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3D digital model of Smallpox Bay ruin and excavations,  based on 373 photos and with a dense cloud of 21.6 million points. Stemming from Principal Investigator Michael Jarvis’s recent appointment as Director of Digital Media Studies at the University of Rochester and his increased access to new technologies, software, and devices, this season’s work included training students in a variety of new cutting-edge digital archaeology initiatives. Based on the 2014 season’s success in developing an interactive 3D model of Oven Site using Agisoft’s Photoscan software, the P.I. and Digital Archaeology specialist trainees Miriam Beard and Alice Wynd conducted photogrammetry surveys of all five sites, with Oven Site and Smallpox Bay being surveyed at the beginning, middle, and end of the season.     Although highest resolution processing awaits a return to the University of Rochester and access to the BlueGene supercomputer, we were able to generate excellent medium-resolution poin...

Cave Site Discovered in 2010 and 2013, Cave Site is completely undocumented in the historic record. It is located approximately a tenth of a mile south of the 1872 stone farmer’s cottage ruin at the center of Amenity Park but does not seem to be associated with it. Excavations commenced during the 2014 season with a three-meter-long exploratory trench bisecting the southernmost of the cave’s two openings to determine the depth of stratigraphic deposits within the cave. This work revealed a posthole situated midway across the front of the southern opening as well as a 30 cm step down to a flattened floor just within the cave’s interior. Few subsurface artifacts were recovered, but two sherds of Astburyware suggested occupation in mid-18 th -century. We also observed that the cave roof had been laboriously smoothed as an improvement and exhibited numerous tool marks. This season’s investigations focused on completing the exploratory trench through the back wall of the cave in order to as...

Smallpox Bay Ruin, pre-excavation T he easternmost of our SIAP sites adjoins two small bays on Smiths Sound. The site is a standing stone roofless building ruin whose architectural features indicate an 18th- or early 19th-century construction date. Historical research suggests that the site may have been used as a quarantine station for inbound sick passengers and crew, since Smiths Island was one of two official mandated quarantine anchorages mentioned in Bermuda acts from 1731 through the early nineteenth century. Previous archaeology found evidence of mid-18th-century occupation extending into the mid-19th century, the latter with a distinct British military character. The 2014 season identified "G.R." (George Rex) and a broad arrow carved into the inside north wall, indications of an imperial presence. Intriguingly, artifacts recovered also included toys such as marbles and a cast copper alloy cannon barrel, suggesting the presence of children on an otherwise military sit...

The Oven Site excavations provide insights into the first century of Bermuda’s settlement. The site appears on both the 1616/17 and 1662/63 Norwood Surveys. [1] Previous seasons revealed that the house dimensions were approximately ten feet by twenty-four feet and that the house evolved in two phases. This year’s research focused on exposing the majority of the Period I (thought to date c. 1615 to 1640?) phase of Oven Site in order to determine its dimensions and construction techniques, refine its dating, and shed light on how and when the Period II expansion occurred. Additionally, having defined the front of the house, we hypothesize the presence of a sheet refuse scatter in the yard to the north of the house that can yield further information about a succession of Oven Site occupants. With these research foci in mind, we excavated a five-meter by one-meter trench extending north and perpendicular to the 2013-2014 central east-west trench (N4-9, E5), and also excavated five meter sq...

Wow, that was one long dinner. As it turned out, a small team kept digging through July 4 to finish up Cave Site and to try (and fail) to get to the bottom of the new cistern tank feature, which went down more than two feet and still has at least another foot of strata, according to a probe. I was still washing artifacts and entering them into the master database  the morning I flew out, and then came home to a heap of university-related administration backlog and the requirement to write a preliminary season summary. I think in future years I need to appoint a student as a communications officer and put him/her in charge of posting regular blog entries, since I've had quite the epic fail this year! June 2, 2015 July 2, 2015 Rather than post a hugely long entry, readers can read up on each of the sites in their own entries to follow, drawn from the preliminary report I just finished.... This was the Smiths Island Archaeology Project's fifth season of fieldwork and the fourth Un...