Cave Site and Limekiln Site Summaries
Cave Site
Discovered
in 2010 and 2013, Cave Site is completely undocumented in the historic record.
It is located approximately a tenth of a mile south of the 1872 stone farmer’s
cottage ruin at the center of Amenity Park but does not seem to be associated
with it. Excavations commenced during the 2014 season with a three-meter-long
exploratory trench bisecting the southernmost of the cave’s two openings to
determine the depth of stratigraphic deposits within the cave. This work
revealed a posthole situated midway across the front of the southern opening as
well as a 30 cm step down to a flattened floor just within the cave’s interior.
Few subsurface artifacts were recovered, but two sherds of Astburyware
suggested occupation in mid-18th-century. We also observed that the
cave roof had been laboriously smoothed as an improvement and exhibited
numerous tool marks.
This
season’s investigations focused on completing the exploratory trench through
the back wall of the cave in order to assess the extent of usable space and
discern additional cultural modification. Numerous metal detector hits along
the back edge of the cave suggested that deposits naturally sloped down to the
rear area and concentrated there, so this strategy promised to reveal
additional information about the site’s occupants and their activities.
Historical evidence and cave sites found on Barbados and other British islands
suggest a connection between caves and enslaved Africans; this year’s
excavations particularly sought evidence of this and of the sorts of activities
that occurred in this obscure, hidden location. Finally, we sought to assess
whether Cave Site is an isolated example or whether there are additional rock
outcrops and occupied cave sites nearby in this area of Smiths Island,
including a promising but nearly completely buried location approximately eight
feet from Cave Site’s northern opening.
Two units were excavated sequentially within the cave (N5 E2-3),
completing a lateral east-west profile of the cave interior’s extent. The
stratigraphic sequence followed that of N5 E4 excavated in 2014 but the units
were far richer in artifacts, particularly large mammal and fish bones.
Evidence of rodent burrowing and the mixing of 18th and 19th-century
artifacts within the cave deposits reveal disturbances mitigating against a
temporally fine-tuned reconstruction of occupation activities. Datable
artifacts ranged from additional examples of Astburyware and plain white
saltglazed stoneware to Creamware annularware, suggesting intermittent
occupation spanning circa 1725 to circa 1825. Charcoal, a bone-handled knife,
peach and other pits, and large quantities of both cracked and sawn mammal bone
reveal that occupants regularly consumed food here - perhaps even feasted - and
that the site served as a socializing/gathering
place. That said, the near complete absence of hand-blown glass bottle
fragments and tobacco pipes suggests that this socializing did not apparently
extend to drinking and smoking.
This
season's excavations revealed that both the cave floor and ceiling had been
deliberately smoothed by humans. Both follow natural limestone bedrock cleavage
but exhibit numerous tool marks. The floor has been flattened but has a slight
step up in unit N5 E4. The rubble layer lying atop the flattened floor seems to
relate to the modification of the roof after the floor had been altered,
suggesting that these events did not occur simultaneously. Unfortunately, no
material was recovered atop the flat floor sealed by the stone detritus -
artifacts that would help us date the earliest usage and first modification of
Cave Site; perhaps the first occupants kept this floor clean and deposited
rubbish outside the cave, in which case it may be possible to recover this
through future excavations.
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| Cave Site, western end of interior trench (N5 E2), facing west. Note the deliberately smoothed floor with tool marks and the south profile stratigraphic sequence, showing a stone rubble layer as the bottom-most deposit. |
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| Southern profile of Cave Site interior trench. |
This
season's work inside the cave has revealed a considerable usable space made
through human improvement, with about four to five feet of head clearance when
the floor was first levelled. It also
provided specific evidence of socializing and significant food consumption
using a few strikingly high quality items (like a bone-handled knife and an
Astburyware vessel) but not smoking or drinking. A few small rounded
non-Bermudian stone pebbles and flint stone flake recovered seem culturally
significant, since they were deliberately brought into the cave, but otherwise
we recovered no culturally/ethnically diagnostic artifacts to associate the
site with African or African-Bermudian usage.
Future archaeological investigation will target the area to the south of
the interior cave trench and the open area in front of (to the east of) the
cave's southern opening to both determine if the 2014 posthole relates to a
structure of some sort and to gather more evidence of the cave's occupants and
their activities.
Testing near Cave Site included a pedestrian survey to
the south and excavating a meter-square unit (N10 E5) near another rock
outcropping. The survey found a significant, high exposed rock ridge
approximately 120 to 150 feet south of Cave Site, with several partly filled
deep declivities and 19th-century surface finds - an area that warrants further
investigation in future seasons. The N10 E5 unit yielded charcoal, bone, and
20th-century artifacts but hit natural bedrock after 30cm and did not reveal
the nearby rock cavity to be large or deep enough to constitute a new cave
entrance.
Limekiln
Site
After the 2014 excavation at Cottonhole Bight failed
to find evidence linking that site to the "Three Sailors" 1610
homestead of Christopher Carter, Edward Chard, and Edward Waters, we shifted
our focus to investigating other potential sites in the Cottonhole Bight
valley. A rigourous Phase I test pit survey of the area was planned, but time
constraints led us to focus instead on an ambiguous feature first identified in
2010 located just north of the main road. A circular feature approximately
seven feet in diameter and six feet deep, the targeted site closely resembles
abandoned limekilns that the Principal Investigator excavated in Hog Bay Park,
Sandys, in 1993 as part of another Bermuda Government Parks archaeological
survey.[1]
Numerous lateral notches in the feature’s walls and a large oven-like alcove
suggested possible reuse by later Smiths Islanders. Alternatively, the shape
and depth of the feature also resemble that of a filled in well. Excavation was
warranted to clarify and date the site.
After
establishing a datum point and local grid system, Site Supervisor James Rankine
mapped the Limekiln and initiated a strategy to excavate the feature in
quadrants determined by its emic dimensions. To shed light on the alcove
feature in the kiln’s eastern wall, he sequentially excavated the northeast and
southeast quarters of the kiln floor. Expecting the abandoned limekiln to have
become a rubbish dump, we anticipated several feet of artifact-rich fill, but
instead found only 30 cm of strata and mainly large animal bones in situ. The
lack of heat-altered stone at the bottom and sides and dearth of artifacts
point to an interpretation that the feature was excavated as a kiln but never
actually fired, or that despite its resemblance, it had some unknown function.
Rankine found no evidence of a structure built above the feature cut, leaving
us puzzled as to the nature of this site. The sole non-faunal artifact
recovered was a copper alloy buckle (perhaps from a bridle) that appears to
date to the 19th century.
Limekiln
Site at the end of excavation, showing natural bedrock floor
[1]
Michael Jarvis and Neil Kennedy, "An Archaeological Assessment of Hog Bay
Park, Sandys, Bermuda," unpublished report prepared for the Ministry of
Agriculture, Fish, and Parks, Bermuda Government, July 1993.
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