An Accounting of the Dead: Historical Epidemiology and Big Data in the Arch Street Project

Summary

As of the beginning of September 2017, the remains of over 250 individuals were recovered from the building site at 218 Arch Street. While the presence of bodies in what was once the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia burial ground should not surprise us, contemporary documents and written histories of the congregation state that all burials had been moved to the Mount Mariah Cemetery in the mid-nineteenth century. The abundance of human remains left on the original site raises questions for historians, archaeologists, and others concerned with the legacy of interments.

To create a foundation from which historians and archaeologists alike might explore these questions, I combine methodologies of big data management and analysis with more traditional historical research. This involved the collection of burial records for over 2,000 individuals interred in the cemetery and burial records for over 5,000 interred in other cemeteries in Philadelphia. I compare patterns of mortality in the larger Philadelphia community and those listed in the parish burial records, with data gathered from individual remains at 218 Arch Street. This allows us both the identification of the disease environment in which the burials occurred and suggests why connections with descendants may have faded.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22137