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Anson Street African Burial Ground Project

  • Sign held by a member of the group Respect and Protect the Bodies during a protest against the College of Charleston's plans to build a new dorm on property that was used as a public burial ground for the poor from 1794 until 1807. Aug. 4, 2025.
    SC News
    Council of archaeologists opposes building dorms on burial ground
    Victoria Hansen
    A council of professional archaeologists in SC joins the public fight against the College of Charleston's plans to build new dorms on a 1790s public burial ground for the poor.
  • Crystal Kornickey holds up casts of her hands in a studio at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023. She is one of 36 people whose hands will be cast in bronze for a memorial to the likely enslaved people discovered in an unmarked burial ground. In recent decades, advances in DNA research have allowed scientists to use ancient remains and peer into the lives of long-dead people. In Charleston, that's meant tracing some of the African roots that were cut off by slavery. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
    News
    Their stories were lost to slavery - now DNA is writing them
    Maddie Burakoff/Associated Press
    A project in Charleston, South Carolina, is using DNA to trace the African roots of three dozen people buried in the late 1700s. The remains were uncovered in the coastal city during construction in 2013. Since then, scientists have learned more about these people and their lives by pulling genetic material from their remains. The research showed most had ties to West Africa and most were likely born into slavery in Colonial America. It's one of a growing number of projects using ancient DNA research. In Charleston, the work has also inspired plans to build a memorial on the burial site.