STENAPA looks for 'old stuff'

One of my interns once commented that Ruud Stelten our lovely SECAR (St Eustatius Center for Archeological Research) friend loved 'old s***'. Not untrue (he really loves it) but after getting the opportunity to tag along with Ruud, Joost and the rest of the SECAR gang at the dig in the farm this week I have to admit, I quite like it too!
  
During a survey for the terminal last year Ruud found some archeological remains of a former slave village. Well, as it turns out, it's only the largest archeologically in tact slave village ever found in the Caribbean! They have applied for funding to fully investigate the site, log and catalog all the finds and build a replica of the village in the grounds of the Museum. We are going to help them in creating some of the provisioning grounds replica. Basically every small hut in the village would have had a small area of ground where the slaves could cultivate some produce, vegetables, fruits, keep chickens or pigs etc. These grounds were really important to them as this was not only a way of producing their own food but they were also able to sell any surplus at local markets on Sundays. It was one of the only areas where they were able to have some control over their lives.

When the exhibition is finished in town at the end of the year we will have two of the replica huts and some provisioning ground at the garden on permanent display in our new heritage garden that we will be working on this year.

We went along on Monday and watched the digger unearthing features that have not been seen possibly for centuries. The man operating the digger was so careful taking literally an inch of top soil away at a time until the feature was visible. Ruud would then tag the feature with a small flag and they would move onto another area. Joost was then looking at the features with the students to measure and plot them all out.

More students were also going through the top soil that the digger was moving and looking for finds, things like small pieces of pottery etc. We found some really cool things, little pieces of pipes, fragments of expensive Chinese and Japanese pottery from the 18th century and Randy found the stem and bottom section of a lead blown glass goblet.

While we were there they were able to plot where a ditch they had found the day before went onto, they found a series of small post holes that Joost thought may be some kind of storage thing and they also found 2 more huts. The darker marks in the soil indicating the holes where the wooden posts would have been were so obvious when you know what to look for.

Ruud with his tagging flags and the digger starting it's work

The darker marks in the soil that indicate where a post would have been

Tess my lovely new intern getting down 'n' dirty all in the name of history!

arrrhhh the treasure... (best pirate impression there)

and then there's the science bit, logging and plotting out all the features

It was really cool for us to come along and experience the site. It will certainly help us when we come to recreate it later on and we are looking forward to the rest of the project. Of course I will keep you all well informed on progress!

Much love from the garden on the golden rock.