Archaeology at an Atlantic Crossroads: Bermuda’s Smith’s Island Archaeology Project (SIAP), 2010-2024

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeology at an Atlantic Crossroads: Bermuda’s Smith’s Island Archaeology Project (SIAP), 2010-2024," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Bermuda was a critical node in Atlantic and global expansion. Its shipwrecks and fortifications have been extensively studied but terrestrial archaeology has languished since 2012. This Symposium reports findings of SIAP, Bermuda's longest-running and sole surviving field project which takes 60-acre Smith’s Island and adjoining waters as a unit of study. SIAP’s 25+ sites span 415 years, encompassing Bermuda’s founding (1610-1612) through agricultural, maritime, military, commercial, and industrial sites into the 1980s. Session papers cover SIAP’s 2010 creation as a holistic “amphibious” historioarchaeological study of multicultural creolization and ethnogenesis; our recent discovery of the 1612 Moore’s Town site, Bermuda's first capital; analysis of 1610s earth-fast structures and early settlers' remarkably durable cement-like daub; the Captain’s House (c1615-c1712) and kitchen site of enslavement; a quarantine site occupied during smallpox and yellow fever epidemics; and SIAP’s incorporation of Bermudians in studying their own past and training a rising generation of island archaeologists.