A few months ago, anthropologists and historians finally received permission from the city of New York to begin digging in an area of Central Park (near 85th Street and Central Park West): a step critical in a quest for decades to reveal the story of an African-American community destroyed in the 1850s by the creation of Central Park. Leave a New York Times article (published a few weeks ago):
While the perforations in the past has produced a few artifacts, searches [ended July 29, 2011 - XJ], generated 250 bags of material which should keep scholars occupied for months, even years. Work on the single Wednesday gave a handful of brush teeth fashioned from bone and the lid of a jar of sandstone.
About two-thirds of the inhabitants of the Village of Seneca were African-American, while others were European, especially Irish in origin. The community was established in the 1820s, a few years before the abolition of slavery in New York. Despite the old news reports that the village was a squatter camp, it was, in fact, composed of landowners of middle class and working.
In the NYTand the Village of Seneca Project Web site. They have more pictures and panoramas of the excavation.
A statement made by the co-directors of project Nan Rothschild (Barnard College, Columbia University) and Diana Wall City College of New York (CUNY) on the bags of more than 250 artifacts that are now washed and analyzed in laboratories:
Better yet, many of these artifacts can be associated with two specific households. We have found the foundation walls and many objects of William Godfrey Wilson House, a sexton for Church all the Angels' who lived in a 3-storey house near the Church with his wife and eight children, and we have searched the backyard of the House of Nancy Moore (later occupied by the Webster family just to the Southeast.)
In the second we found the buried surface dating from the period of the Village, the soil on which the villagers walked and on which they excluded several shards of broken plates and glass, pieces of pipe smoking and young animal bones (apparently mostly beef) which suggests that someone in the vicinity of the Village was able to slaughter. In this region, we hope to be able to retrieve information on the environment, including the plants that were originally from the Village and those who represent the foods that were consumed it. After laboratory analysis is complete, we will be able to provide information on the life of the inhabitants of this community, which at the present time and make them a part of the history of the city of New York.
(via Ed foreign on G +)
No comments:
Post a Comment