Honoring Ancestors in Sacred Space : The Archaeology of an Eighteenth-Century African-Bahamian Cemetery

Established by a black community in the eighteenth century during British colonization of the Bahamas, the Northern Burial Ground of St. Matthew''s Parish was an important expression of the group''s African cultural identity. Analyzing the landscape and artifacts found at the site, Grace Turner shows how the community used this separate space to maintain a sense of social belonging despite the power of white planters and the colonial government.

Turner points to the cemetery''s location near water, trees planted at the heads of graves, personal items left with the dead, and evidence of food offerings as African cultural features. According to Turner, these African-influenced ways of memorializing the dead illustrate W. E. B. Du Bois''s idea of "double consciousness"--the experience of existing in two irreconcilable cultures at the same time. Comparing the burial ground with others in Great Britain and the American colonies, Turner demonstrates how Africans in the Atlantic diaspora did not always adopt European customs but often created a separate, parallel world for themselves.