"Whereon ye Ould Foart Stood…:" Geophysical and archaeological investigations at the site of Fort Casimir, New Castle, Delaware

Summary

Fort Casimir, also known as Fort Trefaldighet, was a seventeenth-century fortification situated along the Delaware River. The fort changed hands four times in its short career – built by the Dutch in 1651, captured by the Swedes in 1654, retaken by the Dutch in 1655, and finally seized by the English in 1664. Serving as a focal point of early colonial settlement in the Delaware River valley, its precise location remains both elusive and intriguing to Delaware archeologists. The first attempt to locate the fort occurred in 1986, when the late Edward F. Heite (1939-2005) completed limited archaeological investigations. Heite excavated test squares in the purported location of the fort, and encountered what he interpreted a portion of the fort ditch containing colonial artifacts. In 2012, this location was revisited by a team of archeologists using geophysics, GIS, and archaeology. The results of this effort are presented in this paper.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013   •
• Colonial Scandinavia and Scandinavian Colonialism: Archaeological aspects of a forgotten past

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 685