Public Interpretation of Faneuil Hall/Town Dock Artifacts: Exploring Boston’s Role in Slavery

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Urban Archaeology: Down by the Water" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2000, Massachusetts voters passed the Community Preservation Act (CPA) enabling municipalities to raise local property taxes to fund historic preservation, land conservation and affordable housing. The City of Boston (COB) Archaeology Program, which has been chronically underfunded for the last thirty-six years, has no operating budget beyond the salary of the City Archaeologist and curates upwards of one million artifacts. The Friends of Boston Archaeology, a nonprofit established to advocate and support the COB Archaeology Program will preserve and make accessible the artifacts excavated from beneath Faneuil Hall (formerly Town Dock) through a "pop-up" public laboratory, a searchable online database and a new exhibit at Faneuil Hall exploring Boston’s role in slavery. Boston’s Town Dock was a central hub of the slave economy that included the import and export of enslaved individuals, slave auctions and the trade of sugar and rum as the key corner of the Atlantic Trade Triangle.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Urban Archaeology: Down by the Water

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1074