Prestwich Memorial

This guide to the Prestwich Memorial in Cape Town starts with two centuries of unmarked burials beneath what is now a city street: enslaved people, sailors, hospital patients and shipwreck victims laid in shifting dunes from around 1710 onward, ground where Khoe and San communities had already buried their dead for far longer. It turns to 2003, when builders breaking ground for an apartment block on Prestwich Street struck bone after bone, uncovering the remains of well over two thousand people. What follows is a dispute between archaeologists and descendant communities over who had the right to decide their fate.