From 30 June to 4 August, our research team, comprised of 20 students from the USA, a slew of specialists, and led by Dr. Scott M. Fitzpatrick (NC State University), Michiel Kappers (In-Terris, Site Technics), and Dr. Quetta Kaye (University College London and a slew of specialists from the UK, USA, and The Netherlands, will be focusing on the archaeological investigation of two sites on Nevis - Coconut Walk and Indian Castle. Previous research by the Time Team (UK) at Coconut Walk revealed that the site had an array of faunal and artifactual material and postholes from habitation structures associated with the Late Ceramic Age (ca. post-AD 600 – 1400). Past research at Indian Castle by Sam Wilson in the 1980s, and recent observations, suggest that this site also has good potential to reveal information about past inhabitants and is eroding away quickly. Overall, our team is primarily interested in examining the smaller islands of the Caribbean, determining how they were affected by human settlement prehistorically, and if this differs from what is seen on the larger islands. In addition, we are also interested in investigating cultural changes that took place between the early and late phases of occupation during the Ceramic Age (ca. 500 BC - AD 1400). Scott M. Fitzpatrick Associate Professor of Archaeology Director of Graduate Programs, Anthropology Co-Editor, Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology Department of Sociology & Anthropology NC State University
Nevis to Start Marine Heritage Project
Beginning in 2011, the broad goals of identifying and documenting Nevis' underwater cultural resources will begin in earnest. The first phase will include a survey of the lee side of Nevis for shipwrecks, investigate already known wrecks, and assist in formally establishing Nevis' underwater cultural resource database. The work will largely involve surveying from a boat using non-invasive remote sensing equipment. Scuba dives to verify promising targets will identify and record the conditions of wrecks. No excavations will be anticipated, though very limited recoveries may be requested of artifacts with diagnostic potential. Any request would include a plan for professional conservation backed by proper funding to ensure safe completion. Prior to recovery plans will be made to ensure a clear line of possession, responsibility, and long-term preservation at an NHCS approved repository, anticipated to be a Nevis museum. Prior to beginning all work, a formal proposal outlining the specific methods of investigation will be submitted, and all work will be conducted under the permitting and supervision of the NHCS and other pertinent Nevis authorities as necessary. It is anticipated that this will formally begin scientific recordings of Nevis' maritime heritage. The database produced will be designed to grow in future years with future finds. It will assist government policies to protect and manage Nevis' wrecks, and all future work will build upon any finds.
Jim Johnson RIP
James William Johnson: 6th June 1959-April 13th, 2010 R.I.P. The NHCS and indeed the whole of Nevis was greatly saddened to hear of the passing of local biologist and hiking guide, Jim Johnson in a tragic house fire at his home in the village of Brick Kiln. Jim originally came to Nevis in the mid 1980's as a volunteer with the US Peace Corp and never left, eventually marrying local girl Nichole and having to two children Patrick (17) and Jessica (19) No one on Nevis was more devoted to protecting the environment and culture of the island than Jim, whether it was with his world famous nature hikes to the peak, his star gazing nights, his geo-caching project and most recently with his single handed promotion of the Nevis Pirate Week Festival which won him an honorary membership with the Nevis Hoteliers Association. Jim was also a long standing member of the NHCS and took part in countless activities on our behalf over the years. The list of Jim achievements on behalf of Nevis would be lengthy not least for all the support and publicity he generated for Nevis Tourism through his numerous interviews with international newspapers and magazines, not to mention all the visiting scientists and and local students that he assisted with research over the years. As James Holmes Manager of Nesbitt Plantation summed up "All that had been on one of his tours will have known his knowledge and his enthusiasm for the Island of Nevis and anything to do with its nature and history."He will be greatly missed and our condolences go out to his family at this time.
Ancient Nevis Pottery to Be tested in UK
By Elaine Morris, University of Southampton
Scientific Research into Afro-Caribbean Pottery from Archaeological Excavations on Nevis. Afro-Caribbean pottery, the earthenware vessels made by African women and their descendants in the Caribbean, has been found in abundance during excavations on Nevis - by the British television programme Time Team in 1998 and the Nevis Heritage Project during 2000-2009. The pottery can be dated by association with European and Oriental wares to the principal periods of slavery (late 17th - early 19th centuries) and post-emancipation (mid-19th - 20th centuries). Dr Elaine Morris of the University of Southampton (UK) is exploring the nature of vessel production itself during these two broad phases as a contribution to understanding why Afro-Caribbean pottery continued to be made on Nevis when production ceased on so many other islands in the Lesser Antilles and how that production changed into the Newcastle Pottery Co-operative we know today. She will be investigating whether there were many different potters located all around the island during the period of slavery making pots for use on their estates and also for sale in the Sunday market run by slaves and whether this continued to be the way production was organised after emancipation or were there only a few locations where pottery was made during both phases. Was there always just one part of the island where pottery has always been made as is the case today? Elaine proposes to investigate these questions by characterising the fabric, or paste, of ten diagnostic vessels from each of four assemblages of pottery from well-documented archaeological investigations on Nevis: Mountravers on Pinney’s Estate, Upper Rawlins and Fenton Hill in Gingerland, and the Charlestown Waterfront site north of Unella’s Restaurant. The Upper Rawlins deposits with Afro-Caribbean pottery date to the late 17th/18th centuries and are part of a short-lived, mountain-side sugar plantation of modest means, while the Mountravers contexts derive from the18th to mid-19th century and reflect the opposite end of sugar estate grandeur. In contrast, the Waterfront site is a town/port site rather than rural location situated within a world of international commerce and local markets dating from the late 17th/early18th to late 19th centuries and will provide an excellent comparative collection of data. The Fenton Hill Afro-Caribbean pottery is associated with other pottery dating mainly from the post-emancipation period of occupation at that location and is a habitation which appears have had little to do with sugar production. The research will use a combination of ceramic petrology conducted at the University of Southampton and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) by Dr Michael Glascock at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) to determine the similarities and differences identified amongst the 40 samples selected and also compared to natural clay samples from Nevis. Petrological analysis of the pastes would characterise scientifically what is visible in hand specimen (the sand-like inclusions and glittering effect visible in the sherds with the naked eye) while INAA would indicate if there is only one clay source used throughout these centuries or whether different sources were used at different times. It would show us whether the pottery found in Charlestown had come from many sources (within the island or from inter-island trade), for example, while that from Upper Rawlins was from just one source. This work will complement that conducted by Dr Todd Ahlman on the Afro-Caribbean pottery found on St Kitts at Brimstone Hill by the University of Tennessee. Dr Ahlman has been extremely helpful in advising and encouraging this research into Nevis Afro-Caribbean pottery within a much wider programme with other scholars looking at similar pottery from several of the Leeward Islands to identify inter-island trade. The Nevis Afro-Caribbean Pottery Project will take place over the next few years, and Elaine will be reporting to the NHCS Newsletter as the research develops. Dr Elaine Morris, School of Humanities (Archaeology), University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Southampton SO17 1BF, UK (
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
)
Nevis has dozens of Amerindian Archaeological Sites
Last Updated on Sunday, 21 March 2010 19:46
A Visit to Nevis—1852
By Charles William Day
An excerpt from one of the many early Nevis related publications in the NHCS’s Archive's Littlewood Collection
We made Gingerland Point, and stretched five or six miles along a low level plain, to weather Long Point, and then we beat into the open roadstead of Charlestown, the tiny capital of this lovely little island. Fortunately for us the wind blew strongly off shore, so we landed in the ship's-boat without a wetting from the surf, an advantage not always attainable. I went straight to a strange barrack-looking mansion on a gentle eminence, to the right of the town, which bore the designation of the Bath Hotel. The hotel commanded a noble prospect. The whole Island of St. Kitts, the Isle of St. Eustatia looming over Brimstone Hill, as far as Scotch-bonnet, twenty miles! the fine range of Mount Misery, four thousand three hundred feet in height, the houses of Basseterre, the capital, clearly in sight, eleven miles across the strait, the deep blue sea, with its glancing specks of light-the tiny triangular sail : still nearer, on our island, a beautiful plain stretched up eastward, nearly three miles to the mountain, three thousand feet in height, clothed with thick forest, serrated with bold ravines, and shewing here and there the bare precipice. This scene is not to be surpassed in the West Indies-rarely indeed is it equalled. Nevis is about twenty-eight miles in circumference, and has many peculiarities, being governed by a President, assisted by a council of five members, and an assembly of about seventeen. It is an independent government, that is, not subordinate to any other island.
The planters in Nevis, instead of being coarse illiterate Scotchmen, without capital, are all the descendants of old creole families, and are educated, intelligent gentlemen. They form the members of council, and of the assembly and the magistracy, besides filling many official situations; so that instead of the ignorant, coloured hucksters, who do such ludicrous things in the assembly at Dominica, Nevis is governed by men well acquainted with the island; whilst, as a consequence, society is much more united, and more kindly disposed towards them. Besides a half-breed of buffaloes, there are about eleven camels in Nevis, which are said to work well. The mountain is full of monkeys, some of which are three feet high, and exceedingly strong and fierce. They have black faces with light whiskers, olive-green fur, and a very long tail. They do great mischief by coming down in troops of fifties, to feed on the canes, potatoes, or anything of that class. The mountain abounds also in partridges and ramiers in the season, but no indigenous parrots. There are some snakes quite inoffensive; also centipedes and scorpions, not quite so innocent. But the great domestic annoyances are from sand flies; and worse than all, the most pertinacious and teasing house flies I ever met with. There are also a few mosquitoes. Mutton is the staple animal food of Nevis.
The Bath-house is a curious-looking edifice. It was built of granite, at a vast expense, by the late Mr. John Huggins for himself and married sons, so that each family, though under the same roof, might have a distinct house, offices, &c.: consequently there are, in Edinburgh parlance, three flats. This arrangement turned out to be a failure, and after many vicissitudes ruinous to its occupants, part of it (the centre) became an hotel. Its arrangements are bizarre, but comfortable.
The Thermal Baths consist, first of an exceedingly hot one for rheumatic patients, who derive great benefit from it ; a tepid bath, of delightful temperature for cleanliness; and a well of chalybeated warm water for drinking. An imperfect analysis of the waters, by Dr. Davy, detected sulphur, iron, and a trace of iodine-trifling medical properties; but the real advantage is, that the temperature is kept up throughout the bath, the water losing nothing from atmospheric influences.
Unfortunately, the late and present landlords have been negroes, so that a thermometer is a piece of "obea," quite beyond their comprehension: therefore, the temperature has not been tried thermometrically by the medical men. The trace of iodine, in the drinking well, makes it rather grateful to the stomach. The air, up here, is pure; the views magnificent; and so people recover their health. The cocoa-palms and other fruit trees of the island, have all been blighted. Yet Nevis must be considered as the bean ideal of West Indian beauty. Amongst the negroes here there is a good deal of obea, and secret poisonings. Though perfectly well known, it is impossible to bring home one case to a conviction. To strangers, Nevis is an extremely expensive place, though a cheap one to the inhabitants.
