Earth Day Celebrations

Hello, everyone. It is a rainy morning here on St. John (what a relief!). Luckily, though, it did not rain when we had our Earth Day celebration last Friday. The surrounding schools took off the morning to come and see presentations by various local groups, such as the Animal Care Center, Dr. Ray, a botanist from UVI, and of course, the Virgin Islands Cultural Resources Management Team. Susanna and I set up two units for the students to “excavate.” We placed artifacts in the sand and instructed the students in the best way to excavate like an archaeologist. The students learned not to excavate without an archeologist present, and received a certificate for a job well done. I really think they left having enjoyed themselves, and hopefully they learned a little about archaeology as well. (We have no pictures this week because we were working our station at Earth Day, but check out the coverage in local papers.)
In addition to Earth Day, Susanna and I have been working on the collections quite a bit. Inventory is due, and we are attacking any problems that arise in the process. Ken has been writing papers for publication about St. John archeology/history as well as completing the park's annual report to Congress on archeological activities. There doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to get everything done, which brings me to my next point. The Cultural Resources Management Team is looking for more interns this month. Live in the Caribbean, work for the National Park Service…who wouldn’t want this job? All those interested should contact Ken Wild, the Park archeologist, at ken_wild@nps.gov. You better hurry, though because when college classes let out we will have plenty of help. We use interns from many different backgrounds, i.e. archeology, history, conservation, curation and architecture. We also have interns from art and engineering for virtual modeling of ruins. We hope to see you on St. John soon!

P.S. Hi Cliff. Unfortunately, we don't disclose locations of plantations we find until a complete survey is done in order to protect their archeological integrity. But thanks for the question!

Found: An 18th century plantation!

Found: An 18th century plantation!
We, the Virgin Islands Cultural Resources Management Team, have exciting news. Just last Friday, Ken Wild and I (Amber Davis) found a plantation that we have been searching for, for some time. The plantation is recorded on the Oxholm map of 1780 and it was discovered by Barbara Johnson in 1981, but the Park Service has never assessed this great site. Well, after one grueling day on Thursday chopping catch-and-keep and cutting down cacti (with no plantation in site), Ken and I re-grouped and set off with new target coordinates on Friday. And lo and behold, we found it! The plantation consists of three structures—the main residence, the enslaved quarters, and the warehouse (picture #1).
These structures would have had wooden walls and roofs; however, all that remains now are the low-lying stone and mortar walls that braced the wooden upper half. The stone walls are sloped outward to prevent rain from pouring into the structure (picture #2).
Ken and I picked up and GPS’ed to within 20 centimeters some ceramic fragments that can date the occupation of the plantation, notably black lead-glazed course earthenware (1700-1770), white salt-glazed stoneware (1720-1770), English slipware (1675-1770), and delftware (1630-1790) (clockwise from bottom left in picture #3). Given the absence of pearlware, which is found everywhere by 1780, Ken conjectures that the plantation was abandoned by the time Oxholm drew his map. All in all, it was a great day, and Ken and I treated ourselves to a cheeseburger at Skinny Legs afterwards:)


Earlier on in the week, students from the Good Hope private school on St. Croix paid the Cinnamon Bay lab a visit. Ken gave a lecture on the extensive history of St. John and the Virgin Islands, and then the students were shown several steps of the archaeological data recovery process. First, ideally the excavator leaves artifacts that he or she finds in the ground, or “in situ,” so that the artifact’s location can be recorded and its context is retained. If the artifacts are not carefully excavated, then they are found in the next step, where dirt is screened twice with differently sized mesh screens (picture #4).

The artifacts are then washed, identified and analyzed, and catalogued. The students asked Ken some questions about the Taino and seemed interested in the demonstration about archaeological excavation. I think they learned more about archaeology and the Virgin Islands than they had previously known.
Later on this week, Ken and I will be searching for another plantation so stay tuned. I hope everyone’s Easter was happy, and thanks for reading!

Blog 3-30-07
Hello readers,
This is your friendly, neighborhood Cultural Resources Management Team tuning in from the Virgin Islands National Park. Today, we visited Hassel Island again, this time with two historic site stabilization experts from San Juan named Colon and Jose (see picture #1). They came to assess the Creque Marine Railway winch house and boy, do we have our work cut out for us! Our first concern is to stabilize the structure and prevent further degradation (or its collapse!) before historic reconstruction can begin. One simple step that can drastically improve the structure’s solidity is to recreate the wooden beams that supported the second story. This will connect the walls together as they were in the 19th and 20th centuries and ideally prevent any collapses from occurring. From there, new and some old materials such as brick and mortar will be needed to patch the walls themselves, and we must remove the vegetation and trash to provide a clear path to the winch house before the work can proceed. The second phase of this project would be a new roof for further stabilization of the structure as well as to help preserve the artifacts housed within, such as the boilers and the flywheel. Colon and Jose will draw up a budget for both the stabilization and historic reconstruction phases of this project and hopefully we will have their help in seeing the project through its completion.



We also brought Professor of History Nicholas Jensen from the University of Copenhagen, Professor of Archaeology Pia Bennike, and her three graduate students on our trip to Hassel Island (see picture #1). While Colon and Jose studied the structure, Ken led us over to the western shore of the island to search for the leprosarium in use in the 1800’s (ceramic fragments identified on the surface attest to this date). A leprosarium is a quarantined hospital for people afflicted with leprosy. In the yellow fever outbreak of 1867, the hospital was also used to house yellow fever victims. Professor Pia is conducting an excavation of a cemetery on St. Croix and was interested in the cemeteries associated with this historic site. Unfortunately, we did not find any cemeteries in our search. Ken believes the dead were most likely buried over on the mainland in Charlotte Amalie. We did, however find a cistern (see picture #2) associated with a low lying stone wall. Ken believes this is most likely the remnants of the front wall of the hospital, and that the rest of the structure would have been made of wood. Also, when on our trek, we found a lot of shell refuse indicative of a large Taino site. Further investigations into this area of Hassel Island encompassing both the prehistoric site and the leprosarium would no doubt prove to be very interesting and informative.

The Team is planning some excursions into the bush next week to find more lost plantations, so stay tuned and we’ll be back:)

March 22, 2007



Hello, everyone. It is getting hotter in the islands as summer approaches, but the Cultural Resources Team here at Virgin Islands National Park is finding ourselves outside in the field more often than in the air-conditioned office. Today, we made big strides concerning the Hassel Island Restoration Project. Two conservators from Texas A&M University, Peter Fix and graduate student Drew, flew in on the seaplane from Puerto Rico at 9 a.m. to assess the metal artifacts associated with the historic Creque Marine Railway. Ken, Susanna, and I lead them around the site and they were excited (and probably a little overwhelmed) to see the abundance of historic marine artifacts in desperate need of stabilization. For example, the rails of the railway are still intact as well as the gears, the fly wheel, and the boilers of the steam engine that would have hoisted the large ships up out of the water to be worked on. A beautiful, old dive bell is located near the engine house that would have been used to work on the ships while still in the water. Remember, Creque is the oldest steam-powered marine railway in the Western hemisphere and it is the only one surviving in the world.I am positive the public would love to visit and learn about this significant site and I can only imagine what Hassel Island will look like once vegetation removal, artifact conservation, and building stabilization has been completed. The conservation plans generated from today’s trip serve as a first step in this process, and hopefully the next steps will be soon forthcoming.
In other news, excavations at Cinnamon Bay have also had some progress. We have finally made it through the culturally sterile sand and have uncovered the first prehistoric/ historic surface. The contrasting colors of the two layers is one reason why we believe we have reached culturally significant sediment—the sterile sand is white whereas the sediment is dark brown and compacted into a very hard, discernible surface. Tomorrow, we will start to excavate the surface and who knows what we will find!

This week, Peter Burgess was once again a great help. We have been trying to identify more of the Jochumsdal historic plantation site this month. Chuck Pishko had informed us there was a grave, but we had yet to locate it. Peter found the grave and more. He deduced that the crypt is in the center of the plantations's animal mill. Thanks Peter for sending us the information needed to go right to the site and complete the documentation process.
I hope everyone is staying warm up north and I’ll see you next week.

Hello everybody:) I am covered with sand at the moment. Field work will do that to you. Today we here at Virgin Islands Cultural Resources Management have opened up Unit 11, the pit in which we will be reburying the human remains washed up at Cinnamon Bay. Our 1X2 m grid is set, the sterile sand has been removed, and we are in the process of excavating Level 1. Many visitors have had positive things to say after learning about the purpose of the excavation, and those are always nice to hear.
In other news, the artifacts in Unit 10 are almost fully catalogued (Unit 10 was the excavation of the greathouse kitchen floor). Susanna has been hard at work cataloguing as well as greeting the multitude of visitors we have had in the lab. Kourtney is continuing to identify human skeletal remains and separate those from animal remains. Her work is very important to the Cinnamon Bay reburial project, and we are lucky to have her expertise on the subject.
Ken recently did a presentation for a group of philanthropists associated with the Trust for Public Land. The group then visited our lab at Cinnamon Bay to learn more about our current archaeological projects. They saw the excavtion of Unit 11, and Ken also told them about our plans for the museum.

I hope everyone is staying warm in the colder climates up north and I will catch up with you all next week:) Bye!

Folk Life Festival

(Quadrille Dancers)

Hello, everyone! And welcome to the Virgin Islands National Park Cultural Resources Team blog spot. This week we have been in the Cinnamon Bay lab every day, and it’s been great—talking to the public, finishing some much-needed cataloguing of artifacts, and of course, taking a swim at day’s end to conduct survey work. The Annaberg Folk Life Festival took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 27 and 28th at the Annaberg sugar mill ruins. Susanna and I visited on Tuesday and we had an opportunity to meet local craftsmen like the basket weaver Mr. Dell and Ital, who carves local coconuts. We also tasted home-baked bread with butter and cheese—YUMMY! It is a local tradition to offer the bread and cheese as a greeting whenever a guest enters your home. Quadrille dancers both young and old performed as well as several musicians. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and left hoping that more events like this would happen soon.

(Mr. Dell, Master Basketmaker)




(1988 Tradewinds Newspaper about Folk Life Festival)

(Local Crafts)
This Wednesday, Kourtney Donohue arrived on St. John. Kourtney is an ex-intern and recently graduated with a Master’s in osteoarchaeology from the University College, Cork in Ireland. She agreed to help us out down here with our collection of human remains recovered from Cinnamon Bay. She will be differentiating between human and animal remains in preparation for burial and she will identify the specific human bones we have on hand. We are all excited to have Kourtney here sharing her expertise on this subject.
Last Friday Ken, Susanna, the acting superintendent, Catherine Light and our chief ranger went over to Hassel Island. They met up with the island’s Delegate to Congress and the St. Thomas Historical Trust to review and discuss the preservation of the island’s rich maritime history. That night, Ken gave a boat tour for the Friends to help raise funds for the museum at Cinnamon, and on Saturday finished with a five-hour tour on Low Key Watersport’s dive boat that raised about $1400 for new interns.
Until next time, everyone and thanks for keeping up!



(Ken Wild and Delegate Christenson talking over plans for Hassel Island)

Traces of the Past

(1780 Oxholm Map, partial, with Jochumsdahl)

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day, everyone! Here in Love City the holiday certainly did not pass unnoticed—restaurants were flooded, street corner stands were selling packages with teddy bears and chocolates, and the color red could be seen everywhere. Now business is back to usual, and the cultural resources team is using the morning hours to update you all on our latest projects.
The most exciting discovery we made last week was locating the “lost” plantation, Jochumsdahl. An ever-useful map of St. John created by Oxholm in 1780-1800 indicates that a plantation existed north of the Catherineburg Plantation. Because there has been such little rain recently and hence minimal underbrush, last week was an ideal time to explore the area in hopes of locating Jochumsdahl. So Ken, Susanna, and I headed into the woods with the GPS, the camera, and sticks in hand to swipe away spider webs. We first found what looked like an old trash site from the early 20th century. Old pulleys, hand carts, and other UID rusty metal objects were strewn about in a stand of bamboo as well as a plethora of gin bottles. Ken dug into the earth a bit with his trowel and found a layer of charcoal just beneath the surface, indicating that this site was used to produce charcoal after emancipation. Workers would clear an area of foliage and hollow out a depression to burn it in, producing charcoal. Because the fire problably needed to be monitored, the workers must have relaxed with a drink of gin while the fire burned down. This charcoal production site is not related to Jochumsdahl, but it is very interesting nevertheless because it tells of another period in St. John history—slightly more recent but no less important. Photographs were taken of the trash and the charcoal, and a GPS point was taken so that the National Park can return to this site later for further research. (evidence of charcoal making)

After identifying the charcoal site, Ken, Susanna, and I spread out to cover more ground and soon enough we discovered a brick that Ken believes is related to Jochumsdahl. He postulates that it is a remnant of the enslaved village located south of the plantation because the debris scatter we saw is indicative of the ephemeral wattle-and-daub huts. A few more bricks were found as well as a black lead-glazed course earthenware fragment. This pottery fragment is dated to 1700-1770 and is the one diagnostic artifact we found for Jochumsdahl. So, at the end of the day we re-discovered a portion of the site of the “lost” plantation. Most likely, the actual building materials of the main plantation structures were scavenged for use in later plantations, which means we won’t find intact ruins forgotten in the woods. But archaeological excavations can undoubtedly provide more information on the history of the elusive Jochumsdahl. (the last remaining traces of Jochumsdahl)

Also last week, the cultural resources team enjoyed a historic lecture at the site of Rustenberg given by Chuck Pishko. Elderhostel volunteers worked on completing architectural drawings of certain structures of the site and Chuck came to explain the purpose of each structure in the sugar-making process. He also told us about the history of the plantation, which includes a visit from the Crowned Prince of Denmark in the early 19th century. (Chuck Pishko and Elderhostel at Rustenberg)

The last bit of news I have to offer is that the excavation at Cinnamon Bay of the plantation cookhouse floor is complete. The area was cleaned, photographed, and reburied. Digging will commence soon at a different location so that we can re-intern the human remains found at Cinnamon. Well, this has been a long post and I hope you made it through. The cultural resources team at Virgin Islands National Park will keep on chugging and we hope that you’ll keep reading. Thanks, guys! Until next time.

Ecofact

As usual, the cultural resource team has been very busy. This morning, Ken and Susanna went to VIERS to welcome a group of Sierra Club members. This group has adopted the Yawzi Point Ruins and Lameshur Ruins and we are so thankful for their work to keep the ruins clear of vegetation. While on the south shore of St. John, the team also investigated an archaic(4oo b.c.) site with many ecofacts, or ecological remains such as conch, and whelk(citeriumPica) shell that would have been a food source for these early St. John inhabitants. In addition, there were shell edged pearlware fragments that my indicate a maroon site, or a place where escaped, captured Africans may have gone into hiding. It was a very interesting day, and aside from collecting data from the archaic site, the new gps was put into use. The terrain remains dry and hopefully, we will find time to do more exploring of little known sites such as Ramshead, pictured here, while the vegetation is a little less dense.

Yesterday, the team met with an Elderhostel group at Cinnamon which is adopting the Leinster Guardhouse ruins and also doing architectural drawings of the Rustenberg Ruins. Ken gave the group a brief talk about the history of the island and then they went on their way to cut vegetation. Like the Sierra Club, we are very thankful to have such dedicated volunteers. After the talk, Ken and Susanna pulled the two bottlenecks out of the Cinnamon Bay Kitchen site and put the final touches on the map and used the very big ladder to take some site photographs. They are waiting Amber's help later in the week to cover the site back up.

(Cinnamon Bay Excavation, Final Photo)

We are a couple weeks behind because Amber was off a week while her parents were visiting and the internet service has been inconsistent. During the previous weeks, Susanna did a lot of curating and Ken met with the Danish Professor, Niklas Thode Jensen from Copenhagen. Niklas and his students will be researching the Danish archives for us for the next few months, then the students will be making the journey to St. John to obtain first hand knowledge of the plantations, specifically, Lameshur. We are very excited to be working with Niklas and these students and eagerly await their arrival in May.

Niklas and Ken looking at Fort Willoby on Hassel Island

Hello, everyone! I hope the new year has been treating you well. The Cultural Resources Team at Virgin Islands National Park has accomplished some very interesting things since the last blog. First, Ken and Susanna are now Rescue Diver certified (re-certified in Ken’s case). I opened up the Cinnamon Bay lab during their training and talked with the beach-goers while cataloguing artifacts. The following day (last Friday), Ken and I visited the Lameshur site with Sean Krigger, an architectural historian from the Virgin Islands State Historic Preservation Office, and RandyBrown, Director of the Virgin Islands Environmental Research Station (VIERS). Randy would like to restore some of the historic Lameshur plantation buildings for use as classrooms and exhibit space. The restoration as well as the regular maintenance needed when the buildings are in use will undoubtedly help to preserve them for future generations. However, the restoration must be done with historic accuracy in mind so that the buildings are preserved looking as close to what they originally looked like as possible. This requires buying period-accurate hinges for windows and doors as well as having the windows and doors be constructed in a suitable style and painted with a special paint in an appropriate color (see the painting of Lameshur dated to about 1840’s in the blog archive (May)). I learned that lime mortar and silicate paint are the preferred materials for repairing and painting historic walls because they are water permeable. Therefore, when historic bricks soak up ground water, the water will not be trapped within the wall and disintegrate the bricks but will diffuse through the mortar and paint and eventually evaporate. Sean advised Randy on the modifications that are and aren’t allowed and what types of restorations are preferred. Next, plans will be drawn up and work can ideally start within the year. Ken offered to help as much as he could when the actual construction started, he used to be a brick layer.
This Tuesday, I came in and the Team mapped a large portion of the excavation site at Cinnamon Bay. Susanna cleaned the kitchen surface and measured object dimensions (rocks, mortar, brick, shell, glass, and metal) and I drew the map on graph paper (see picture above). I gave a tour in the afternoon, but it wasn’t the best ever. I hope that with practice I’ll get more familiar with the subject material and be more comfortable speaking to an audience about it. A snorkel survey of the beach in the late afternoon recovered many remains and artifacts likely uncovered by the recent Northern swells (we’ll have to investigate it further after the mapping is finished). The old tree we often used as a reference point finally fell over with this last swell. Well, until next time everyone and feel free to post comments and/or questions. We love to hear from our readers!

Rave Reviews

Happy Belated Holidays, everyone! It is the year 2007 now and St. John is busy. Your friendly neighborhood Cultural Resources Management Team (a.k.a. Ken, Susanna, and I) is back in action. I have been furiously preparing to start giving tours at Cinnamon Bay, which I’m both excited and nervous for. I have reviewed the pre-Columbian and colonial history of the Cinnamon Bay site by re-reading the articles that are posted on the Friends website (if anyone is interested in details, look no further). The single, lonesome man on my inaugural tour today gave me rave reviews, haha.
The excavations of the kitchen floor ar3e complete at Cinnamon Bay plantation house and the site has been cleaned off in preparation for mapping, which we began today. Ken is teaching me a slightly older technique of mapping involving a level drawing board and compass in which the site is mapped in-field. Once the map is finished, the site will be back-filled and we will choose a different place to re-intern the enslaved human remains.
In the office, Ken has just completed a part of a paper dealing with the early history of the United States Virgin Islands—Tainos, pirates, including Captain Kidd, European refugees, enslaved Africans, and all. The other contributing author is a Syracuse University Ph.D canidate and she is focusing on the 1733 Slave Revolt along with the conflict that arise from multiple cultures coming into contact within the Caribbean . The two pottery fragments pictured, along with the unusual bone tool, date to 1650 to 1670 the period privateers and pirates flourished here. Once the paper is finalized, we'll make it available and you can learn more!

Zemis and Coins

Rudy and Irene, the owners of R & I Patton Jewerly, are two people to whom the interns owe a great deal of thanks. This is because R & I Patton donates to the Friends archeology program 100% of the sales of gold and silver zemis sold in their store. They also provide bronze and silver zemis to the Friends to sell in our boutique or on the web at http://www.friendsvinp.org/store/patton.htm

Irene Patton, under the guidance of Ken Wild, archeologist with the National Park Service Caribbean Archeology program, made replicas of ceramic artifacts (zemis) found at the Trunk Bay and Cinnamon Bay sites. The terra cotta zemis were made by the Taino Indians who lived on St. John before Columbus. They represented spirits of ancestors, animals, birds and reptiles that served to convey special messages to the present and other world. They were attached to bowl rims and were broken after ceremonial use.

Rudy and Irene are also invaluable for their knowledge of coins and have provided some information regarding the 1822 Curacao coin featured in the previous blog. Rudy reports that"

"The coin is from (no surprise) Curacao Netherlands Antilles. The minting date is not so certain (surprise!)
This coin is a 1 Stuiver which is on the reverse side with a star in thelower field. The obverse has Curacao in the upper field, the date, 1822 inthe middle field and a star in the lower field below a line. The coin wasminted in the Netherlands (as Denmark minted coinage for use in the DanishWest Indies) in 1822 and then the dies were used again when it was alsostruck in 1840-1841. So even though it carries the date 1822, it may havebeen minted in 1840-41. It circulated at that later date as a 2 Centpiece. The star was the mint privy mark for the either the Enkhuizen mintor the Hoorn mint in West Friesland, The Netherlands.
This was shortly after the second British occupation of Curacao during theNapoleonic Wars (1800-1803 and 1807-1816.)
--1994 Standard Catalog of World Coins, 21st Edition by Chester L. Krauseand Clifford Mishler (covering coinage 1801 to 1994) Newer editions areavailable from Amazon.
BTW it is probably worth less than $100 on the World Coin market. Thecondition would be "Fine." This is the lowest condition assigned. Of course it is invaluable as a part of the excavation in Cinnamon Bay."

Ed Rothfuss adds that "It took 48 of these little silver coins to equal 8 reaals (schellings) or one peso, the equivalent of our 19th century silver dollar."

Many thanks to R&I Patton for providing this information and for their great jewerly! Please visit their website at http://www.pattongold.com/ to learn more.

Then and Now

A month or so ago Ken, our archeologist, spoke at a St. Thomas Historical Society meeting and met Jane Sheen who was interested in helping the park in its efforts to gather historic documentation on park resources. A few weeks ago, Ken and Susanna took a trip over to St. Thomas to meet Jane Sheen, and look at her collection of historic postcards of the Virgin Islands. The postcards date from the late 1800 hundreds to the early 1900 hundreds and many of the images captured park resources still in use, like the photograph above with the Reef Bay Factory still in operation. Others capture the people and the times like learning to make baskets at the turn of the century. The postcards are great and Jane was so helpful. That day she loaned 100 + cards right then in order for us to scan the images. This week, Susanna spent a few hours scanning in the images, front and back, because the back of the card can indicate when it was published. Eventually, we hope to process all the images and make them available online. Below one of the cards, shows the Creque Marine Slipway in full operation.

This is an image of the structure as it stands today. Thank you Jane for making this wonderful contribution.

5oth Cultural Posters

Here are the 50th cultural resource posters I mentioned in our last posting. We now have them on display at the Cinnamon Bay Archeology Lab.




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VINP 50th Anniversary

Hi, this is Amber, the one and only archaeology intern (for the time being) at the VI National Park. Long time, no see readers! Our blog site had to go through government security approval before we could get back to you. We have been busy these past few weeks, and I mean really busy. The 50th anniversary of the creation of the Virgin Islands National Park was celebrated last Friday, December 1st. Speakers, who included Virgin Islands Delegate to Congress Donna Christensen, Southeast Regional Director Patricia Hooks, and Director of the National Park Service Mary A. Bomar, discussed how successful the park has been since its inception in protecting both the underwater and land resources of this Caribbean paradise.(all pictured below)


They also emphasized the importance of the continuation of this work into the 21st century. Modern dancers from the St. John School of the Arts performed as well as local quadrille dancers, and the Steel Pan Dragons played some Christmas songs to get everyone into the holiday spirit. (NPS Staff in CLASS A Uniforms)
I sat at an exhibition table during the ceremony with four posters that archeologist Ken Wild created for the occasion. The posters, which are shown below, detail the different aspects of cultural resources preservation in the Virgin Islands National Park—maritime, prehistoric, historic architecture, and the collections that connect to the communities past. I talked with people who were interested in the current archaeological projects and hopefully with funding all can proceed as planned. A great buffet and a 50th anniversary cake finished the celebration and I must say it was great to see both park officials and the community gather together for this event. (NPS Employees:first row Devon Tyson, Dave Sapio, Christy McManus, Tina Bernier, Ken Wild, Thomas Kelley, second row: Esther Francis, Rafe Boulon, Susanna Pershern, Carrie Stengle)
This week, with the 50th anniversary celebrations behind us, we have gotten back to what we do best—digging in the dirt! Eight members from the Las Vegas Sierra Club volunteered to continue excavations of the cookhouse located near the Great House of the Cinnamon Bay plantation. Joe and Ellen Ries, Bill and Billie James, Marge and Ed Rothfuss, Barbara Gerhart, and Linda Nations planned a week-long service trip to St. John and were delighted when they found out they would be working with Ken Wild on a dig. The historic floor of the cookhouse was originally discovered because local clergymen and Ken Wild had chosen the area for reburial of the human remains washing up at Cinnamon Beach. The remains are thought to be of African descent. The Sierra Club volunteers helped to expose the entire cookhouse floor, which was dated from the 1820’s to the 1840’s by the type of pottery and glass recovered, and Ken and Susanna will photograph and document it next week. Marge found a coin minted in 1822 in Curacao (shown below) which may shed some light on trade relations at Cinnamon Bay. After proper documentation is complete, the floor will be reburied and a new site will be chosen for the burial of the human remains. Also below is a photograph of the team working at the excavation site. Well, that’s all for now, everyone. Until next week:)