Archaeologist explores how African Americans were converted to Christianity

At the site of a plantation where abolitionist Frederick Douglass once lived, University of Maryland (UMD) archaeologists have uncovered striking evidence of how African and Christian religious beliefs blended and merged in the 19th century. The team dug up an intact set of objects that they interpret as religious symbols—traditional ones from Africa, but mixed with what they believe to be a Biblical image: a representation of Ezekiel’s Wheel.