Conference Agenda

The efforts made to reclaim the site of the Harlem African Burial Ground were started by a dedicated community group in the early 2000s and culminated in the full archaeological recovery of human remains on the site decades later. This paper will document the history of the site's use as a cemetery, its later disturbance, and the efforts made by community groups, city agencies, and archaeologists to respectfully recover the remains from the site.

The site of the Harlem African Burial Ground was subject to extensive disturbance over the course of almost 200 years of urban development. Determining the vertical and horizontal extent of the remains of this cemetery and their documentation and recovery across an entire city block in Manhattan required the efforts of a multi-disciplinary team and a variety of field strategies. This paper provides a description of these strategies, a summary of the often surprising results, and a reconstruction of the cemetery’s colonial-era setting.

In 2015, exploratory testing at the Harlem African Burial Ground confirmed the presence of human remains, a fact already known to the descendant community. A full recovery of human remains from the site began in 2024, and the team was expanded to include bioarchaeologists with specific expertise in the African diaspora. This paper will provide an update on the Ancestors who were recovered during the recent phases of work, as well as potential analyses that may be completed in the future in consultation with the descendant community.

Urban archaeology may present unusual logical complications which require archaeologists to develop new approaches to standard archaeological practices. At the Harlem African Burial Ground, the recovery of disarticulated human remains within a decommissioned bus depot presented a variety of challenges. These included navigation of subsurface obstructions, development of wet and dry screening methods, safe excavation and screening of contaminated soils, transportation of soils and other materials across the site, and waste water and soil management-- all within an intimidating industrial space. This paper will discuss methods developed and utilized by the archaeological team in order to recover human remains from a complex and often hostile environment.

Gentrification and urban renewal disproportionately impact sacred spaces of racialized communities in the United States. This impact is compounded by the belief that the repeated ground disturbances inherent in urban development have destroyed all archaeological evidence of sacred sites such as historic burial grounds. This adage has repeatedly been proven wrong, as demonstrated by the 1990s New York African Burial Ground Project. Though legislative protections for historic sites exist at local, state and federal levels, these laws are written primarily for non-urban spaces. Throughout New York City, community-based coalitions are filling the gaps that these laws leave in their wake. This paper will demonstrate the impacts of community-based actions by highlighting efforts at both the Flatbush and Harlem burial grounds. These communities have used different methods to fight for preservation. However they are united by a shared commitment to honoring these sites by protecting them from further desecration.

The line between public and community-based archaeology is often blurry and indistinct and, at times, used interchangeably. Or, as in the case of the Harlem African Burial Ground project, it contains methodological elements of both approaches. With CRM defining the career path taken by most within archaeology, a clear methodological grounding in community and public archaeology becomes an essential component of the classroom. This paper will share takeaways from building a combined graduate/undergraduate course around the Harlem African Burial Ground Education and Engagement RFP and the value of applied learning in community and public archaeologies, where one size does not fit all.