Abstract

The Sutherland Nine refers to nine individuals whose bodies were found to have been unethically obtained in the early 20th century to the University of Cape Town’s skeletal collections. Detailed records were kept that helped a team of researchers identify who they were and from where they were taken. The Sutherland Reburials Project was formed and, with the blessing and encouragement of some of their surviving descendants, the team was able to investigate the individuals through a number of means, in order to restore some of their agency and dignity that a racist and colonial academia of the past had attempted to strip from them. The Sutherland Nine were eventually laid to rest once again in 2023, exactly 100 years after they were first disturbed. This project highlights the importance of community stakeholders in the practice of archaeology and heritage, and how we as its practitioners can provide justice for the wrongdoings of our academic forebears, helping communities engage with a history that had previously been denied to them by colonial and Apartheid governments and institutions.

Michaela is a 2nd year PhD student here at the University of Cambridge, having previously studied at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She was a member of the Sutherland Reburials Project as an undergraduate researcher for the archaeology team, under the supervision of Prof. Simon Hall. She now investigates computational models of human-environment interaction in Neolithic Mediterranean Africa, but continues to have a keen interest in public engagement in archaeology and heritage.