 men, women and children of African descent were found at the site, where they had been buried individually in wooden boxes. There were no mass burials. Nearly half were children under 12, indicating the high mortality rate of the time. Historians and anthropologists estimate that over the decades, as many as 15,000-20,000 Africans were buried in Lower Manhattan. They have determined that this was the largest colonial-era cemetery for enslaved African people. It is also "possibly the largest and earliest collection of American colonial remains of any ethnic group." Some of the burials included items related to African origins and burial practices.

The work of excavation and study of the remains was considered the "most important historic urban archaeological project undertaken in the United States." These remains stand for the estimated tens of thousands of persons at the burial ground and historically in New York, representing Africans' "critical" role in "the formation and development of this city and, by extension, the Nation." Because of its significance to African-American and United States history, on April 19, 1993, the site was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of Interior.

As a result of public engagement, the Howard University team identified four questions which the community hoped to have answered from studies of the remains:

• "cultural background and origins of the burial population;
• the cultural and biological transformations from African to African-American identities;
• quality of life brought about by enslavement in the Americas; and
• modes of resistance to enslavement."

Some bodies had items buried with them, as part of personal and cultural rituals. An example is the silver pendant shown above. Some heads showed filed teeth, an African ritual decoration. Howard University did forensic studies, assessing the remains for nutrition, diseases and indicators of general living conditions for African slaves and free blacks.

After the Howard University studies were completed, the remains were reinterred at the site in October 2003 in a ceremony including the "Rites of Ancestral Return." The "commemorative ceremony was inclusive and international in scope, and was organized by GSA and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture" of the New York Public Library. Thousands attended the reinterment and commemoration.