By Rhonda Parker
St. Augustine – In America’s oldest city history may be a part of daily life, but St. Augustine citizens rarely miss an opportunity to show their enthusiasm for their illustrious past. Tuesday night’s presentation called “First Colony” was no exception as residents packed Flagler Auditorium for the second in the “Discover America First” series, which featured Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park re-enactors, City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt, and internationally acclaimed Archaeologist Dr. Kathleen Deagan.
Deagan was among those awaiting entrance on the steps 20 minutes before the presentation and for whom polite volunteers found proper seating. During her presentation she joked to the crowd, “I couldn’t believe the line was so long, but then, there’s no place like St. Augustine when it comes to history.”
The Discover America First Series is part of a countdown of events leading up to what the city hopes will be a birthday party on a global-scale for its 450th Commemoration.
Members of the city commission and city staff first unveiled a painting by local artist of note Jeanne Troemel of Pedro Menendez Aviles – who first founded St. Augustine in 1565. Throughout the program, Fountain of Youth re-enactors portrayed members of that first colony, which Deagan and Halbirt outlined in power point presentations of sites that included the grounds of the Castillo de San Marcos Fort, the Colonel Spanish Quarter Museum grounds, and the Fountain of Youth.
Local re-enactor Chad Light, who portrays Pedro Menendez for city and state events, took the dramatic lead as the first Colony’s founder, with his supporting cast from the Fountain of Youth taking to audience through the high hopes of the landing, first encounters with the native Timucuas, and the beginning construction of the first fort – which Deagan’s presentation showed had a probable location at the current Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park.
Among important discoveries at the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park in recent years covered by Deagan in her presentation were outlines in rotted wood and discolored earth of the probable first European settlement on American soil. Deagan’s presentation showed evidence of buildings with European-style construction, and also thatched “round houses” built similar to native dwellings, but with European artifacts that may indicate these as “barracks” housing for Menendez’s men, whom he is documented as organizing into groups of ten.
In 2009, another important discovery included what could be the long-elusive defensive lines extending approximately 210 feet along the north side of the settlement.
Another find this past year Deagan described as “most interesting and important” is the outline of a large, 65’ x 40’ foot building with evidence of European-style beam foundations and raised floor similar to a French site in Alabama, which is known to have been a munitions storehouse. Deagan speculated the storehouse was burned by the Timucuas during an attack on the settlement.
Among other finds of interest were the skeletons of two prehistoric dogs that are each 900 to 1,000 years old - obviously beloved pets do to the care of their positioning in burial, Deagan said.
Deagan said that it’s like an archaeological law that the most interesting finds will always turn up on the last day when time and funding have run out, and the 2011 dig at the park was no exception.
On the final day in December, a burned post and what appeared to be a second wall of the large structure was unearthed – just in time for heavy rains to fill the dig site with water.
Work will resume next week at the Fountain of Youth site.
“It going to be exciting to go back and find what this is,” she said.
“An Archaeology project is like a jigsaw puzzle with no picture,” Deagan said, adding that one of the most common questions she gets from the public is “How do you know where to dig?”
While she said the older tools of the trade like augers and post-hole diggers are still relied on, the newer high tech options like ground-penetrating radar have become a boon for Archaeologists and are less invasive to sites.
In Halbirt’s presentation, which preceded Deagan’s, the city archaeologist narrated slides of the dig this past year on the grounds of the Colonel Spanish Quarter, with the discovery of what could be a central well and evidence of quadrangle structure, with evidence of three walls of what is possibly the sixth wooden-structure fort built by the Spanish once they moved their colony to the area of the present old city downtown.
Halbirt said the fort may have been built in a time (late 16th century) when the town was actually located just a little south of the plaza, but the fort may have been located near the current location of the Castillo’s parking lot, which was discovered to have been a marshy area where shallow-draft vessels could bring in supplies. Shards of pottery vessels in which goods would have been transported have been discovered at the site, Halbirt said, and showed a slide of one vessel currently being pieced together from the dig.
He also showed slides of a current dig on Marine Street where a new home will be constructed; a food-storage cellar that has now been obliterated years ago by renovations to the Santa Monica Hotel; remnants of a home probably burned by the infamous raid of Sir Francis Drake; as well as the unusual find of the burial of a dismembered donkey, which is the only known donkey burial of its type in the southeast.
One of Halbirt’s most important discoveries is known as the “Gonzales Sherd”, which is the earliest known fragment of pottery inscribed with a European name in North America.
Halbirt explained how the archaeological record is explained and interpreted through – not only the artifact evidence uncovered in the field – but also stains, ashes and soil layers that tell the story of human activity on the site. It’s not just about what can be brought up in a shovel, or even a backhoe, but has everything to do with putting in context the layers and artifacts.
“The archaeological record is not simple, but incredibly complex,” Halbirt said.
Other links of interest:
"In a Well With Carl" youtube video featuring Carl Halbirt: http://youtu.be/lD-Ota0A7yM
Aviles Street dig with Carl Halbirt and Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline: http://youtu.be/8_kqwTq0H5Q
"Archaeology Helps the Community Understand its Heritage" with Carl Halbirt: http://youtu.be/xh5TI6teUbg
http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/fountainofyouth.html
Some of Deagan’s academic writings concerning St. Augustine:
1983 Spanish St. Augustine: The Archaeology of a Colonial Creole Community. New York, Academic Press.
1987 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500-1800 (Vol 1: Ceramics, glassware and beads). Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press (Vol I: Ceramics and Glassware).
1995 Puerto Real: The archaeology of a sixteenth century Spanish town in Hispaniola. University Press of Florida
1995 Ft. Mose: Colonial America's Black Fortress of Freedom. (with Darcie McMahon) Gainesville: University Press of Florida
1998 Rethinking modern history. Archaeology (1998 Special 50th anniversary issue) 51(5):54-60.
2002 Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies: Florida and the Caribbean, 1500-1800 (Vol. II: Portable, personal possessions) Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
2002 Archaeology at America's First European Town: La Isabela, 1493-1498 (With Jose M. Cruxent). New Haven: Yale University Press.
2003 Colonial Origins and Colonial Transformation in Spanish America. Historical Archaeology 37(4):3-14
2004 Reconsidering Taíno Social Dynamics after Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture contact Studies. American Antiquity 69(4):597-626
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