Of Grave Concern: Macro Threats to Inland Historic African-American Burials and Challenges for Northeast Florida

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond the Shoreline: Heritage at Risk at Inland Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Human burial sites are increasingly at risk from environmental disasters, vandalism, and development. While individual headstones face a mosaic of these threats, historic cemeteries—particularly African American burial grounds—are so threatened Florida legislators passed a bill in 2021 to convene a task force to address the crisis. Data gaps in the thousands lead to mismanagement on county, state, and national scale. Moreover, if historic cemeteries are not mapped in the correct location, they are similarly mismanaged or can become lost over time. Such is the case in Nassau County, Florida, where approximately 70 inland historic cemeteries have discrepancies that need to be corrected in the Florida Master Site File, including several sacred to the Gullah Geechee Nation. This paper provides examples of various cemeteries at risk from the climate crisis and additional challenges that can be overcome by monitoring, groundtruthing information from the community, and quality control of data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond the Shoreline: Heritage at Risk at Inland Sites   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology