Honoring Ancestors in Sacred Space

Throughout life black Africans in the Bahamas worked, voluntarily or not, and possessed material items of various degrees of importance to them and within their culture. St. Matthews was a cemetery in Nassau at the water's edge--or sometimes slightly below. This project emerged from archaeological excavations at this site to identify and recover materials associated with the interred before the area was completely developed. The area has been "collected" for decades--both professionally and by interested citizens, and Dr. Turner, a native Bahamian, coupled the results of her research excavations with the collections and archival material, to provide insight into the lives and deaths of the interred.