![]() Some, like the enslaved people in New York, came against their will. By looking for chemical signatures in made objects and organic material, such as the bones at the African Burial Ground, this technique can determine their age and provenance.įrom this research, we now understand that immigrants have been building and living in cities for as long as cities have existed. Is used in archaeology to trace the history of an item. It can also include lidar, a laser system that measures reflections to judge distance, and is used in everything from laser guidance to some autonomous cars. Involves capturing 3D information about a location or object with a range of techniques, including radar and sonar. Imagine at-home genomic tests, but for bones. Has revolutionized archaeology by allowing for detailed analysis of remains that can unveil a person’s family history and migration patterns. Already common in geology, archaeologists have expanded their use of it in recent years. Uses high-frequency radio waves that pass through the Earth’s surface, bump into objects and structures below, and bounce back to a receiver above ground that records these patterns. It’s a bit like analyzing tree rings, where each layer of enamel represents a period of the person’s life. Because this enamel is built up in layers as humans mature, chemists can study a cross-section of the tooth and learn what substances people were exposed to as children. Bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey, who has led the African Burial Ground project since the early 1990s, said his team would never have known where people in the cemetery came from if they hadn’t been able to do several kinds of chemical analysis on their tooth enamel. Tooth tellingĭata archaeology is particularly good for historians studying cities because urban places often hold the stories of immigrants who might be otherwise difficult to trace. This data democratizes history, too: scholars can now examine hundreds, if not thousands, of remains and process large data sets to gain insight into the experiences of ordinary people-not just the lucky few who owned land, emblazoned their names on monuments, or held public office. This kind of data makes accurate digital re-creations possible, which means historians can turn a remote, inaccessible site into something that anyone can visit online. By using remote sensing technologies like lidar, researchers can uncover an entire city grid, giving us a better picture of what it would have been like to walk through neighborhoods and peek into shops. Sometimes called “data archaeology,” this kind of high-tech exploration is well suited to the study of urban history. Today, researchers supplement bioarchaeology with 3D photography, lidar, satellite imagery, and more. But this was simply the first stage of a much broader archaeological revolution that brought scientists and humanities scholars together to generate data about our ancestors. The African Burial Ground project was among the first to use a new constellation of “bioarchaeology” tools that went way beyond the traditional pickaxes and brushes. ![]() And it showed how we went from being a nomadic species that traveled in small bands to sharing tightly packed habitats with millions of other people. ![]() It revealed that enslaved people from Africa built many of the cities that Americans still live in today-in the North and the South. Scientific analysis at the site added persuasive data to these social movements and changed the way many Americans viewed their nation’s founding. and authors like Toni Morrison were centering the roles of African-Americans in US history.īy using remote sensing technologies like lidar, researchers can uncover an entire city grid, giving us a better picture of what it would have been like to walk through neighborhoods and peek into shops. Historians were investigating the role enslaved people played in building northern cities, while Black scholars like Henry Louis Gates Jr. The African Burial Ground was uncovered at a moment of cultural discovery as well. Today, though, the team is using modern techniques that previous generations of researchers only dreamed of: using lasers to slice micro-thin pieces of tooth enamel so the isotopes trapped within can be analyzed sequencing ancient DNA to connect people who died centuries ago to their descendants. At the start of their dig, they analyzed skeletal remains using the same techniques that archaeologists had used for almost a century, measuring the size of bones and looking at damage to them to infer details of people’s lives. Joseph Jones, an anthropologist at the College of William & Mary and one of the site’s investigators, told me that the science matured even while his team was still excavating. ![]()
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