How technology helped archaeologists dig deeper into ancient cities

Joseph Jones, an anthropologist at William & Mary College and one of the site’s researchers, told me that his team was still excavating when he arrived. When excavations began, bone remains were examined using the same techniques used by archaeologists for nearly a century, measuring bone size and examining the damage done to them to infer details of people’s lives. Today, however, the team is using it modern techniques what researchers of previous generations dreamed of: using lasers to split micro-thin pieces of tooth enamel so they could study the isotopes trapped inside; sequencing ancient DNA to link people who died centuries ago to descendants.

The burial place in Africa was also found at a time of cultural discovery. Historians were investigating the role slaves played in building northern cities, including Henry Louis Gates Jr. while black scholars like and authors like Toni Morrison focused on the role of African Americans in U.S. history.

The scientific study conducted on the site added compelling data to these social movements and changed the way many Americans view their nation. He revealed that African slaves built many of the cities that Americans still live in today — in the North and the South. And it showed how we went from being a nomadic species that traveled in small bands to sharing close habitats with millions of other people.

The African Burial Ground project was the first to start using a new constellation of “bioarchaeology” tools that went beyond traditional winds and brushes. But this was only the first stage of a broader archaeological revolution that brought scientists and humanities together to create data about our ancestors. Today, researchers are completing bioarchaeology with 3D photographs, lidars, satellite imagery, and more.

Sometimes called “data archeology,” this type of high-tech exploration is perfect for studying urban history. Using remote sensing technologies like Lidar, researchers can find a whole network of cities to find out what it would be like to walk around neighborhoods and look at shops. With this type of data accurate digital regenerations are made possible, which means that historians can turn a site that is not remote access into something that anyone can visit online.

These data also democratize history: scholars can study hundreds of remains, such as thousands, and process large data sets to learn about the experiences of ordinary people, not just landowners, lucky people who wore their names on monuments. he held public office.

Tooth counting

The archeology of the data is particularly good for historians who study cities, as there are stories of immigrants that can often be difficult to trace in urban areas. Bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey, who has led the African Burial Workshop project since the early 1990s, said his team would never know where people in the cemetery came from if they had not been able to perform various chemical analyzes on tooth enamel. Because enamel builds up in layers as humans mature, chemists can study a tooth incision and learn what substances people were exposed to as children. It’s like looking at tree rings, where each layer of enamel represents a period in a person’s life.

Immediately, they found a sharp dividing line between those born in Africa and those born in the Americas: lead. Although African civilizations worked with many metals, lead was used almost exclusively by Europeans for things like pipes and pelvic vessels. Anyone who had a lead in childhood tooth enamel was almost certainly born locally.

As science developed, Blakey’s team also used a technique called strontium isotope analysis to find out where people came from. When people eat and drink in a specific area for a long time, their teeth absorb a small amount of strontium, an element that flows from rocky ground to food and drinking water. The strontium of older masses of the earth is slightly different from that of the newer strontium, so by examining the isotopes of human tooth enamel, researchers can determine where they lived throughout their lives.