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

Author(s): Wade Catts; Peter Leach; Craig Lukezic

Year: 2013

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.

 

Cite this Record

"Whereon ye Ould Foart Stood…:" Geophysical and archaeological investigations at the site of Fort Casimir, New Castle, Delaware. Wade Catts, Peter Leach, Craig Lukezic. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Leicester, England, U.K. 2013 ( tDAR id: 428292)

Keywords

Temporal Keywords
Seventeenth Century

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 685