Social Memory and Plantation Burial Grounds, a Virginian Example (original) (raw)

2008, African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

In 2001, I began a project to locate slave cemeteries in the Virginia Piedmont (Rainville 2003). At first, I thought a small sample size would be sufficient to understand the patterns and cultural significance of these mortuary landscapes. But each newly discovered cemetery brought surprises and now, seven years later, I am still learning new perspectives on African-American kinship patterns, mortuary ideologies, and cemetery landscapes. Meanwhile, my sample size has grown to over 100 cemeteries, dating between 1810 and the present. In 2002, I extended my study beyond slave cemeteries, to post-bellum and twentieth-century examples, to have a better context for determining what was unique about the antebellum traditions.