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Paper short abstract

Newton Enslaved Burial Ground is mobilised as a national heritage project and a site of moral repair. Based on fieldwork with museum and community actors, I analyse how material damage during development polarised claims over ownership, care, and belonging.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how “consumed belongings” polarise publics when heritage is staged as both moral repair and institutional project. The case is the Newton Burial Ground in Barbados, a burial site of enslaved people that became a focal point of heritage-making: archaeological research and museum involvement established it as an authoritative site of memory, while construction work for a monument and research centre have reactivated debates about ownership, care, and historical accountability.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with actors connected to the Barbados Museum & Historical Society, heritage practitioners, and community interlocutors, I analyse how the burial ground is made into a non-negotiable public good—yet is simultaneously contested through moral evaluations and competing narratives of legitimacy. A key moment of polarisation emerged when construction work reportedly damaged the edge of the site, producing a rupture between promises of commemoration and experiences of renewed violation. In response, different actors mobilised distinct registers: legal/institutional responsibility, spiritual and ancestral claims, nationalist narratives of development, and critiques of museum authority as colonial residue.

I argue that the burial ground operates as a “sticky” (Ahmed 2004) materiality where labour, loss, and belonging are continuously (in)digested: the site is asked to carry reconciliation, tourism potential, research value, and political symbolism at once. By tracing how damage, repair, and publicity circulate, the paper shows how heritage projects can intensify polarisation while also opening fragile possibilities for re-negotiating care and accountability.