Message #203800

[Kara Sundstrom]

But several anthropologists and historians, including Michael L. Blakey, who as the scientific director of the African Burial Ground project oversaw the archaeological excavation and analysis of the remains and artifacts, remained unconvinced that Dr. Seeman’s arguments were decisive. They were shown a draft of his article.

“We often are unable to ascertain which meanings persons in the past held for the objects they created,” Dr. Blakey, director of the Institute for Historical Biology at the College of William and Mary, wrote in an e-mail message. (The journal publishing Dr. Seeman’s article is based at the college, but Dr. Blakey had no role in the publication of it.)

The sankofa, Dr. Blakey maintained, is one of several “plausible meanings” of the design, and one that “most perfectly expresses the meaning of the site for many people around the world.”

Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana diZerega Wall, authors of “Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City” (Yale University Press, 2001), said it was not enough to look at documentary records or — given how little West African cloth of any kind has survived from before the 19th century — the extremely limited physical evidence.