Yesterday marked the end of our two weeks of field work on Ft. George Cay. It was a little sad to backfill the test excavations, take down our base camp, and shuttle everything back to Pine Cay. We didn’t accomplish as much as I hoped, but there’s nothing new about that. I’ve always been suspicious that meeting all your goals may mean that they weren’t set high enough to start with.
There is still a lot of Ft. George Cay to explore. We did not set foot on every square meter of land or comb the shallows offshore as thoroughly as I intended. Clumps of really dense bush discouraged us from testing many promising areas. But we managed to accurately map the locations where we found evidence of habitation and put them on geo-registered high-resolution digital aerial photos of Ft. George Cay using a program called Oziexplorer. This is important because the part of the cay currently protected by legislation is only 1 acre. The maps now irrefutably demonstrate that structures and artifacts belonging to the fort cover at least 8 acres and probably much more.
Although the field work portion of our archaeological exploration of Ft. George is finished, the project is far from over. We have artifacts and samples to clean, conserve, and analyze, articles and reports to write, and exhibits to prepare. We hope that our efforts will engender a greater awareness of the historical importance of Ft. St. George, how rapidly shore erosion is destroying parts of it, and how time for efforts to protect and preserve it is running out.