Seaport Museum Artifacts Ship Out

Archaeology ^ | June 22, 2005 | Mark Rose

[SunkenCiv]

Although it is greatly reassuring to know that the Seaport Museum collection--2 million artifacts from excavations in Manhattan--is going to a good home in Albany, it is difficult to conclude that this is anything but another chapter in the ongoing divorce proceedings between New York City and its past. In 1999, the Giuliani administrations put the wraps on excavations around City Hall and the Tweed Courthouse that exposed numerous burials of early New Yorkers. Who were they? Were the burials of residents of an almshouse, built in 1736 on the site now occupied by City Hall, or of Revolutionary War soldiers, inmates from a nearby prison, or even outliers from the African Burial Ground?

[SunkenCiv]

Rose's comments appear to be just another Republican bashing. Could it be that the burial ground was considered to be something that shouldn't be disturbed? Regarding the Seaport Museum collection -- it is indeed good that it is being preserved; and like most museum collections, it's no doubt filled with artifacts which were excavated by non-professionals and quite accidentally, or by professionals after the find spot was already lost and the site disturbed.

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[SunkenCiv]

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