SIAP is my therapeutic spa, a mid-Atlantic oasis for digital detox where the world shrinks to the manageable size of a few students and supervisors and enthusiastic Bermudians curious about archaeology and the straightforward surmountable practice of clearing ground, laying out meter squares, digging layers, and being surprised and challenged by the artifacts that emerge. The downside of stepping outside ubiquitous digitality (no WiFi on Paget Island and limited data) is that it is hard to regularly post blog entries to keep you, dear reader, updated...
Today is our first proper day off, a week into the season. I have a great team of four students - Lexi, Andrew, Rebecca, and Rosa (a great change from 2024's two dozen) - and three awesome supervisors, now firing on all cylinders after a bumpy start.The logistics of starting a dig are invisible to the public, but require a lot of well-timed coordination and energy. A cancelled Delta flight put me a day behind before we even began! Boats to paint and launch, students to collect at the airport, food to buy and shuttle by boat across the harbour, luggage and field gear to shift, all during a Bermudian holiday weekend kept us busy.
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| Our Wheelbarrow decided to go for a swim... |
Mother Nature did not cooperate, throwing at us first early July hot weather and then gusty squalls that kept our intrepid but low-to-the-water boat out of use. Such adversity is the stuff of bonding (after hours of misery), uniting the team as they tasted the hard work and less glamourous aspects of archaeology.
By Saturday, however, we had cleared our target area at Smallpox Bay, laid out units, and broke ground in order to resume the quest to fully define the very large structure we identified in 2024. Three of our units should have the next set of structural posts in a long line, while another two are positioned in the center of the building. Mixed among the hydroponics agricultural trash from the 1970s were sherds of Raern stoneware, creamware, tin-glazed earthenware, flint fragments, and other artifacts consistent with previous finds.
Xander, Katrina, and Bermudian volunteers Ari and Casey provoked some jealousy by finding Good Stuff in the interior building units, but even Better Stuff awaits Rx2/Lx2 tomorrow...
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| Andrew with Rick Spurling |
We ended Saturday by joining the celebration of Onion Day at Carter House, where the students explored Larry Mills' 1610s Settler's Cabben, freshly thatched with new palmetto leaves. We were so immersed in St David's culture that Andrew entered - and WON! - the onion-eating contest. Rebecca found a book in the archives that seems prophetic...
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| Larry Mills explains palmetto thatching |
Meanwhile, Valerie has been imposing order on the BNT Lab in St George's ahead of what I'm sure will be a steady stream of very cool new artifacts. She will put her faunal ID skills to work, since more than half of all artifacts we recover are usually bones! Val has also begun to tackle our backlog of floatation samples from 2024 post holes. Katrina (2015, 2017, and 2023 veteran) found a CU-alloy straight pin in our first batch, an actual needle from our 1612 (metaphorical) haystack?
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| Lemons and Apples are actually the same |
It has been great to get to know everyone as we work and live together on Paget Island. Several have snorkeled for the first time ever and we are all stunned by the vibrant fish and coral and artifacts scattered along Paget Island's shores - including many large whale bones. Although we are blessed with great hot food from Somers Market (Thank you Debbie and Ryan and team!), we've also been cooking dishes for each other too. Here and there a game was played and a shanty sung, but Monty Python quoting is strictly forbidden.
Posts, I am afraid, will be less frequent this season - we are playing at 1990s archaeology field school re-enactors - but I am sure they will be action packed as we take on a modest but ambitious set of targeted digging at Smallpox Bay and Oven Site and perhaps some STPs at possible new site locations.
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A shady supervisor
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