Here liethinterr’d: An examination of the 17th-century burial landscape of coastal British North America
Robyn Lacy
This research project involves a geographical, historical, and archaeological investigation of the relationship between 17th-century British burial grounds and their associated settlements. I focused on sites from Newfoundland’s Southern Shore and Conception Bay areas, as well as along the northeastern seaboard of North America, going as far south as Hampton, Virginia. The placement of burial grounds was examined through spatial data, historic documents and maps, and site visits, and the information gathered was compiled into a database. This database will be made accessible for other researchers to be used as a frequency of traits model, in order to inform future research on 17th-century colonial settlements whose burial ground location remains unknown. The statistical results of this model were applied at Ferryland, Newfoundland, in the summer of 2016 in the first strategic attempt to locate the 17th-century burial ground associated with the earliest period of permanent European occupation at the site. Ferryland was founded in 1621, making it one of the oldest permanently occupied European settlements in North America, and the original burial ground has yet to be identified. Statistical results suggested that a raised landform in the centre of the settlement, or to the east or south of the fortifications would be the most likely locations. In 2016, locations to the east and south were examined, and in 2017 all effort will be put to investigating the most promising location inside the fortifications.
This research is important to the understanding of early colonial life in one of Newfoundland’s earliest communities. The information that archaeologists can gain from understanding the colonists’ views on death and burial in the landscape will greatly advance our body of knowledge of early English and Irish settlements in eastern Newfoundland. In terms of the wider Atlantic rejoin, the relationship between 17th-century burial grounds and settlements has been not been explored on a large scale, with many studies glossing over the 17th-century in favour of the more visible 18th-century sites and gravestones, often on a site by site basis. This project will be useful for researchers working on 17th-century settlements without an identified burial ground, as the frequency of traits model will provide information regarding the most frequent placement of burials in contemporaneous sites.