Kenicia Francis
For almost three decades, archaeologists have been probing burial sites around the Antigua Naval Dockyard in the hope of shedding light on the lives of those who lived and worked their hundreds of years ago.
Last night, researchers presented some of their findings on investigations into the naval hospital cemetery and the vast burial site at Galleon Beach.
Doctor Tamara Varney, a professor at Lakehead University in Canada, was among those working alongside local archaeologists including Dr Reginald Murphy.
Dr Varney appeared on Friday’s Observer AM show and shared what the team discovered.
“At the Rural Naval Hospital Cemetery, we have mainly men that were associated with the Navy. I was really naive when I first started, I thought it would just be British sailors coming from Europe, but there are African naval personnel, probably free and enslaved individuals, as well as children. And at least one woman, looking at their skeletons, we can see that they were relatively healthy individuals, or at least their bones look really healthy, because their likely causes of death were probably infectious diseases that killed them quite quickly, and so that doesn’t leave any mark on the bones,” she said.
“So, we see these people who were strong, resilient individuals, you can see that they have fractures, which you might think of being associated with hard labor, but they healed well, and they just kept going. And we can see what they ate, and it seems like those of European ancestry and those of African ancestry were eating different things.”
Heritage Manager Dr Christopher Waters explained why many of the remains unearthed were of children.
“The idea of being a child and being allowed to be a child and to grow up, that’s actually a fairly modern concept. In the 18th century, children were considered half adults, not children, and as half adults, you had to do at least half the work. So at least within the Navy, you could often get the youngest officers, midshipmen, officers in training, they would go into the Navy, they would start working on ships as officers in command of men when they were 11, 12 years old. Oftentimes, you would have even younger boys who would be working between the decks, working as servants. So having young children within the Navy structure was not uncommon,” she explained.
In closing, Heritage Resource Supervisor Desley Gardner, the project offered a fascinating insight into the country’s colonial past.
“When I pursued the career of archaeology, I never thought I would directly be dealing with human remains. I always thought it would be ceramics, because my first introduction was, you know, just sifting through some fish bone at the Amerindian site in Fiches Creek. But this was actually quite immersive. And I was one of the persons who found the first button. So I was very excited.”
“And I worked on the Galleon Beach site. And I saw how other persons were engaged with this site and excited to see that we were finding things and preserving archaeological site. Because one important thing that we always note is that these sites were only excavated because they were under threat. Whenever there is an instance for this, we try our best to rescue as much of the human remains as possible and put them in safekeeping until we can find a space for reburial,” she said.
