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Final Group Photo at the End of Fill-in Friday Apologies to all for the gap in blogging - it's been a very intense last week of digging to get all four of our sites finished while accommodating various visiting groups and then packing up the field equipment and putting the sites to bed for another year (i.e., filling in all the open excavations we made). During this past week, I felt like a doctor making hospital rounds twice daily, checking in with our three sites. I was ostensibly based at Cave Site and even managed some digging when not leaving it in the capable hands of Sam M. and Andrew. After hitting a flat plane of bedrock fairly early at the mouth of the cave (wherein we found a deep round posthole, possibly for constructing a blind or front wall to this part of the cave), we extended a unit west to dig within the cave proper. This involved actually being inside the cave to dig, which posed a particular challenge for getting archival photos of the tops of each context. Thi...

A veteran of the 2012 and 2013 field schools, Leigh has stepped up to be the site supervisor of our Smallpox Bay excavations. Besides interpreting the challenging new finds coming out of the ground, she presents here complementary historical research that helps us better interpret this site. Interpreting and Reinterpreting Smallpox Bay Even though there is a ruined structure marking the Smallpox Bay site, what this building was used for and who used it continues to be an enigma.  We thought the site was likely used as a quarantine house for those arriving in Bermuda who presented symptoms of smallpox, due to the name of the nearby bay and the fact that Dr. Forbes (who was interested in smallpox inoculation) owned Smiths Island in the 1750s on. But in the 2013 season we found no medical artifacts, nor evidence of cooking which would have been present at any place of convalescence.  Recent feature and artifact finds made in the 2014 season, however, are beginning to reveal how t...

Ashley, recording opening elevations Ashley is the first student to step up and contribute a blog post, reflecting on her recent finds and partnering with Peter, our volunteer who flew all the way from Virginia to participate. She's a rising junior at the U of R from California and plays on the university's volleyball team Tobacco Pipes & Buttons Ashley and Peter in the foreground By the time week three  came around we were all exhausted. We had just finished with the back- breaking shoveling of the quarry fill [the infamous context 005]  from the wide  trench. That’s when Peter came along and I am very happy to say he became one of the greatest digging partners I was fortunate enough to be paired with. His enthusiastic attitude was just the boost I needed:  He was always excited to dig and learn about archaeology. Not only was he in and out of that trench like it was nothing but he was always offering to sift our bucket of dirt. That consists of lifting a twenty...

The surreal blue of the walls comes from our tarp. Diggers look like Smurfs After finding the eastern corners of Oven Site and satisfying this season's principal goals there, our team has now fanned out to the other Eastern Smiths Island sites - Leigh is leading excavations of the Small Pox Bay ruin with Ashley, Kelsey, and Judd.  Jim is seeing if Cotton Hole Bight can yield evidence of the first three Bermudians (c. 1610) with Alice, Mimi, Sam O. and Luke. Andrew and Sam M. are taking on the new cave site with me. Taking out a pesky Spice tree with a borrowed chainsaw (thanks, Danny!) Our incredible run of luck has continued, with no rain days at all this year. Our boat commute on Wednesday morning was on a calm day at dead low tide, and as we rounded the nasty shoal halfway across, I saw through the clear water that it wasn't a shoal at all, but rather a pretty big shipwreck! We later snorkeled around it, circled its ballast pile and followed its lengthy keel, marveling at th...

...They swim with barracuda! Sam, Judd, Matt and I snorkeled the entire northern shore of St. George's Island - two and a half miles. These critters were hanging out under the oil tanker dock near Ferry Reach. By popular request, here are the intrepid snorkelers:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that in the last week of digging any site, really strange things happen... There seems to be some cosmic connection between the Smiths Island Archaeology Project and Father's Day. Momentous things happen. Back in 2012, for instance, a freak near-tropical storm materialized right over St. George's. This year, Father's Day was more fantastic than fractious. Indeed, we figured out most of our main questions about Oven Site in a series of startling breakthroughs. The discoveries started after we removed the 2- to 2-foot thick layer quarried limestone blocks and rubble (Master Context 005) and approached the bedrock floor. Our working hypothesis thus far (based on staircase and the eastern wall cut, which we interpreted as a porch room) is that the Oven Site house was T- or cross-shaped, with the kitchen/hearth room in the back - something I realize now is a rather Georgian mindset assumption that work/private rooms are hidden behind front ...