Mapping God's Little Acre: Digital Documentation of Newport's Colonial African Burial Ground

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The remarkable site of God’s Little Acre (GLA), the historic African and African American section of Newport’s Common Burial Ground, comprises the largest surviving corpus of gravemarkers from a colonial era African cemetery anywhere in the United States. In 2019, members of the Rhode Island Historic Cemetery Advisory Commission approached us to create a detailed and precise digital map of the site. Using Real-Time Kinematic GPS, a custom-built paperless FileMaker database, and phone and drone photogrammetry, we created the first spatially accurate digital map of extant grave markers at GLA. Now publicly available online, the map and associated database are designed to facilitate future research, guide conservation efforts, and provide a dataset that can be worked into public-facing materials, such as pamphlets and digital tours, in order to increase local awareness of and tourism to God’s Little Acre.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow