"The Hollanders Have Built A Fortress With Four Bastions:" A Synopsis Of The Archaeological Investigations At The Site Of Fort Casimir/Nieuwer Amstel, City of New Castle, Delaware.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "More than Pots and Pipes: New Netherland and a World Made by Trade" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Fort Casimir was a 17th-century fortification defending the town of New Amstel, today’s New Castle, Delaware. Casimir was the center of power for the Dutch West India Company, and later, the City of Amsterdam on the South (Delaware) River. The fort changed hands four times – 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. The fort’s subsequent fate and actual location has long been sought by antiquarians, historians, and archaeologists. At the start of the 20th-century it was believed the fort was lost beneath the tides of the Delaware River. This view changed in the 1980s, when archaeologists discovered possible remains of the fort. Archaeological investigations in 2012 and 2019 sampled the site, recovering a remarkable artifact assemblage and portions of the fort’s ditch, curtain wall, and gate, confirming the fort’s location.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022   •
• More than Pots and Pipes: New Netherland and a World Made by Trade

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology