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!