Smiths Island Rebooted - A Mini-dig in July 2019

Thanks to the generosity of Ian Walker and the Bermuda Aquarium Zoo and Museum, the Welch Family, and the continued support of the Bermuda National Trust and Smiths Islanders, I will be spending the next two weeks undertaking a preliminary assessment of several new sites at the west end of Smiths Island. We first discovered a cluster of above-ground ruins in 2013 but have never had the chance to properly map, model and date them. Because they do not appear on any historical map or document or aerial photograph of Smiths Island, the sites pose a mystery that archaeology alone can begin to unravel.

 

I am coming off my third digital archaeology field school in Ghana and this year had the thrilling opportunity to excavate within two rooms in Elmina Castle.

 In one area, we found a thick layer with only Iberian pottery, dating to the 16th century. In the other, we came right down on the bedrock footing of the original Portuguese curtain wall, dating to circa 1482. It was humbling to think that the Portuguese had built a near-unconquerable medieval castle on West African shores and had a century of sustained commerce with coastal Fante and interior Akanist traders before Bermuda was settled. But it was also difficult to work within a site used to purchase and warehouse human beings for weeks or months at a time before they were put on ships to endure the Middle Passage. So much suffering occurred within these walls that it was difficult to remain focused and detached on the tasks of noting soil transitions, recording contexts, and interpreting artifacts.

The one commonality between ending work in Ghana and starting again in Bermuda was the heat. So far, Bermuda has been every bit as hot as Equatorial West Africa and I miss digging in late May and June, as I have in past summers. I am also working alone, or rather with a crack team of Bermudian veterans (i.e. Xander Cook) and any volunteers willing to brave the heat with me. Securing housing in St. George's proved elusive for supporting my usual university field school group of students, but rather than let another summer pass by without new research I'm taking on a modest assessment of two humble cottages at the West End Bay. Dr. Ian Walker has lent me the  BAZM workboat to get to work each day and has also introduced me to Trunk Island in Harrington Sound, another small, well preserved island that had a house on it on Richard Norwood's 1663 map.


But before we began work on the new sites, I took a stroll down memory lane to check the condition of our previous SIAP excavation sites.

Oven Site was overgrown, as usual.

Cottonhole Bight looked surprisingly empty and cleared - must still be recovering from Matt Lenoe's chainsaw massacre...

And Smallpox Bay ruin still stands, despite its roofless vulnerability to hurricanes.

 But sadly Cave Site has been seriously disturbed - some foul miscreant dug two large deep holes, no doubt misled by popular media tales of pirates burying treasure in caves. Instead, he or she merely churned up the delicate stratigraphy in an ongoing investigation site that we tentatively believe could yield important information about 18th-century enslaved Bermudians' socializing.

We are just getting to work clearing the West End Bay cottages, so tune in a few days from now to follow our progress!