Partners and Supporters

Although Project Directors ostensibly get the lion's share of the credit for the flashy finds and slow, methodical research at archaeological excavations, these achievements really depend on the labours of a wide array of collaborators, partners, supporters, benefactors, and volunteers. I owe my graduate and undergraduate students the biggest debt of gratitude for the countless hours of hard work, challenging questions, intense curiosity and energy, and occasional lunacy they've brought to the sites over the past five years. It is sharing in the camaraderie that springs from a sense of common purpose as much as new historical discoveries that keeps me coming back to Smiths Island year after year. Besides a hard-earned t-shirt, veterans of the Smiths Island field school become lifetime members of an elite group - the Loyal Order of the Tree Frog - upon surviving the season. Should you ever see a giant green tree frog projected in the sky above, you are either really drunk, hallucinating, or being called to return to Smith's Island to defend our sites and vanquish evil.

Loyal Order of the Tree Frog Members

Sophia Banner ('22)

Samantha Becker ('22)

Cameron Baretto ('15)

Mimi Beard ('14, '15)

Quarin Bey-Muhammad ('12)

Jared Book ('22)

Sadie Brown ('22)

Katie Brown ('22)

Hannah Chhibber ('22)

Ryan Chui ('17)

Jordan Cicoria ('12)

Xander Cook ('15, '17, '19, '22)

Skylar DiBlasi ('22)

Ethan Dimmock ('15)

Sean Fischer ('17)

Kristina Fricker ('12, '13)

Anima Ghimire ('13)

Sarah Grabowski ('22)

Peyton Harrison ('22)

Bailey Hilt ('15)

Ashley Hunter ('14)

Kelsey Hurley ('14)

Charlotte Jarvis ('10)

Leigh Koszarsky ('12. '13, '14, '15, '17)

Wyatt Krater ('22)

Andrew Lingrel ('14)

Alexandra Mairs-Kessler ('10)

Samantha Martinez ('14, '15)

Samantha Oliva ('14)

Megan Perucca ('22)

Luke Piscitelli ('14)  

Katrina Ponti ('17)

Gabby Pulcinelli ('15)

Mimi Ramsdell ('12)

Jim Rankine ('14, '15, '17)

Mike Read ('12)

Ewan Shannon ('17, '22)

Rick Spurling ('10)

John Sterritt ('15)

Karamy Valdez ('17)

Judd Wendland ('14)

Lisa Wright ('17)

Alice Wynd ('14, '15)

Jonathan Zeleznik ('13)

Mona Zhang ('22)

Fenyi Zhao ('17)

Site T-shirts from 2012 to 2015

We have also had many volunteers over the past three seasons, and those who have spent at least three days in the field with us have earned an official field school t-shirt (not available in stores!). They range from local St. George's and St. David's folk to visitors who have flown to Bermuda specifically to experience the dig. Thank you for donating your time!

Scott & Kelsey Amos ('13)

Jessica Balfour-Swain ('15)

Chloe Baron ('13)

Zoe Brady ('13)

Adrian Cook ('17, '22)

Xander Cook ('14)

Jason Correia ('13, '14)

Alaina Cubbon ('13, '14)

Trenton Daniels ('14)

Sarah D'Alessio ('13, '14)

Ashley Desa ('15)

Rachael Hayward ('22)

 Jim Hermann ('13)

Heather Miyano Kopelson ('14, '15)

Matt Lenoe ('14)

Alicia Marshall ('15)

Susan Mayall ('13, '14)

Ross Nedervelt ('14)

Luisa Olander ('14)

Fukumi Orikasa ('13)

Mark Orchard ('14)

Khari Place ('13, '14)

Katrina Ponti ('15)

Krystl Robinson-Assan ('13)

Fae Sapsford ('15, '19, '22)

Peter Schaub ('14)

Shannon Stapley ('14)

T.J. Stevens ('14)

Abby Stuart ('15)

Tawana Tannock ('14)

Roger Trott ('14) 

Matthew Viney ('14)

Timothy Webb ('22)

 

 

PARTNERS

The UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER has been instrumental in establishing and running my field school, especially during the ten months of the year NOT spent in Bermuda. Jacqui Rizzo of the History Department and Tynelle Stewart and her staff at the Study Abroad Office keep me organized and help me get students enrolled and prepared for each summer's dig. Steve Manly of the Undergraduate Research Office has generously supported UR student participants with research funds to defray the field school cost. Renato Perucchio, Director of the UR's Archaeology, Technology, and Historic Structures program, has likewise been enormously supportive.

The BERMUDA NATIONAL TRUST has supported my historical and archaeological research since 1991 - half a lifetime in my case! As a graduate student I cut my teeth as a researcher uncovering the histories of many of the BNT's St. George's properties, in conjunction with Colonial Williamburg Foundation's Department of Archaeological Research. The BNT's Archaeological Research Committee provides vital support in terms of equipment, lab facilities, and handling complex immigration and housing matters necessary for students to volunteer and study in Bermuda. Its members are also old friends who have been digging with me before many of next year's field school students were even born. They are a big reason that I love coming back to Bermuda year after year. Bob Duffy, Linda Abend, Nan Godet, Susan Kesseram, Stephen Copeland, Margie Lloyd, Amanda Outerbridge, Dace Ground, Jennifer Gray, Bill Zuill, Diana and Nigel Chudleigh, Andrew Bayley, Deborah Atwood, Zoe Brady, and Charlotte Andrews have all helped massively to advance archaeology in Bermuda and sustain the Smith's Island Archaeology Project since its 2010 inception.

The ST. GEORGE'S FOUNDATION under the leadership of Rick Spurling has supported the Smiths Island Archaeology Project from its inception in 2009, when Rick landed me at Smallpox Bay on a November afternoon to start scouting sites. The SGF and the Spurlings helped me secure the workboat so important to working on an island and housed me and my first field crew of two in 2010 and has been very generous and engaged ever since. Through 2019, the SGF's World Heritage Center served as my field school classroom and is where I start and end each season with public talks, reporting to St. Georgians what we hope to find and then what we've actually found.

The BERMUDA AQUARIUM, MUSEUM, and ZOO is another valuable ally of SIAP and a conscientious heritage collaborator as it works to restore Trunk Island in Harrington Sound into a Living Classroom featuring native flora and fauna and archaeology sites as they are discovered.  Executive Director Dr. Ian Walker, Nigel Pollard, and Trevor Rawson especially have helped SIAP out through the loan of work boats and their sweat and hard work in clearing Smith's Island sites of dense invasive tree cover. 

I am also grateful to the BERMUDA GOVERNMENT Parks Department for continued permission to investigate Smith's Island, the Bermuda  POLICE SERVICES for the use of rooms in its St. George's Barracks, and the PLANNING AND SURVEYING department for maps, aerial photos, and GIS files that have helped us find and assess our sites.

SUPPORTERS 

Operating a field school has a lot of moving parts, from feeding and housing students and overseas volunteers to commuting across a harbour to work each day and having a loo to use when you get there! 

Since 2013, SOMERS MARKET has generously donated its Food Bar surplus at the end of the day. Chef Arup's fantastic food makes us look forward to coming home each day - Bermudian, Indian, Thai, Mexican,  Caribbean, Southern - you name it - plus fish, ever popular mac and cheese, and great desserts. And this year Chef Ryan added his own West Indian delicacies to the mix, while Store Manager Mr. Ramotar kept us in breads, cakes, muffins, and pies throughout the weeks. 

Mr. Ramotar

Chef Arup with his 2014 shirt

 

Arup and Ryan with their 2015 shirts

Anne and Norman Brown were our gracious hosts from 2012 through 2014 at Convict Bay.  In 2015, Faith Bridges and Neil Moncreiff made available three newly renovated parts of Block House, a cluster of 18th-century houses located right next to Town Hall in the heart of Old St. George's - and conveniently next to our Reeve Court lab as well.

Garth Rothwell has generously let us use his dock and, more importantly, the cottage next to his home (Dr. George Forbes's 1770 Smiths Island mansion), which provides us with 21st-century toilets, storage, and vital access to water. He has also thrown us a party on Fill-In Day 2014 that has gone down in field school lore as many a student's fondest moment. In 2017, Garth was also instrumental in enabling us to secure summer housing at St. George's Preparatory School.

Without Geoffrey Redmond's boats for our daily commute (2012-2017), we would have a hard time reaching our sites. They are both fun to drive and add an element of the unknown, with their sometimes temperamental motors and proclivity to switch from boat to barge and back, according to what he can spare us. He is also a great supporter of youth education about archaeology and has brought St. George's Primary School teachers and students out every year the field school has been running.

Mike Dickinson has emerged as Smith's Island's ambassador to SIAP work, acting as a liaison between archaeologists and the island's tight-knit community. We are grateful for the loan of his parent's house (2021) and lending us his bobcat and tools when needed.

The extended Cook family - George, Jo, Annette, Adrian, and especially Xander - have profoundly aided my various digs and historical research since 2015 by providing rides, a bed, food, advice, tools, dinners, field labour, and friendship.  From an excited, distractible 14-year old volunteer, Xander has grown to become a serious, professionally trained terrestrial and nautical archaeologist as he prepares to defend Bermuda's cultural heritage (ashore and overboard) from those who would threaten it and launch his own new research projects into Bermuda's rich, complex history.

CONTRIBUTORS

Contributors enhance the educational experiences of student-participants and advance their mastery of archaeological methods and Bermudian history in important ways.

Bermuda Archives

Bermuda Government Department of Youth, Sports and Recreation

National Museum of Bermuda

Carter House Museum (17th c. Day)

SEA/Corwith Cramer and Virginia

John Cox

Dr. David Givens, Director of Archaeology, Jamestown Rediscovery

Peter Leach, Geophysical Survey Systems Inc. Staff Archaeologist and GPR guru

DONORS 

Rick Spurling, Jacob Hocking, Paul Leseur, Henry Hayward, Than Butterfield,