Bones, Burials and Black Worlds: Mortuary Archaeology and Critical Heritage Studies of African and African American Funerary Practices

3 units

This class explores the archaeology and heritage of death and burial across the African and African diasporic past. It focuses on how the evolving histories, ideologies, and material arts and engagements pertaining to Black funerary practices, how these have been approached and conceptualized in scholarship, what has been learned, and how this can contribute to efforts of protection, preservation, and heritage justice in the present. It also introduces students to some of the main methods used by archaeologists in the study of burials and mortuary landscapes.