recently, even some black scholars considered African-American archaeology a waste of time. That's changed now. Government and private developers learned about the need to "include descendant communities in their salvage excavations, especially when human remains are concerned." The findings at the burial ground already had highlighted some of the losses of slavery, as African Americans had not been recently recognized as a major part of early New York history until then. As the journalist Edward Rothstein wrote, "Among the scars left by the heritage of slavery, one of the greatest is an absence: where are the memorials, cemeteries, architectural structures or sturdy sanctuaries that typically provide the ground for a people’s memory?" Site studies In total, the intact remains of 419 men, women and children of African descent were found at the site, where they had been buried individually in wooden boxes. There were no mass burials. Nearly half were children under 12, indicating the high mortality rate of the time. Historians and anthropologists estimate that over the decades, as many as 15,000–20,000 Africans were buried in Lower Manhattan. They have determined that this was the largest colonial-era cemetery for enslaved African people. It is also "possibly the largest and earliest collection of American colonial remains of any ethnic group." Some of the burials included items related to African origins and burial practices. The work of excavation and study of the remains was considered the "most important historic urban archaeological project undertaken in the United States." These remains stand for the estimated tens of thousands of persons at the burial ground and historically in New York, representing Africans' "critical" role in "the formation and development of this city and, by extension, the Nation." As a result of public engagement, the Howard University team identified four questions which the community hoped to have answered from studies of the remains: "cultural background and origins of the burial population; the cultural and biological transformations from African to African-American identities; quality of life brought about by enslavement in the Americas; and modes of resistance to enslavement." Before the erection of the monument, the burial ground had endured an immense amount of abuse. Archeologists found a substantial amount of industrial waste and ceramics while excavating the site. Archaeologists concluded that burial ground was being used as a dumpsite by Europeans during the 18th century. The burial ground was also subject to grave robbing and looting