Halfway through through the fieldwork season, and I already cannot believe the amount of earth we’ve moved in pursuit of the burial ground! It’s amazing, thank you to the week 1 & 2 crews for all the hard work you put in, I couldn’t have gotten this far without all of you (and your digging hands)!
It was an amazing week over all, so lets dive right in to what we got up to at Ferryland last week:
17th-century building rubble from the brewhouse dismantling. We found lots of early-mid-17th-century objects between the fallen stones, as well as rich organic soil, charcoal, burned bones, and other organic material. Photo by author, 2017.
Last week was hectic, hence the lack of posts (sorry everyone!) but I promise my absence will lead to some really interesting posts in the next week or so that I’m really excited to share as soon as I can! In the mean time, I thought I would do a slightly less academic post on this fine Saturday evening and talk about some death / burial / mortality books that I’ve been enjoying lately, or obsessing over and recommending to everyone who comes near me over the last few weeks.
In a place often referred to as ‘The Rock’, it sounds a bit redundant to be importing gravestones, but for a period in the 18th-early 19th century, that is exactly what people in Newfoundland were doing. By people, I of course mean people who could afford to have gravestone carved overseas and shipped across the ocean. There are locally carved gravestones as well going back to the 17th-century! I even have a puzzle for all of you gravestone enthusiasts out there, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Spade & the Grave 