BONES IN THE BASEMENT [Hardcover]

BLAKELY R (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In 1989, workers restoring the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta made a grisly discovery: over 9000 human bones?remains of bodies autopsied by medical students and faculty?were buried in the building's basement. Blakely (director, Ctr. for Applied Research in Anthropology, Georgia State Univ.) began coordinating a study of the basement's contents by a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, anatomists, and enthnographers. They determined that more than 75 percent of the bones were African American, silent testimony to the marginalization of Augusta's slave and free black communities. (Since human dissection was illegal in Georgia until 1887, most of the cadavers were certainly procured by grave robbers.) This book includes 12 papers originally presented at a 1995 symposium of the Society for Applied Anthropology, and readers patient with the language of professional social science will find it a creative and fascinating contribution to both medical history and African American studies. Highly recommended for academic and large public libraries.?Kathleen Arsenault, Univ. of South Florida, St. Petersburg
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Smithsonian (December 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560987502
• ISBN-13: 978-1560987505
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,648,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay, January 13, 2011

By 

Big Sistah Patty (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: BONES IN THE BASEMENT (Hardcover)

I give the book a 3 star. It wasn't what I thought. It was quite technical and touched minimally on the topic.

What struck me as unjust was the author's focusing on the slave who was purchased by seven white doctors to dig black folks up in order to be used for dissection. He devotes an entire chapter and even has a picture of him. However, he fails to do the same for the seven doctors who owned him. I see this as being another way exploiting the powerless. I guess ruffling Black feathers are okay, but not a good thing for white ones. The families of the slave owners might take issue with him exposing their ancestor.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, but not sure on the fact-checking...., March 20, 2006

By 

Eleanor A. Miller (New York, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: BONES IN THE BASEMENT (Hardcover)

I found this book compelling and thought-provoking. The researchers clearly knew their methodology, and outline the anthropological sections in almost painstaking detail. The book is an excellent source for those interested in 19th century cultural and medical history, and was perhaps even the authority on certain aspects of those subjects before Michael Sappol's recent book, "A Traffic of Dead Bodies," came out a few years ago. HOWEVER, I am wary about some of the chapters, now, because I found a major typo in one section, where it stated that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written by Louisa May Alcott (clearly not true). I am quite surprised that the Smithsonian Institute allowed such a glaring error to be printed by their press. Although each chapter is written by a different author, and so this error could be the result of one person's mistake only, it does cast doubt on the validity and conclusions reached in the rest of the book.