Unearthing the past of Sylvester Manor

On Friday, March 7, at 7 p.m., join Nedra Lee, Ph.D., archaeologist and associate professor at UMass Boston, Fiske Center, for an engaging discussion about the fascinating anthropological and historical research discovered at the Afro Indigenous Burial Ground at Sylvester Manor.

The presentation, part of the Shelter Island Public Library’s Friday Night Dialogue Series, will be held at the Nature Conservancy Education Building at the Mashomack Preserve.

Ms. Lee will give an overview of the work done on the Manor grounds, dating back to the first archaeological dig in 1997, and the research projects scheduled for the near future.

This summer, Ms. Lee will be returning to Shelter Island with a team of graduate students to continue her work on exploring in depth the Manor’s Afro Indigenous Burial Grounds.

She will present a slide show as well as discuss the digitization project of the artifacts found at Sylvester Manor. To date some 300,000 fragmented artifacts have been found.

Ms. Lee will talk about future exciting projects including looking for another farm house on the property and documenting surviving descendants from the Afro Indigenous communities.

The Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research was established in 1999 through the generosity of the late Alice Fiske and her family as a living memorial to her late husband Andrew, a descendant of Nathaniel Sylvester, Shelter Island’s first European settler.