American Mummies

Autorentext

Scott Warnasch has been a professional archaeologist for over thirty years and has worked and taught in the United States, Europe, and South and Central America. He is the leading expert on iron coffins and iron coffin burials and personally discovered, analyzed, and identified the three subjects portrayed in his book. He has been a distinguished lecturer and keynote speaker on this subject and on forensic archaeology at conferences and universities across the country.

Warnasch was the primary forensic archaeologist for the City of New York and senior anthropologist of the World Trade Center Office at New York City’s Medical Examiner’s office from 2005 to 2015. In addition to directing the archaeological recovery work at the World Trade Center site (2006–2014), he has worked on cold case identifications as well as other high-profile crime scenes. He lives in Essex County, New Jersey, where he has spent the last few years teaching, lecturing, consulting, and writing.

Klappentext

Part detective story, part American history: the reconstructed lives of three mummies buried in iron coffins

American Mummies explores life in the first half of the nineteenth century from a unique perspective, combining American history with cold case investigation. The three mummies—discovered in Egyptian-looking iron coffins that naturally preserved their remains—aren’t the relics of defunct ancient empires; they died in New York and New Jersey in the 1850s. Yet their stories crackle with accounts of life and death during a critical period in our country’s history when fundamental decisions regarding race, sex, and power were becoming encoded into the nation’s DNA. The diversity of their experiences—Black, White, male and female—presents a vivid cross-section of everyday life from over 175 years ago, while the integration of forensic science, archaeology, and genealogy offer granular details—even capturing fleeting glimpses of the mummies’ final hours among the living.

Recounted by the former forensic archaeologist who found them, the mummies’ shocking discoveries and painstaking identifications lead from abandoned burial plots to morgues, labs, and funeral homes. Assisted by experts from the Smithsonian Institute, the NYC Medical Examiner’s Office, and various universities, the meticulous analysis and research weave the deceased’s lives, families, and social networks into a tapestry of interconnections, tragedies, and triumphs.

Their stories brim with riots, fires, jailbreaks, and contagions, offering both local details and wide vistas of a seminal and dangerous period in American history. And the curious circumstances surrounding their discovery pull back the muddied veil of the dead’s place in the urban landscape, raising key questions like: How long does one get to rest in their grave? Who decides when that time is up? And what happens then?

Inhalt

Introduction

Chapter 1: This is Not a Crime Scene—Elmhurst, Queens, 2011

Chapter 2: Fisk’s Miraculous, Metallic Burial Case

Chapter 3: How to Disarticulate a Graveyard and Those in It—Newark, 2005 and 2009

Chapter 4: A Witness to History—The Identification and Life of the Newark Woman

Chapter 5: Captain William A. Pollard—A Man of His Time

Chapter 6: Meeting the Woman from Queens, 2012–18

Chapter 7: Who Was She?

Chapter 8: The Rise and Fall of Fisk’s Legacy

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author