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Harvard archaeology professor Jason Ur and Johns Hopkins University professor Aja M. Lans are mapping the racial segregation in the Old Burying Ground cemetery to uncover colonial burial trends in New England.

Ur and Lans presented their research findings on the enslaved individuals buried there at an event hosted by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture last week.

The Old Burying Ground, which is located across the street from Harvard Yard, served as the burial site for many prominent Cambridge families and past Harvard affiliates, including Henry Dunster and John Leverett, for approximately 200 years since its establishment around 1635.

But people enslaved by Harvard affiliates, including two enslaved women named Cicely and Jane, are also buried in the cemetery — along with Charles Lenox, a free 18th century Black entrepreneur who worked for the University, and his daughter, Susan.

Ur and Lans are investigating the Old Burying Ground and other cemeteries around Massachusetts to research the history of slavery and burial practices in colonial New England.

Their research has found that the burials of Black individuals were all located on the outskirts of the site, with many lacking headstones or proper identification.

“We know that the burial spaces of enslaved people and even free Black people are often separated from those of white, and, particularly in colonial New England, they’re going to be considered outsiders,” Lans said. “They’re buried on the margins.”

Only Jane and Cicely — who were enslaved by former Harvard affiliates Andrew Bordman and William Brattle, respectively — had headstones detailing their names, ages, and the names of their slave owners. But both were separated from Bordman and Brattle’s family burial plots.

“As somebody who thinks first and foremost about space, that tells me unambiguously that there was a really big social gulf between these people,” Ur said.

Lans said that the presence of Cicely and Jane’s elaborate headstones did not, however, signify a “symbol of benevolence” from their slave owners.

“They’re still marking their ownership over these people in death, and make no mistake,” Lans said. “They are inherently violent, just as the system of slavery was and is.”

Aside from Jane and Cicely, other Black and Indigenous people are buried in the cemetery without any identifiable markers, which previously made it difficult to determine the accurate number of people buried in the site.

“We have records of plenty of Negro servants and Indian servants dying. Where are they buried? It was kind of our question when we originally went into this project,” Lans said. “They likely didn’t have headstones.”

Ur and Lans are using ground penetrating radar technology with the help of Harvard PhD candidate in archaeology Andrew Bair. The three researchers are creating a high resolution map of the site, confirming the existence of numerous unmarked graves on the edges of the burial ground, while using only “nondestructive” methods.

“There are unmarked graves here, and they do likely belong to other Black people, other outsiders, perhaps the Indian American servants, who were also enslaved,” Lans said.

Ur and Lans said that, through their open lecture presenting their research findings, they hope to reveal the hidden stories of forgotten individuals.

“The monuments are disproportionately connected to the white residents of Cambridge, even though we know — or we're very confident that — we've identified where the Black residents of Cambridge were now buried,” Ur said. “They don’t have the monuments, so part of the outreach here is to basically put them back on the map.”

Lans said that she has often observed the lack of burial recognition for Black peoples throughout history, with most of their burial grounds destroyed or residing “underneath parking lots and highways.”

“We should have the right to mourn our dead the way everyone else has, but also the treatment, the disregard of Black people’s bodies, is an ongoing crisis, and the treatment of our ancestors still reflects ties to the treatment of Black people today,” Lans said.

Ur and Lans are planning to publish their research in peer-reviewed journals and develop a new history curriculum for local high schools in collaboration with the Slave Legacy History Coalition in Cambridge. They also hope to extend their project beyond Cambridge, expanding their research to map a cemetery for Black individuals in Baltimore, Maryland.

“I want to encourage folks to go to cemeteries,” Lans said. “They’re meant for memorialization, and the reason these headstones exist is for us to remember the people who came before us.”

—Staff writer Andrew Park can be reached at andrew.park@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AndrewParkNews.

—Staff writer Nari Shin can be reached at nari.shin@thecrimson.com.