Saturday, October 24, 2009

Artifacts Everywhere . . . October 24, 2009

By Neal V. Hitch, Museum Director

This was our second day on Ft George Cay. One thing is clear. There are a lot more artifacts than we thought there were.


The hurricanes of last September wreaked havoc and accelerated the erosion on known foundations. We have found several ceramic artifacts in the water and in the exposed cliff where the beach is slowly claiming the fort. Many of these ceramics are the same or similar to those in the Brooke Fox collection, but being able to document similar cultural material in or around the fort foundations gives a context to interpret the artifacts that Brooke Fox donated to the museum.

Today, we continued with clearing brush and locating known sites. In the first two days we have located all of the sites annotated by Walt Brewer on a computer aided drawing completed in 1999. The brush is very dense. It takes a lot of work to clear. And it is very, very hot.

But, we have made more progress than we expected, and have more work cleaning and documenting artifacts than we thought we would, they are everywhere.