Historial Archaeology

The focus of this project was the World War II (WWII) Battle of Peleliu that began on September 12, 1944. The project was limited to the Peleliu invasion beaches to approximately 30 meters (100 ft.) inland. Seaward, it included the lagoon, the reef, and the immediate area just beyond the reef. This was the first effort to study the Peleliu WWII invasion beaches and the offshore battlespace. The historical analysis of the assault, research undertaken to identify landscape modification and post-war salvage, KOCOA analysis, and the invasion beach site visit, provided a framework for understanding and modeling the loss locations and the remains documented in 2018.

A total of 52 square meters were excavated by volunteers supervised by the author. Excavations uncovered evidence for four phases of activity at the site: Native American occupation up to 6,000 years old; 17th century occupation by the Brewster family; 18th-19th century occupation by the Soule family; late 19th to early 20th century use of the site for sand extraction and refuse disposal by the Standish Hotel. Native American occupation took the form of debris from the manufacture of stone tools, completed projectile points from the Late Archaic and Late Woodland periods, a possible chunkey gaming stone, and a complete stone woodworking gouge. The house foundation that was uncovered is believed to either be the home of William Brewster that was successively lived in by his descendants and the then the Soule family, or to have existed on the same location as the house in which the Soules lived. It is believed to be a central chimney Cape Cod style house that may have been renovated later in its life. A limited quantity of artifacts dating from the 17th century (pipe stems, ceramics, bricks, window leads) were recovered. The Soule family's occupation of the site overlapped the earlier Native American and Brewster family occupations. The Soules appear to have added an ell onto the west side of the house as well as a French drain on the south side. They may have also rebuilt at least a portion of the chimney stack. After the last Soule to live on the property, Marshall Soule, had died, the site was abandoned and
eventually collapsed onto itself. In the late nineteenth to early twentieth century the property was
owned by the Standish Hotel who used it as a source of sand and gravel, resulting in the excavation of
at least three areas around and partially impacting the house foundation, and subsequent refuse disposal
into the extraction holes and onto the foundation. Overall, the site has a high research potential to provide information on early Plymouth Colony houses and households as well as everyday life of later 18th and 19th century farmsteads. The Native American component is one of the few that is recorded for the Nook and is potentially a significant source of information on pre-colonial use of Duxbury.

This report uses historical documents and town histories to reconstruct the layout and extent of the original Pilgrim village in Plymouth and assesses the archaeological potential of various possible house locations. It also examines the layout of the village as being based on the motte and bailey town development plan of Medieval England. Plymouth has been very built up since 1620 with some of the most noticeable changes probably happening in preparation for the 1920 celebration and in the 1960s when numerous 17th and 18th century buildings were destroyed in the name of progress. Overall, it would have to be said that the town has a horrible record for attempting to preserve any traces of its  Pilgrim past. There is probably no hope of ever finding any archaeological traces of any of the actual architectural portions of any of the original homes with the exception of the Standish/ Holmes house up on Burial Hill. If early occupation extended to Middle Street, if this was the north side of the palisade,
then traces of buildings and that palisade have the best chance of being identified in the town parking lot and along Carver Street. This is especially true if Coles Hill itself was outside the palisade, meaning that it may have run approximately where the west side walk is bordering Carver Street. This does not mean that evidence of the 17th century occupation of Plymouth does not exist. Traces of early buildings, buildings that represent the first phase of post-1627 expansion outside of the palisade may be present along North Street. The potential of this area was realized when PARP conducted an investigation behind 11 North Street and found colonial evidence going back to the 1630s. Unfortunately, most of the early buildings along this street probably fronted on the road, meaning that there is, again a high likelihood that most of the architectural traces are gone, but more yards exist in this area making it more likely that some of the backyards from the first half of the 17th century still exist here. To a lesser degree, the same may be said of the lots on Leyden Street. Traces of the palisade may be preserved in the back lots bordering Town Brook on the south side of the street and domestic and architectural refuse may be scattered about in any open space along Leyden Street. It would just take a lot of keyhole excavations to try to determine where any intact deposits were located. Any grassy spot or even any paved spot, could hold evidence of the first colonial settlement in town.

Palembang city, is the oldest city in Indonesia, as recorded in the Kedukan Bukit Inscription, which dates to 604 Saka / 682 AD. Palembang's position as an international port city, making this city developed under the authority of Srivijaya. By the 11th century, Srivijaya collapsed due to the invasion of the Kingdom of Cola and Malayu. After the fall of Srivijaya, Palembang came under the rule of the kingdoms in Java, mainly Majapahit. This paper discusses Javanese dominion in Palembang based on archaeological remains, especially relics on the Gede Ing Suro Site. The Archaeological method used in this study.  The Gede Ing Suro Site is a multi-component site that contains several archaeological remains from various times, ranging from temples, statues, ceramics and Islamic tombs. Regarding the historical data of Palembang at this time, it can be found in the Nagarakrtagama book and the Chronicles of Ying Yai Sheng Lan. In the end, it can be concluded that the Gede Ing Suro Site is a Javanese monument of power in Palembang, as before it was a monument of Srivijaya power

by J. Barto Arnold III, Thomas J. Oertling and Andrew W. Hall

The wreck of the Denbigh, one of the most successful and famous blockade-runners of the Ameri- can Civil War (1861-5), was located and recorded near Galveston in Texas in 1997. The vessel was built in 1860 as a coastal paddle steamer by Laird, Sons & Co. of Birkenhead (Merseyside, England), and incorporated all the latest features of design and technology. After three years as a passenger steamer on the Irish Sea the Denbigh sailed for Cuba, where she worked as a blockade-runner taking material to and from the Confederate South from early 1864 until her grounding and destruc- tion by Union forces on 23-4 May 1865. This paper provides updated findings on the ship's history and covers the 1999 test excavation phase of an underwater archaeology project to investigate the wreck. As a case-study in historical archaeology the Denbigh Project seeks to integrate documen- tary, pictorial and material evidence in a way which provides a model for future investigations of shipwrecks of the recent historic past.

The early demise of Carrickfergus in the 18th- century has ensured the remarkable preservation of the town's post-medieval archaeology, a relatively unique phenomenon in urban archaeological investigations in Northern Ireland. Established as an Anglo-Norman caput in the 12th-century, by the 17th-century Carrickfergus was serving as the cultural, commercial, and civic hub of Ulster; a trans-Atlantic port, home to the Lord Deputy of Ireland and a diverse population of competing political allegiances and cultural identities, namely the English, Irish and Scots. Cumulative excavations within the town since the 1970s has yielded a wealth of material culture, fundamental to understanding the tangible expression of cultural change and continuity during the tumultuous expansion of British control in Ireland. A range of archaeological material will be presented in order to explore themes of identity, cultural entanglements, contested narratives and the extent of the emerging British Atlantic economy in late-medieval and early modern Carrickfergus.