Archaeology Open Day

We had the Archaeology Open Day yesterday at St. Peter's Church Hall and got a good turn out. The artefacts were on show and the interactive 3D model of the churchyard was available for people to view. Plus the archaeologists gave tours of one of the crypts.

Thanks to Brent, Travis, Hope and Sara for all their hard work.

Last Saturday we had a tour of the church and the Archaeology Lab for the dig sponsors, the Bank of Bermuda Foundation and members of the Bermuda National Trust staff.

We are having a Public Open Day this coming Saturday at the church and church hall 12:00pm to 4:00pm.

Richard

Recent News Article about the Project

http://www.royalgazette.com/siftology.royalgazette/Article/article.jsp?articleId=7d8862f30030000&sectionId=48

Well we had a media blitz this week with an article in the local newspaper, the Royal Gazette (see link below.)

Also Brent was interviewed by one of the local TV stations, ZBM News and it aired on Tuesday night. Brent was so mortified that he couldn't watch his own performance. This uncharacteristic show of humility didn't last long so the rest of the team now have to deal with 'Hollywood' Brent Fortenberry. He was even asked for his autograph. Good grief!

Richard

http://www.royalgazette.com/siftology.royalgazette/Article/article.jsp?sectionId=48&articleId=7d8862f30030000

New Finds in St Peter's Church

We have begun excavating in the northern crawl space of St. Peter's Church. The space itself is a product of the the 1950s restoration of the church when support walls were constructed to reinforce the floor of the building. On our stomachs with little room to even kneel we have started to remove the dirt sealing the bedrock underneath the oldest portion of St. Peter's. We first excavated a two foot wide unit spanning the entirety of the 6 foot space. This unit quickly gave way to bedrock. We then moved to the east to the next two foot unit; as we removed the soil near the bottom of the deposit a small copper plate was discovered. Corrosion obscured the inscription however, by its size and shape and the fact that a small portion of wood remained on the back side we figured it might be a pew marker since we did not expect to find any burials in this part of the church. Nonetheless when cleaned this copper artefact was a burial plaque reading: "Sir Jacob Wheate BARt Commander of His Majesty Ship Cerebus OBt the 12 February 1783." Some inital research told us that the Cerebus herself wrecked in around that time near Castle Roads the main cut into Castle Harbour. While we have yet to fully explore the area this coffin plate could be associated with the burial of Jacob Wheate in this part of the church. The mystery surrounding this would be that he would have been buried underneath the floorboards of the 1713/4 part of the church. An odd place to put a man who died of Yellow Fever. We are continuing the explore this area but the coffin plate (pictured above) is an exciting find for our field season. brf.

Ming House Excavations

This week we completed our unit abutting the southern wall of the free black and slave section of St. Peter's Churchyard in the garden of Ming House. Several layers of deposits were discovered. The top layers were composed of both modern and historic material. It seems from the plethora of full bottles and large ceramic fragments this area was an easy place to dump trash over adjoining walls. This was true was the cemetery as well as we uncovered some fragments of headstones. At the base of excavation two small post holes were discovered. We have tentatively interpreted them as possible holes for scaffolding or supports during the construction of the wall. The prize find from this trench however was a coin from 1818 bearing the image of the King of Spain at the time Ferdinand VII. Our entire stint at the site was aided by our trusty sidekick Murphy pictured above. In future seasons we have been given permission to open up a larger area in the Ming House Garden.

End of Week Two

Another exciting aspect of the project this year is our work on constructing a 3-d model of St Peter's Church. This model is being constructed using Google Sketch-Up and will include the interior of the church, the entire graveyard, and the underground vaults. When completed it will allow the user to explore the landscape from a first person point of view. One of the larger goals of our continuing work on St Georges is to integrate this particular site into a 3-D 17th century landscape and beyond. The photo above is an example of our early efforts.

After two weeks of digging our time at Whitehall has come to an end. While our time here was cut short by both our dig schedule and some logistical hiccups we learned much of the phasing of the site over the last four centuries. Of greatest import for this project are the several layers of sealed 17th (possibly early 18th century) deposits filled with artefacts, most notably a large quantity of of tinglazes from both England and the Low Countries. Future investigations of the property will hopefully shed more light on these layers and how they related to the larger 17th century landscape of St. George's.

Next week includes the Cup-Match Holiday which is a cricket match between St George's (East-End) and Somerset (West-End) created in celebration of Emancipation Day in Bermuda 1 August 1834. So during the first portion of the week we will be digging at Ming House an early 18th century on Duke of York Street (the main thoroughfare in St George's). It is of interest for this project due to its location directly abutting St Peters boundary wall. These excavations will shed light on the construction phases for the church wall. More Soon, brf

Another Perspective on the Investigation of St. Peter's Church

It has been a little more than a week since we began our study of St. Peter's Church here in St. George and it has certainly been a very interesting beginning. Our work has taken on various forms, from plan-view survey to subterranean mapping to good, old-fashioned excavation. I have been particularly struck by the nature of our graveyard survey in the St. Peter's churchyard and surrounding areas. I was a bit apprehensive about how my fellow archaeologists and I would be affected by performing an extensive study in such an emotionally-charged site. It seemed to me that we would be operating under a cloud, as it were, as we attempted to gather a useful amount of data from the somber memorials.

I was surprised to find that my original expectations were not realized. Rather than feeling suffocated by the adopted sorrow resulting from hundreds of deaths, I consistently failed to notice the mood of the place. In fact, I often had to stop myself from placing survey materials on the tops of burial vaults, or from leaning against the worn headstones during periods of down-time. For the most part, I was much further divorced from the churchyard's atmosphere that I had initially anticipated. There were, however, several poignant moments during which intense moments of sentimentality, usually the result of an especially emotive inscription or the discovery of a small child's burial, spiked into my general calm, invading what was otherwise a fairly sterile experience. It was at these moments that I was reminded of my surroundings and I immediately felt a wave of guilt sweep over me. How could I forget the loss that had filled these memorials to the point of overflow?

The St. Peter's survey has thus far forced me to reevaluate my notions of emotional archaeologies and the nature of historical places as they are negotiated in the contemporary world. It is my hope, and indeed my expectation, that I will be challenged to continue these ruminations throughout the remainder of our season.

Travis


Travis Parno is a senior staff archaeologist on the St. Peter's Church Archaeological Project and a post-MA PhD student at Boston University.

Some Background on St. Peter's Church

Some Background

A wooden church was built on the site in 1619 and this was replaced by a stone building around 171¾. The church has undergone several successive renovations throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and even after its replacement had been virtually completed (the Unfinished Church). St. Peter's has continued to serve its parishioners for nearly four centuries.

Overall our goals for this season include:

-Examining the origins and evolution of St Peter's by conducting a survey of building's foundations and excavating in the nearby properties of Ming House and Whitehall.

-Surveying the Memorials of the Church in the yard, interior, and underneath the current structure.

What we are working on today

Recently it was discovered that there were several chambers underneath both the front portion (south side) and north portion of the church. We have now started to map and survey the contents of these chambers. So far we have examined three chambers. Two of them contain some of the earliest gravestones surviving at St. Peter's the earliest we have seen to date has been 1718. The middle chamber contains a set of stairs likely an earlier set that led into the church prior to its expansion. We hope to continue our exploration of these chambers digging deeper into the history of St. Peter's over the coming weeks.

Surveying the Memorials

Sorry for the delay. The first week is under our belts and I hope that in the future all of the team members will blog about their experiences on the dig. As for now its just be Brent Fortenberry, a PhD Student from Boston University USA.

This year our work in the town of St. George's focuses on three areas in and around St. Peter's Church. Our first job was to survey all the memorials in and around St. Peter's. In 2004 two historians conducted a survey of all the inscriptions. They did not however plot each memorial in space. So last week the team went memorial to memorial, gravestone to gravestone, plotting each by hand in space. Next week we will likely then take those plans and place them into a digital format. In addition to this work we are going back and plotting in the memorials and gravestone that have no inscriptions (either they have worn away or never existed at all).

Starting this week is our archaeology camp more to come and on a more regular basis.

Cheers,
brf

2008 Excavations

Our field season runs from the 18th of July until the 15th of August.

Email us with your questions and comments at bntarchaeology@gmail.com

More to come!