Critically engaged archaeology: Prestwich Street burial grounds as a case study

Humphreys, Robyn

Critically engaged archaeology: Prestwich Street burial grounds as a case study

Thesis / Dissertation

2026

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Archaeology

Faculty

Faculty of Science

Abstract

This thesis illustrates how archaeological heritage practice structures the relationship between communities and human remains from archaeological sites. Using Prestwich Street burial ground (PSBG) as a case study this project explores how the development of historical, contract, social and post-colonial archaeology in Cape Town, starting in the late 1980s, informs post-apartheid archaeological heritage practice. PSBG is a large late 18th century colonial era burial ground that was discovered in 2003 in, Green Point, South Africa, during urban development. The discovery resulted in significant public contestation and challenged archaeologists to consider new heritage values, of memory, justice and healing. Previous research on PSBG-related heritage practice connected archaeologists' detached responses to new heritage priorities to a history of empiricist archaeological practice that developed in the 1960s. Based on stakeholder engagement and archival research, this thesis instead argues that archaeological practice at PSBG was historically informed by contract archaeology which had developed in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when Cape Town was implementing neo-liberal spatial planning initiatives. Historical archaeologists viewed development as an opportunity to access new sites, produce histories of the underclass of colonial Cape Town, and develop social archaeology, while also embedding archaeology in development heritage management processes. In the early 1990s, post-colonial archaeology was theorized as an educational programme that gave back precolonial histories to previously marginalised African communities in South Africa. This research reveals that post-colonial, and social archaeology could not facilitate community centred archaeological practice, because they didn't engage with activist heritage practice in Cape Town. Post-colonial and social archaeology were presented as transformative disciplinary practice; however, they relied on colonial relations of knowledge production. Contestation around PSBG challenged these knowledge hierarchies and called into question the centrality of the archaeologist for producing history. The thesis further argues that because we have not interrogated how colonial power structures are maintained while trying to decolonize the discipline as revealed by PSBG, the legacy of paternalistic relations continues to shape communities' ii relationships to human remains from archaeological sites. I show this by exploring the current heritage practice related to the management of human remains from archaeological sites.

Keywords

Prestwich Street

burial ground

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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