Ever True to Thee: Archaeo- and Osteobiographies from Asylum Hill

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Founded in 1855, the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum saw 30,000 patients pass through its doors before the institution moved to a new facility in 1935. Vital expansion of the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), located on the former asylum property, prompted historical and archaeological investigations of the now-unmarked Asylum Hill Cemetery, which holds the graves of 4,000 – 7,000 individuals who died as patients. In accordance with the wishes of potential descendants, identification of the dead is a primary goal of the project. Poor bone preservation in many graves limits the data that can be used to build osteobiographies, but intensive artifact analysis provides complementary information for comparison with family oral histories and surviving patient records. Though no identifications have been made among the first 335 individuals exhumed, the narratives revealed by their skeletal remains and associated coffin hardware, clothing remnants, and personal items foster a deeper understanding of the institution and its patients, contradicting the popular perception of asylum residents as “locked up and forgotten.”

This presentation includes visual representations of excavated human remains, but not photographic images.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39742.0