>In front of Mayor Giuliani (pre 9/11)...wonder if they're conjoined
adult twins?

Today President Bush declared the less than 1/2 acre, a National
Monument, the African Burial Ground, (thought to contain 20,000
burials) which is also part of New York's City Hall Park and Commons
Historic District.

In 1999 I came onto the summer cemetery excavations in NYC's City Hall
Park, it being restored to a period of about 1880 by the various
contractors, busy while the human remains were discovered and "dealt
with" supervised by a forensic anthropologist who worked for the
Smithsonian and on-call with the Rhode Island police, Marilyn London,
I hope she doesn't mind. The fence installed was large cast iron set
in stone which was being ground constantly while we were working,
along with the various other operations, i.e., as slabs of stone, from
the Binghamton, NY area, in grey and black to outline former buildings
around and in the park compiled from historic map overlays by other
researchers were brought in to create a plaza that summer. There were
also protests against the NATO aerial bombings in Europe, a large
cross carried out to the middle of the nearby Brooklyn Bridge, the
labor negotiations (or lack thereof) protested with the City and a few
other problems as the dry summer proceeded. Under the "watchful eye"
of the statue of Horace Greeley ("go west young man and grow up with
the country" he sits on a small sofa) and near the Joseph Pulitzer
monument, "newspaper row" had been nearby, where the city's papers
were published at one time, (unfortunately none of the presses have
not been saved as in some cases other cities) were the human remains
near the surface under the walkway and "in the way" of the to be
electronically controlled emergency entrance to the park.

In the middle of testing for the area containing the cemetery and new
security fence and features being installed were the remains its was
thought of New York's "First Almshouse" cemetery, which I had done
some research from borings on with another company that had excavated
a small area between the since restored courthouse and City Hall,
later expanded by another archaeologist and students from Brooklyn
College. I had also worked in a re-excavated trench for power and
steam between the "Tweed Courthouse" and Surrogate Court through
Chambers Street with another archaeologist. The courthouse was then to
hold a museum of the city, instead now occupied as a Dept. of
Education headquarters. Some of the episodes of "Law and Order" TV
show were filmed in it.

I was asked to excavate where a water fountain was to go and as I came
down into the sandy soils encountered two burials, as many of the
artifact-free burials were, of two or more laid in the ground in the
same pit, and I hope the water fountain "footprint" was moved to
accommodate the burials. Then, (or recently) the Iroquois Council in
New York State had adopted a position or policy of recommending of not
moving any burials. The then recent decision I think that it was
applied to was in the new salt sources found near or in Letchworth
State Park, to replace the salt mines that had flooded and collapsed
on the east shore of Lake Cayuga, above Ithaca, NY. The new source had
burials on it and they wanted the people involved to leave them there
and work around it. In this case all remains that were previously
disturbed enough (very shallow) were removed and said to be returned
to a chamber near those that remained at a later date. Not all the
remains were inside a "cemetery" and my general feeling is that a
better scientific effort perhaps could have been done, but like I
said, I got to it in the middle. I was told that some of the remains
for example were used for baseline studies of PCB contamination in the
Hudson River where I had previously worked in Dutchess County, NY.