Thrilling Announcement!

A lot has happened since my last post! It has been a very busy summer and fall since the 2023 Field Season ended, with archival research trips to The Hague, Amsterdam, London, Oxford, and Accra and several weeks digging and data collecting at Kormantin, Ghana, as we reveal the footprint of England's first fort in West Africa (1638). 

While I have been teaching, traveling, and winding up my NEH Digital Kormantin project, my Rochester ATHS Data Elves (Skylar, Megan, Aleksi, and Chloe) have been hard at work doing database input on the 450 contexts we had inventoried but not digitized from 2022 and 2023. We are closing in on having everything entered over Spring Break in March as I double-check items at the Globe Museum Archaeology Lab and hopefully work with Bermudian volunteers. And then the fun begins - analysis and spatial distribution pattern queries in GIS!

Our big announcement is...

SIAP HAS JUST ACQUIRED ITS OWN GROUND PENETRATING RADAR!!

The April 2022 GPR survey with David Givens and Peter Leach clearly established Bermuda's incredible conditions for geophysical surveying of subterranean features and excavations during the past two summers confirmed that GPR readings quite precisely lined up with pits, natural cuts and slopes, post holes, and stone wall footings. My National Endowment for the Humanities Archaeology fieldwork grant included provisions for fund-matching up to $20,000 and I have been working hard since last summer to raise money to leverage this match.

Longtime Historic Jamestowne benefactors THOM and TRICIA SMELTER of Fredericksburg, Virginia, were the first major donors and helped build momentum in early autumn. Bermudians then rallied to the cause: Heritage supporters MARIETTE SAVOIE and MARK SMITH, PETER BARRETT and the ST GEORGE'S FOUNDATION, RICK SPURLING and the ST DAVID'S HISTORICAL SOCIETY, and IAN WALKER and the BERMUDA AQUARIUM, MUSEUM, and ZOO all made substantial contributions to put SIAP over the $20,000 mark, alongside other donors pledging at the University of Rochester's SIAP Crowdfunding Site. Thank you all for your investment in making big future historical discoveries at Smith's Island and throughout Bermuda!!!

I didn't quite get the cap to line up right but still graduated!

This past week (February 5-8) I picked up our brand-spanking-new 300/800 Dual Signal antenna, cart, collection tablet, and other gear at GSSI Headquarters in Nashua, New Hampshire, and did two long full days of training getting familiar with running surveys and processing and interpreting geophysical data. The 300/800 antenna is perfect, since the 300 MHZ band gives high-resolution signals for objects, layers, and anomalies up to three feet deep while the 800 MHZ band penetrates down fifteen feet or more, depending on conditions.  

Since Bermudian soil is usually quite shallow, the 300 MHZ band will be especially useful for site surveying on Smith's Island.  The 800 band should come in handy in other parts of Bermuda where sand dunes and valley deposits may have more deeply buried early features and sites. I can't wait to get back to Bermuda and get to work getting to know the art and mystery of reading Bermudian dirt!

Spring GPR surveying and finishing up Smallpox Bay artifact processing and analysis will build excitement for the next season of excavation at Smallpox Bay and near Oven Site in May and June 2024. I hope to recruit a dozen or so "archaeology stars" to nail down the core of Governor Richard Moore's  first town and find the mansion where the captain of Smith's Fort lived throughout the seventeenth century.

I am also looking for students or researchers versed in zooarchaeological identification skills to analyze our substantial collection of faunal material that can reflect diet and environmental changes across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as cultural elements of evolving food-ways. I will be taking applications to join the team through March 15, 2024, so if you are interested in the six-week project contact me at Michael.Jarvis@Rochester.edu.  Bermudians are of course always welcome to come out and help discover their own history doing shorter-term stints, both in the field and at the Globe Museum Archaeology Lab in St. George's.