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Blakey, Michael L.
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I have been working on the interface of human biology and culture in a variety of ways. These include an examination of the social history of theories that connect biology, "nature,'' social inequality, and behavior; the articulation between human biology, racial ideology, and public policy; the political economy of health in industrial society; the bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora; and the ethics and epistemology of publicly engaged research. I also have a long standing interest in how museum interpretations demonstrate ideology and in the development of methods in dental paleopathology. My research on the 17th and 18th century African Burial Ground in New York City and the comparative database on the bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora are being developed here at the Institute for Historical Biology which I direct.
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Publication Open Access Report on the Human Remains Recovered from Block 23CB on Colonial Williamsburg Property(2004-02-01) Blakey, Michael L.; Mahoney, Shannon; William & Mary; William & MaryDuring the summer of 2003, Dr. Michael Blakey, director of the Institute for Historical Biology, was contacted by the archaeologists at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation notifying him that they had located human remains at the intersection of Jamestown, Richmond and Boundary Roads. The remains were excavated by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation archaeologists and taken to their conservation lab until further notice. On 22 November 2003, Shannon Mahoney, a graduate research associate at the Institute for Historical Biology, contacted Andrew Edwards and Emily Williams of Colonial Williamsburg regarding the remains on Block 23 of the Colonial Williamsburg historic area. On 12 January 2004, Blakey and Mahoney visited the conservation lab where Emily Williams described the recovery of the remains and the field methodology. During excavation at the site, Lucie Vinciguerra had removed the remains and wrapped them in foil and the foil packets were placed in a refrigerator to inhibit any further deterioration. Emily Williams cleaned the remains and mended a few of the elements with B-72, which were then placed in plastic bags and labeled with their original foil packet number.Publication Open Access Assessment of Human Remains from Archaeological Site 44YO2(2003-04-28) Blakey, Michael L.; Mahoney, Shannon; William & Mary; William & MaryOn Wednesday 9 April, 2003, Dennis Blanton, director at the William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research contacted Michael Blakey, director of The Institute for Historical Biology, concerning the identification and inventory of human remains located at a local archaeological site during project testing. The human remains were picked up from the WMCAR labs on Tuesday, 15 April 2003 and the inventory and identification list followed a week later. This report is an in-depth description of the conclusions reached through the study of the remains.Publication Open Access Epistemology for a Humanistic Human Biology: the Case of the New York African Burial Ground Project at Howard University(Asociación Mexicana de Antropología Biológica, 2010-01-01) Blakey, Michael L."A basic respect for the meaning of culture (that human perceptions, ideas, and behaviors learned) demands us to accept that the human practice of science is thoroughly embedded in culture..."Publication Open Access Archaeology under the Blinding Light of Race(University of Chicago Press, 2020-10-01) Blakey, Michael L.Racism is defined as a modern system of inequity emergent in Atlantic slavery in which “Whiteness” is born and embedded. This essay describes its transformation. The operation of racist Whiteness in current archaeology and related anthropological practices is demonstrated in the denigration and exclusion of Black voices and the denial of racism and its diverse appropriations afforded the White authorial voice. The story of New York’s African Burial Ground offers a case in point.Publication Open Access The Skeletal Biology of the New York African Burial Ground (Pt. 2): Burial Descriptions and Appendices(Howard University Press: in association with the General Services Administration, 2009-01-01) Blakey, Michael L.; Rankin-Hill, Lesley M.Publication Open Access Walking the Ancestors Home: On the Road to an Ethical Human Biology(Taylor & Francis, 2022) Blakey, Michael L.; Arts & SciencesI first worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in 1968. It was a project I designed on the dental pathology and masticatory musculature of 50 Hawiku and Suruque skulls, under the kind supervision of biological anthropologist Donald Ortner. I was 15 years old and attending Larry Angel’s and Lucille St. Hoyme’s summer paleopathology seminar at the museum. One could still smell smoke and mold wafting from riot-torn 7th Street after Martin Luther King’s murder only a couple of months before. I was the only African American and the youngest person in the seminar, a situation to which I had already become accustomed as a member of the Maryland Archaeological Society.Footnote1 A dozen years later I returned on a graduate fellowship to study the Hrdlička papers, only the second person to do so, and to write a critical social history of biological anthropology from the vantage of the Smithsonian.Footnote2 I thought it wise to examine the history of this thing I planned to become part of if I was to chart my own course through it.Publication Open Access Introduction to The Blinding Light of Race: Race and Racism in Western Science and Society, Volume 1(2025) Blakey, Michael L.; Arts & SciencesIn 45 years of teaching about racism, I have found its story to be a powerfully enlightening narrative when the views of diverse scholars are presented in their own incisive language, each making his or her best effort to explain the problem in their times. The core of the book is based on a course which transformed over my years of teaching: Race, Biology and Society (University of Massachusetts-Amherst 1979-1980), Race and Gender, Racism and Sexism (withJohnnetta B. Cole, Alan Swedlund and Denise Miles, UMass 1981), Biology and Culture (Howard University 1982-2000; Spelman College 1989; Columbia University 1997), The Construction of White Supremacy (Institute for Policy Studies 1991), and Idea of Race (Brown University 1999; College of William & Mary 2001-present). It is cross-listed in its ultimate form for students of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies. The Blinding Light of Race Race and Racism in Western Science and Society Volume I - Anthropology and Slavery at the Dawn of White Supremacy ISBN for the three-volume set: 9781003863144Publication Open Access Remembering Leith(American Anthropological Association, 2021-10) Blakey, Michael L.; Arts & SciencesLeith Mullings and I were close colleagues and friends. Her work was insightful, substantial, progressive, and always humane. But when I remember Leith, I reflect on being privileged with sisterhood, beyond collegiality. She was a compañera of a special kind whose relationships were nurtured for many years in the halls of a broad activist academy, in the society of activist scholars, as an alternative, if interacting, universe occupying the same space and time as meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). So I ask: How wonderful is that, to know a woman in the warmest way of shared ideas within the colder space of anthropology? I want to add these reminiscences of my sister to her lasting record.Publication Open Access New York City’s African Burial Ground(The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2020) Blakey, Michael L.; Arts & SciencesIn 1991, construction workers in lower Manhattan unearthed an African burial ground, the final resting place of some 15,000 enslaved African captives brought to New York in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to build the city and provide the labor for its thriving economy. The discovery sparked controversy as the African American public held protests and prayer vigils over the following two years in order to stop the federal (US General Services Administration) building project that nearly destroyed the site. A US congressional hearing led by Illinois Congressman Gus Savage would result in agreements between New York Mayor David Dinkins, Savage, and Senator Alphonse D’Amato that compelled the US GSA to cease construction on part of the site at 290 Broadway. Public discussions ensued for another two years to determine what would be done to commemorate the lives of the African builders of colonial New York City.Publication Open Access Understanding racism in physical (biological) anthropology(Wiley, 2021) Blakey, Michael L.; Arts & SciencesThe mainstream of American physical anthropology began as racist and eugenical science that defended slavery, restricted “non-Nordic” immigration, and justified Jim Crow segregation. After World War II, the field became more anti-racial than anti-racist. It has continued as a study of natural influences on human variation and thus continues to evade the social histories of inequitable biological variation. Also reflecting its occupancy of white space, biological anthropology continues to deny its own racist history and marginalizes the contributions of Blacks. Critical disciplinary history and a shift toward biocultural studies might begin an anti-racist human biology.