Nearly Gone but Not Forgotten: Reclaiming African American Heritage in Rural Southern Cemeteries

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Cemeteries serve as places for descendant populations to gather, remember past events, and celebrate past lives. How then do such places become abandoned and forgotten? The 4AC project (Ayden African American Ancestral Cemetery) investigates the processes that led to the abandonment of a large African American cemetery. Specifically, it incorporates archaeological, ethnographic, and geographic theory and methods to understand the factors associated with neglect and abandonment of cemeteries in southeastern North Carolina. The project involves many stakeholders the university, state and local government, and the community with the goal to reclaim the cemetery.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology