African Burial Ground, NY: Throughout the eighteenth century, the city's free and enslaved Africans buried their dead here, in what was then part of New York's "common" land. Excavations for new construction in lower Manhattan in the early 1990s revealed the presence of burials dating as early as 1712. The more than 400 individuals whose remains have been recovered from this site represent a much larger population whose role in the formation and development of this city and, by extension, the nation, was critical.