{"id":17450,"date":"2024-12-11T13:38:10","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T18:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/?p=17450"},"modified":"2024-12-21T12:07:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T17:07:39","slug":"the-hidden-history-of-bermuda-is-reshaping-the-way-we-think-about-colonial-america-copy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewlawler.com\/content\/the-hidden-history-of-bermuda-is-reshaping-the-way-we-think-about-colonial-america-copy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hidden History of Bermuda Is Reshaping the Way We Think About Colonial America"},"content":{"rendered":"

New archaeological finds on the islands have revealed secrets about one of Britain\u2019s first settlements in the Americas\u2014and the surprising ways it changed the New World<\/h2>\n

By Andrew Lawler, Published December 01, 2024. Read the article here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A sudden roar broke the muggy stillness, making me jump.<\/p>\n

A young woman squatting in a shallow trench reassured me. \u201cNo worries,\u201d she said, gesturing with a trowel into a nearby thicket. \u201cOur tools here are chainsaws and leaf blowers.\u201d Whisk brooms, dental picks and spoons are also part of the arsenal. A few dozen yards away, in a dirty T-shirt, faded camo shorts and black work boots, Michael Jarvis hacked away at thick brush with a gas-powered saw. In this clearing on Smith\u2019s Island, in Bermuda, Jarvis\u2014\u201cChainsaw Mike\u201d to his students\u2014is unearthing one of the first New World towns built by English colonizers.<\/p>\n

The settlement was established in 1612, a mere five years after the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia and eight years before the Pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was abandoned soon afterward for another location on a nearby island. Its very existence was forgotten for four centuries; even its name remains unknown.<\/p>\n

With its pink sands and azure waters, Bermuda has long been a favorite among honeymooners\u2014and overlooked by scholars. Yet the string of about 180 islands in the Sargasso Sea were, for a time, home to more settlers than either Virginia or Massachusetts, and far more prosperous. It was here that the English first grew tobacco in the New World and purchased enslaved Africans to work the fields, a practice that soon spread to American shores. \u201cBermuda barreled ahead, becoming profitable, and that model encouraged investors who realized they could make money in the New World,\u201d explained Carla Pestana, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles. \u201cIt was the first financially successful plantation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The booming archipelago also provided essential food supplies for struggling Jamestown, predated Plymouth as a religiously focused Puritan colony and served as the sole flourishing beacon for early English venture capitalists seeking to make their fortune in the New World. But covering a mere 22 square miles\u2014barely a third the area of Washington, D.C.\u2014the colony\u2019s population was quickly dwarfed by English emigration to North America and the Caribbean. Soon ecological disasters forced planters to become merchants or privateers. As the British Empire expanded around the globe, and the United States was born, the significance of this remote speck of land receded, barely earning a footnote in many chronicles of American colonization. \u201cWhen historians have thought about Bermuda, it\u2019s as a curiosity or a failure,\u201d Jarvis said.<\/p>\n

Archaeologist Michael Jarvis on Bermuda\u2019s Paget Island last summer. \u201cI best understand people in the past by understanding what they did,\u201d he says. Nicola Muirhead<\/p>\n

For the past 14 years, Jarvis, a historian and archaeologist at the University of Rochester in New York, has led excavations in Bermuda seeking to uncover the secrets of its neglected colonial history. Nobody has done more to shed light on the islands\u2019 important role in fostering the growth of Britain\u2019s overseas realm and its American spinoff. Now he is confident he has located its first substantial settlement. His findings are exciting those who research Europe\u2019s colonization of the New World, given how rare it is to uncover remnants of such an early English community in the Americas. Mark Horton, a British archaeologist digging for remnants of the failed 1587 Roanoke colony on the North Carolina coast, hails it as \u201ca truly significant discovery\u201d that will \u201cgreatly help in understanding early 17th-century settlement\u2014not only in Bermuda, but at Jamestown, in New England and across the Caribbean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bermuda, shaped like a fishhook, lies 650 miles east of North Carolina\u2019s Cape Hatteras and 800 miles north of the West Indies, astride the warm Gulf Stream current that courses past the Bahamas and into the North Atlantic. A cooling climate more than a million years ago locked up ice in the polar regions, lowering sea levels and exposing the top of a massive volcano in the mid-Atlantic Ocean that rises 14,000 feet above the sea bottom. In time, warming temperatures raised the water, smoothing and flattening the rough peak, a cycle that repeated itself many times over and gradually formed today\u2019s archipelago with its shallow bays. Meanwhile, the Gulf Stream carried plants and animals, including turtles, insects and the seeds of palms, cedars and mangroves. Among them was the tiny invertebrate that secretes calcium carbonate\u2014the key component of limestone\u2014which slowly built up a network of coral reefs surrounding the islands.<\/p>\n

With no mammal predators, an array of birds multiplied, including vast flocks of a seabird called the cahow, a name that mimics its noisy and otherworldly cry. There is no record of people setting foot here until the early 1500s, though some believe Bermuda to be the \u201cisle of birds\u201d visited by St. Brendan, the sixth-century Irish monk and adventurer. Spanish navigator Juan de Berm\u00fadez spotted the chain around 1503, giving it its name. It\u2019s believed that he offloaded pigs so they might feed future Spanish settlers or castaways.<\/p>\n

Sixteenth-century seafarers, however, did their best to give the island chain a wide berth. Jagged reefs reaching far into the ocean easily punctured wooden hulls, a threat made more menacing by the unpredictable weather. Sir Walter Raleigh warned that Bermuda was surrounded by \u201ca hellish sea for thunder, lightning and storms.\u201d English captain Francis Wyatt wrote that \u201call seafaring men\u201d\u2014whether English, French or Portuguese\u2014agreed \u201cthat hell is no hell in comparison to\u201d Bermuda\u2019s fierce weather. They avoided the islands \u201cas they would shun the devil himself,\u201d another Englishman, Silvester Jourdain, wrote. Not all succeeded. One of many ships that sank offshore was a Portuguese vessel; a casualty of the wreck survived long enough to carve \u201c1543\u201d into an island rock. This fearsome reputation extended to the land itself. The eerie calls of the cahow were ascribed to demons. One European wrote that Bermuda was \u201can enchanted den of furies and devils, the most dangerous, unfortunate and forlorn place in the world.\u201d While Europeans scrambled to grab New World territory, the archipelago was considered out of bounds.<\/p>\n

This infamous hell became a miraculous heaven on the morning of July 25, 1609. A large English fleet sent to resupply the struggling settlement of Jamestown took a shortcut across the Atlantic, only to encounter a powerful hurricane that scattered the vessels. Amid the relentless pounding of the waves, the hull of the 250-ton flagship, the Sea Venture, filled with seawater. For three terrifying days, expedition leader Sir Thomas Gates exhorted the passengers to work the pumps while Admiral George Somers clung to the helm to guide the foundering ship through titanic swells.<\/p>\n

By the third day, death seemed certain; some prayed, while others got drunk. Then, in the morning light, Somers spotted land and steered the sinking ship close to shore, where it wedged tight between two V-shaped rocks. With the storm abating, all 150 people\u2014as well as the ship\u2019s dog\u2014made it safely to a beach on what became known as St. George\u2019s Island. Instead of an \u201cisle of devils,\u201d they found a lush landscape, thick flocks of easily captured birds, herds of fat feral pigs and bountiful marine life. Dazzled by the food and mild climate, many of the shipwreck victims preferred to stay, but Somers and Gates were determined to reach their destination. They built temporary camps, and through the fall and winter, they constructed two sturdy vessels from the local cedar. By spring 1610 they set sail for the Virginia coast, leaving behind two sailors who deserted the mission and were able to thrive on the island.<\/p>\n

The settlers who departed soon regretted their decision. Arriving at Jamestown, they found the colonists sick, hungry and at odds with the local Algonquian-speaking peoples. The visitors\u2019 stores of food were welcome, but Somers returned to Bermuda to gather additional provisions. He also overindulged, dying in November 1610 of a \u201csurfeit of eating of a pig,\u201d according to historical records. Instead of returning to Virginia, his crew buried the admiral\u2019s heart in Bermudan soil and stowed his body in a cask of whiskey before sailing for England. One of the original deserters and two additional men remained on the island\u2014willing castaways whom American poet Washington Irving later styled \u201cthe three kings of Bermuda.\u201d By then, all but 60 of Jamestown\u2019s 500 inhabitants were dead, victims of infighting, incompetence and bullying tactics toward the Indigenous tribes that led to violence.<\/p>\n

News of the Sea Venture\u2019s dramatic shipwreck reached London by the fall of 1610, along with tales of an enchanted place that was \u201cabundantly fruitful,\u201d as the Jamestown historian James Horn wrote in 2005. When Shakespeare heard the stories, he wrote a play about a magical spirit-filled island, referred to at one point as the \u201cBermoothes.\u201d The King\u2019s Men thespians first performed The Tempest for James I and the royal court on November 1, 1611. By then, the desperate situation in Virginia was well known in England, spooking investors who feared that no New World settlement would thrive. \u201cRemember that three out of four English settlements had failed,\u201d Jarvis said, citing two attempts to settle North Carolina\u2019s Roanoke Island and another to colonize Maine. \u201cAnd Jamestown was only barely surviving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bermuda suddenly beckoned as a more promising prospect. A little more than six months after the play\u2019s debut, a small vessel called the Plough was on its way to settle the island chain. While Jamestown was an all-male effort, women and children joined the new venture, though their names are lost to history. Among the 60 passengers were several who were hostile to the Church of England and eager to find a place to practice their more austere form of Christianity. This was also in contrast to Jamestown, which primarily drew those looking for easy wealth rather than a religious haven. And instead of placing an inept aristocrat in charge of the venture, the sponsoring Virginia Company wisely chose an experienced carpenter named Richard Moore.<\/p>\n

After an uneventful nine-week voyage, the ship\u2019s captain threaded his way through one of the island\u2019s only deepwater channels, likely using a map drawn by Somers. On July 11, 1612, the vessel dropped anchor in a spacious harbor dotted with wooded isles. While the settlers said a prayer of thanksgiving, the crew caught enough fish to feed everyone.<\/p>\n

The next day, Bermuda\u2019s \u201cthree kings\u201d made their presence known. Over the course of their two-year stay, the trio had built a small homestead on Smith\u2019s Island, an oblong-shaped piece of land twice the size of Ellis Island in New York Harbor. A cleared acre had yielded corn, pumpkins and beans, which they stored away along with copious amounts of salted pork and tortoise meat. The supplies would have heartened colonists who no doubt had heard grim tales of cannibalism at Jamestown.<\/p>\n

Governor Moore \u201cpresently landed his goods and 60 persons \u2026 upon the south side of Smith\u2019s Isle,\u201d one contemporary wrote. The colonists found a variety of fruits and vegetables already growing, including thriving cucumbers and melons. The settlement would have included a meeting house or church, storage buildings, a scatter of residences and a grander home for the governor. Military barracks or a palisade would have been superfluous. \u201cUnlike Jamestown and Plymouth, there were no Indigenous people, and this made Bermuda a blank canvas,\u201d said Pestana, who recently made the trek to Smith\u2019s Island, volunteering to dig, sift and wash artifacts. The Spanish were the only threat, but Moore had a rudimentary fort constructed on a nearby island armed with a cannon salvaged from the Sea Venture to protect the settlers from England\u2019s great rival.<\/p>\n

The town proved short-lived. Within months the governor \u201cremoved his seat from Smith\u2019s Island to St. George\u2019s after he had fitted up some small cabins of palmetto leaves for his wife and family,\u201d wrote Plough passenger John Smith. Jarvis suspects the shift to this larger island took place in mid-fall 1612, perhaps due to the lack of arable land and adequate fresh water. The colonists would have likely dismantled what they could to build their new center of St. George\u2019s, which remained Bermuda\u2019s capital for the next two centuries. (Today the capital is Hamilton, on Main Island, to the southwest.)<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s Island\u2019s brief moment as the home of Bermuda\u2019s first town was quickly forgotten. The area eventually served as a quarantine camp for those who arrived with communicable diseases; the body of water off the island\u2019s southeastern end was dubbed Smallpox Bay. While much of the island chain became thickly settled, Smith\u2019s Island remained a quiet backwater. When a hydroponics business on the eastern third of the island failed in the 1970s, the land was turned into a national park and quickly reverted to jungle. Beneath that tangled mass lay one of the oldest English towns in the New World.<\/p>\n

The sun was just rising, but already disco music blared from a loudspeaker mounted to the stately 18th-century St. George\u2019s Town Hall. A scruffy Boston whaler with Jarvis at the helm puttered up to the wharf, and a half-dozen passengers climbed out. These students and researchers, who spent their nights on a nearby island, would toil during the day in the basement of the town museum, cataloging artifacts found at the dig. After they disembarked, I joined a group of local volunteers for the ten-minute voyage across the harbor to Smith\u2019s Island, where they would assist in that day\u2019s excavation.<\/p>\n

Once we arrived, Jarvis secured the boat to the dock and led us single file on a path through thick foliage. \u201cEverything originally was covered with palmetto and cedar,\u201d he said over his shoulder. The palmetto berries fed the hogs introduced by the Spanish, and the cedar, strong as oak but much lighter, proved ideal for building ships. Bermuda\u2019s settlers instituted strict rules to protect this latter commodity, but a blight that began in the 1940s killed off these park-like forests and opened the way for invasive plants. By the time Jarvis arrived in 2010, the vegetation was dense. The first task was to clear the brush.<\/p>\n

Soft-spoken despite a football player\u2019s build, Jarvis learned to handle a handsaw while growing up in rural Pennsylvania, where he spent long hours outdoors. He conquered his fear of chainsaws just a few years ago. His grandfather and uncle were blacksmiths, and at a summer job at a New Jersey maritime village he worked the forge, making harpoons and hooks to sell to tourists. \u201cI gravitated to colonial history because I was always interested in getting at the origins of our nation\u2019s history,\u201d he said. In college, Jarvis focused on experimental archaeology, which attempts to replicate the way individuals made things and performed various tasks. \u201cIt\u2019s a way to understand the past by knowing what people then actually did,\u201d Jarvis said. He also taught a semester at sea on a schooner, cruising the Caribbean. \u201cHauling lines and going aloft, you gain insights that only come by doing what they did back then,\u201d he said. While working toward his doctorate in history at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, he dug in trenches within the historic area of what was Virginia\u2019s second capital.<\/p>\n

In 1995, Jarvis joined the team led by the archaeologist William Kelso that uncovered the original fort at the first capital of Jamestown, a site long thought to have succumbed to river erosion. That dig exposed what is widely considered the most significant find from colonial America. Some surprises were cahow bones, tropical fish skeletons, sea turtle shells and large pig bones. Archaeologists agreed that these were Bermuda imports that helped sustain the hungry Virginia colonists. They even found tobacco pipes and building blocks from the islands\u2019 limestone quarries, underscoring the close relations between the two early settlements. Virginia Company records show that vessels coming from England regularly stopped at the archipelago on their way to Virginia.<\/p>\n

Those discoveries whetted the young academic\u2019s curiosity. Years earlier, as a student, Jarvis had done a stint on one of the few excavations on the island chain. Now, he turned his attention to its early colonizing efforts, poring through the historical record for clues before launching his on-the-ground search for Bermuda\u2019s version of Jamestown. More than a decade later, he believes he has found where the passengers of the Plough built their first settlement.<\/p>\n

Now 56, the archaeologist, leading us down the narrow trail toward the island\u2019s east end, detoured into a small opening in the brush that sloped downhill. A few dozen yards down the narrow trail stood a natural stone wall punctured by a round hole the size of a barrel. Though the evidence remains sketchy, Jarvis is confident this marks the home of the \u201cthree kings\u201d who greeted the Plough settlers in 1612. \u201cThis style of bake oven, a cave hearth, processes meat and bread,\u201d he said, pointing out indentations in the stone where timber posts would have rested, perhaps to hold up a small lean-to with a thatched roof. \u201cIt was a good location, hidden from the Spanish and protected from the prevailing winds during storms.\u201d<\/p>\n

A team of archaeology students and volunteers uncovered mature boar tusks here, suggesting they were used before the 1620s, when the last large feral pigs vanished into colonists\u2019 cooking pots. Farther down the slope was a cove called Cotton Hole Bight. \u201cWe know they built shallops\u201d\u2014a small boat popular in that era\u2014\u201cand this is a good place to launch vessels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back on the main trail, we hiked another hundred yards until the narrow path opened into a broad clearing. Under two large tarps, a couple of dozen excavators were brushing and scraping away at the soil and rock. \u201cWe have a map of Jamestown, but there is nothing for the initial settlement here,\u201d Jarvis said. \u201cArchaeology is absolutely necessary to figure out the location\u2014history won\u2019t help us.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the center of the clearing stood the ruin of a small building of Bermuda limestone. Faded letters on an inside wall still read \u201cGR,\u201d which stands for King George. In 1780, the British Army garrisoned the islands, and the structure likely was built in 1790 to cope with the yellow fever epidemic. A dozen yards north of the ruin, beneath a blue tarp, members of Jarvis\u2019 team were slowly gathering evidence of Moore\u2019s first town.<\/p>\n

Before putting a spade in the ground, team members use a device that looks like a bulky lawn mower to probe what lies beneath. That requires clearing the land of invasive brush, which is why Jarvis\u2019 chainsaw is essential. This ground-penetrating radar showed depressions in the limestone bedrock beneath the shallow topsoil, though buried debris can create false signals. Such results can guide excavators to the most promising areas to dig with their hand trowels.<\/p>\n

The best markers for an early 17th-century English building are not foundations but round holes. Carpenters would dig and sink vertical posts into the ground at regular intervals to hold a timber frame, often separated by three feet. They would then add studs between the posts and fill the remaining area with flexible branches\u2014known as wattles\u2014that then would be coated with thick clay, a material called daub. This wattle-and-daub method was used by Jamestown and Plymouth settlers as well, but pinpointing the remains of such ephemeral structures is often difficult; the telltale postholes often are hard to discern, buried under four centuries of soil. Fortunately for Jarvis, Bermuda\u2019s early settlers used hoes and other tools to bore deep into the soft limestone, leaving behind clear traces beneath the thin layer of earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cA clutch of roots can be a sign of a posthole,\u201d explained Olivia Adderley, a native Bermudian who recently spent time in Britain studying archaeology. \u201cThen we use a whisk broom and trowel to expose each feature.\u201d She thrust a nail with a red plastic flag into one likely posthole, setting it aside for more careful excavation later. Though the posts themselves appear to have been removed after the capital moved to St. George\u2019s, she added, \u201cwe have tool marks and shims\u201d that show these are human-made rather than natural features. Walking over to a cavity recently dug out, she reached her arm into it, and it vanished almost to her shoulder. Such deep postholes are evidence of a building with sturdy walls that may have risen to two stories.<\/p>\n

Material swept into the holes provides additional clues. Undisturbed for four centuries, these pockets reveal convincing evidence that the people who lived at this site were the settlers from the Plough. \u201cSealed sites from that time period are few and far between,\u201d said Bly Straube, an archaeologist who worked at the Jamestown excavations and now is senior curator at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. The researchers have recovered fragments of a remarkably durable daub that Jarvis said bears an uncanny resemblance to cement used in ancient Rome. And the many broken bits of pottery can be used as reliable dating tools, since styles changed across the eras. \u201cThe ceramics are consistent with the material found on the Sea Venture and at early Jamestown,\u201d Jarvis asserted. Straube says additional analysis is underway to confirm the claim. If Jarvis proves correct, the site is from the 1610s, precisely in the window when the Plough arrived.<\/p>\n

Bones in the postholes also offer insight into what colonists ate\u2014and when. An abundance of fish skeletons was hardly remarkable, but there was a puzzling lack of cahow. The bird was plentiful in the early years of settlement and such a major source of nutrition for colonists that they nearly went extinct within a decade or so. The lack of cahow remains therefore suggested the settlement was from a later date. \u201cThen we realized that the flocks migrate to Bermuda in the late fall\u2014after the colonists had likely already moved to St. George\u2019s,\u201d said Jarvis. \u201cSo the absence of their bones is actually evidence that this is the first town.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, the researchers have identified two distinct structures, including what appears to be a modest building measuring 12 by 16 feet. This was likely a home for one of the families who traveled on the Plough. The second is 16 feet wide and at least 30 feet long. \u201cWe had no idea we would find something this large\u2014and we haven\u2019t found the end of it yet,\u201d Jarvis explained. \u201cBut we have found what is likely a door.\u201d If this was placed in the center of the wall, then the building is 32 feet long. \u201cIn that case, it would have resembled the church at Jamestown, and possibly been two stories.\u201d Records show that an Anglican minister held divine services, and any church would have been in the town center. Once fully mapped, the large structure could help Jarvis piece together the rest of the settlement\u2019s layout.<\/p>\n

As many as ten private dwellings would have made up the bulk of the town. So far, a scatter of other postholes suggests the remains of at least three or four. In future digging seasons, Jarvis hopes to create a map of streets, lanes and structures to flesh out the size and orientation of the settlement. Just to the west of the possible meeting house, excavators found a small piece of lead that once held panes of glass in place, at a time when such windows were reserved for the wealthy. \u201cThis suggests a high-status individual\u201d\u2014perhaps Governor Moore\u2014\u201cand gives us a tantalizing hint of class differences among the houses,\u201d the archaeologist added. \u201cAs we study each building, we expect to see a hierarchy of class emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the soil exposed during the dig is screened nearby to recover small artifacts, and each day\u2019s finds are then sent across the harbor to the St. George\u2019s lab for cataloging. Analysis of these helps researchers discern how early English colonists organized their new society. \u201cWe want to know how Bermuda\u2019s first town both resembled and was different from the other English colonial prototypes,\u201d Jarvis said. So far, Moore\u2019s settlement appears to have been a unique hybrid of Jamestown and Plymouth. Like the former, it may have had a traditional Anglican-style church, yet, like the latter, it was constructed less like a military camp and more as a village with separate dwellings for families.<\/p>\n

In the decade after the Plough\u2019s arrival, English settlers flocked to Bermuda, including more ascetic Protestants hoping to create a perfect society on their island Garden of Eden. Their example encouraged those with similar beliefs to view America as a haven for Puritan-minded people. By then, Bermuda was booming, with an English population outstripping that of either Virginia or New England.<\/p>\n

Tobacco had already been noted on the islands by Sea Venture castaway John Rolfe, famed for later marrying the Powhatan princess Pocahontas at Jamestown. It was planted by an earlier Spanish castaway, and Rolfe used the Bermuda tobacco seeds in Virginia around 1612 or 1614, creating an export that saved Jamestown from financial disaster. Bermudians had a head start. The \u201cthree kings\u201d already had \u201cmade a great deal of tobacco,\u201d and one early settler predicted cultivating the crop would be \u201cvery commodious both to the merchant and to the maker of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

White colonists first brought a single enslaved Black laborer from the West Indies to Bermuda in 1616\u2014three years before Black people in bondage landed in Virginia. More followed. Those who had labored on West Indian tobacco plantations, and were familiar with the crop, were particularly prized. It was only in 1624 that Virginia\u2019s tobacco exports to England exceeded that of Bermuda. Eventually, tobacco\u2019s deleterious effects on the soil, as well as the limited land, ended the islands\u2019 brief boom. Meanwhile, European ships brought rats that devoured food supplies and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. Settlers wantonly killed flocks of cahow and other birds, while deforestation added to the swift economic decline.<\/p>\n

Colonists rapidly pivoted from farming to shipbuilding, trading and privateering, and many of the enslaved laborers became sailors and stevedores. Fast and sturdy Bermudian ships soon crisscrossed the ocean, stimulating business in a vast arc from the West Indies to Newfoundland, while seizing enemy vessels as European powers fought to dominate the New World. Memory of the islands\u2019 origins as a kind of paradise and then a tobacco powerhouse that briefly outshone their sister settlement in Virginia waned. A century later, when that colony joined the rebellion against Britain, Bermuda stayed within the empire, and today it is a self-governing British territory.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare concluded The Tempest by predicting that everything \u201cshall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.\u201d Yet Jarvis and his team are recovering Bermuda\u2019s vanished story. In 2023, William Kelso visited Smith\u2019s Island to check on his prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s work. \u201cArchaeology is like a play,\u201d said the retired Jamestown excavator. \u201cThe set is the landscape, and the script\u2014the history\u2014is usually all torn up and falling apart. Mike is pulling it all together and casting Bermuda in three dimensions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The audit also discovered that American memorials reflect a national focus on violent events. Fully a third commemorate war. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-smithsonian-magazine"],"yoast_head":"\nThese archaeological findings unlocked the stories of our ancestors \u2022 Andrew Lawler<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Two centuries of excavations have given voice to a past that previously lay mostly hidden. 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