The History and Archaeology of Burials Excavated from the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg and the Powder Magazine

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Individuals Known and Unknown: Case Studies from Two Burial Contexts at Colonial Williamsburg" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The recent archaeological discovery of two different burial contexts within Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area has provided the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Department of Archaeology opportunities to employ new strategies for the study and treatment of human remains. Methodologically the approach is interdisciplinary in nature while always centering descendants and stakeholders in the decision-making process. This paper will provide the necessary historical context for the papers that will follow, highlighting the different archaeological and ethical approaches taken with two very different projects—the excavation of three individuals from the early nineteenth-century cemetery of one of the oldest Black churches in the United States and the excavation of a mass burial containing four Confederate casualties and amputated limbs from the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862. ***Images of human remains will be shown.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Individuals Known and Unknown: Case Studies from Two Burial Contexts at Colonial Williamsburg   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39173.0