BRIDGING THE ATLANTIC - ARCHAEOLOGY AND COMMUNITY IN

ENGLAND AND BERMUDA

Paul Belford
Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust
This paper explores experiences of community archaeology in World Heritage Sites in England and Bermuda. The work
was undertaken by Ironbridge Archaeology, the commercial archaeology unit of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust,
with academic and conservation partners. In both cases the community archaeology was not originally the motive
behind these research-led projects, but rather evolved as the projects themselves evolved. Whilst the nature of the
archaeology on both sides of the Atlantic was very different, in both places many similar challenges were faced. These
included identification of the stakeholder communities, maintaining positive engagement whilst at the same time dealing
with controversial issues, and presenting archaeology to as wide a public audience as possible.

Introduction consists of usually long-established families, mainly

This paper outlines two community archaeology
projects in different World Heritage Sites. It is
important to stress at the outset that neither project was
designed as a community archaeology project based on
‘relinquishing at least partial control ... to the local
community’. 1 In both cases the involvement of various
communities fed into an existing research-led
archaeological project. Nevertheless, encounters with
communities in both places raised a number of
interesting questions both about the archaeology and
about the nature of ‘the local community’ itself.
Certainly the traditional notion of community is in a
state of flux in the twenty-first century.
In Ironbridge the traditional community consisted of
workers in local mining, ironmaking and ceramic
industries. This community, which was a product of
inward migration in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, had largely disappeared by the mid-twentieth
century. Some elements do survive, such as a small
number of workers in the local iron foundry, and
employees of heritage-related businesses. These
include shopkeepers and hoteliers as well as
manufacturers of teddy bears and garden furniture.
Most residents of the World Heritage Site are however
those who work elsewhere and can afford the property
prices. Nevertheless this incomer community places a
high value on the heritage and landscape, although
their values are often very different from those of
existing residents or indeed archaeologists.
The situation in Bermuda is different in detail, but has
still resulted in plural communities. Slavery was an
important factor in the Bermudian economy in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and aspects
of that history resonate through Bermudian society
today. Broadly speaking the island consists of three
main groups of residents. In terms of heritage
investigation and conservation, the most active are
long-established families who can trace their residency
back through several generations. This group is usually
(but by no means universally) white, leaning strongly
towards an Anglo-American cultural heritage, and
often with power and influence. The second group also
(but again not universally) of Afro-Caribbean descent
and cultural heritage, who have traditionally been
somewhat alienated from the first group’s notion of
what heritage is and why it is important. The third
group are temporary expatriate workers who rarely
develop more than a superficial interest in the
archaeology and history of Bermuda. This is of course
a simplification, and other significant groups such as
those of Portuguese and Amerindian ethnicity are also
present.
In addition to local communities, there are (and always
have been) other communities not rooted in a sense of
place. Both of the projects described here have
engaged with such communities. Some of these might
be seen as elite groups, such as academics concerned
with certain periods of human history or with certain
types of technology and material culture. Such an
academic community is not overtly bound by a sense
of place, although many of those engaged in relevant
studies might well be exploring very similar places.
Other communities could include a ‘stakeholder
community’. One stakeholder is a major offshore bank,
yet their CEO and all but a handful of their staff are
oblivious to the work they have partly funded. At the
other end of the scale are stakeholders who travelled
long distances at their own expense to become
involved with the work as students or volunteers.
Background
Both projects involved Ironbridge Archaeology, the
commercial archaeology unit of the Ironbridge Gorge
Museum Trust (IGMT). The Museum was established
in 1967 to research, preserve and interpret the
industrial buildings, monuments and landscapes of the
Ironbridge Gorge. 2 . Ironbridge Archaeology has
existed as a self-funding department of the Museum
since the early 1990s, whose main revenue is derived
from commercial, developer-funded archaeology
projects undertaken under the aegis of UK planning
legislation. The history of the unit itself can be traced
back to the 1970s, but since 2000 Ironbridge
Archaeology has developed a strong identity as a
leading specialist in historical and industrial

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archaeology. Nevertheless Ironbridge Archaeology
continues to work closely with other Museum
departments, and external academic and conservation
partners, in developing programmes of research,
training and public archaeology.
Apart from the involvement of Ironbridge
Archaeology, a number of common threads run
through both projects. One of these is the nature of the
archaeological research itself, another is the multi-
agency nature of the projects. Both of these issues are
described more fully below. A further connection,
arguably the most significant in the context of this
volume, is the setting within World Heritage Sites.
The Ironbridge Gorge was one of the first UK sites to
be inscribed on the UNESCO list, along with those
such as Stonehenge and the Giant’s Causeway in 1986.
The inscription was due to embodiment of the
industrial revolution in an ‘extraordinary concentration
of mining zones, foundries, factories, workshops and
warehouses [within an] old network of lanes, paths,
roads, ramps, canals and railroads as well as substantial
remains of [the] traditional landscape’, including the
Iron Bridge itself. 3 Ironically, some of the results of the
research project described here have placed a new
emphasis on the historical significance of the place and
have rendered parts of the original inscription
anachronistic. The research project described here was
led by Ironbridge Archaeology, but was only possible
with the close co-operation and financial support of
universities in the UK and Canada and specialist
societies.
Bermuda’s status as a dependency of the United
Kingdom means that the World Heritage Site of St.
George’s is actually part of the UK list of World
Heritage Sites. St George’s was inscribed on the list in
2000 because it was ‘the first English town of the
British Empire…[p]redating…Jamestown by seven
years’ and it had ‘retained much of its early street plan
and many of its masonry buildings’. Moreover the
associated fortifications were ‘also without parallel and
represent almost the complete range of British coastal
fortifications and artillery overseas’. 4 The research
project here was led by the Bermuda National Trust
(BNT), initially with the involvement of universities in
the UK and the United States, and subsequently as a
partnership with Ironbridge Archaeology. Again local
organisations, including financial institutions,
voluntary groups and societies, and local government,
were very supportive and closely involved. As with the
work in Ironbridge, excavation both within and outside
the World Heritage Site have raised questions about the
meaning and value of the UNESCO inscription.
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Old World
The Ironbridge Gorge is a landscape characterised by
intensive industrial activity during the post-medieval
period. Situated in the geology of the Carboniferous
Coal Measures, the River Severn cut a post-glacial
section through the stratigraphy of ironstone, clay and
coal which facilitated extraction and processing of the
various minerals. These activities began in the middle
ages, but industrial expansion began in earnest after the
dissolution of the monasteries in the early sixteenth
century which resulted in the acquisition of land by
entrepreneurial individuals. By the end of the
seventeenth century significant industries of
ironmaking and ceramic production had made their
marks on the landscape. These achieved wider fame
and global reach in the eighteenth century, with the
development of coke-fuelled iron smelting in 1709 by
the Quaker Abraham Darby. Exports of coal, iron and
steel down the Severn to Bristol and the world were
joined in the later eighteenth century by high quality
porcelain and in the nineteenth century by encaustic
tiles. Decline from the later nineteenth century was
ultimately reversed from the 1960s with the creation of
Telford New Town, a government initiative to relocate
industry and population from the west midlands
conurbation to a purpose-built settlement. The
regeneration of the Ironbridge Gorge, spearheaded by
the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, was part of this
scheme, which was at its peak from the early 1970s
until the mid-1990s.
As a consequence the Ironbridge Gorge has become
one of the most intensively researched landscapes of
the post-medieval period (Fig. 1). Early historical
studies by Raistrick and Trinder highlighted the
importance of the area and the relatively well-
preserved nature of the remains associated with early
industrial development. 5 This preservation is in part a
function of the industrial decline of the area in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 6 Much of this early
research focused on the industrial buildings and
monuments, notably the Old Furnace at Coalbrookdale,
which was the scene of Abraham Darby I’s
development of coke-fuelled iron smelting in 1709, and
the Iron Bridge itself built by Abraham Darby III in
1779. The development of a more archaeological
approach, which sought to place these and other
individual sites within their landscape context, was
begun by Judith Alfrey and Kate Clark in the 1980s. 7
Subsequent work was undertaken within the
framework established by Clark and Alfrey during
major restoration projects in the 1990s. 8 Although this
work tended to focus on the upstanding remains, some
important contributions were made in this period to the
understanding of the below-ground archaeology.
Figure 1: Location of the Ironbridge Gorge and sites mentioned in the text. Drawing by Sophie Watson (Ironbridge
Archaeology).

Project background and research agenda ferrous metal trades, but also other ‘light’,
Despite this impressive history of research, excavation more consumer-based, activities, many of
and building recording, several key questions about which have seen little archaeological research.
industrial development within the World Heritage Site o Non-industrial archaeology. Despite a long
had remained unanswered. In particular, emphasis had tradition at Ironbridge of research into later
been placed on the development of iron founding in the nineteenth century social history, there had
Ironbridge Gorge in the eighteenth and nineteenth been no co-ordinated attempt to examine the
centuries, at the expense of other industries and other archaeology of working-class domestic life.
periods. Moreover the traditional focus on ‘great men’ The material culture of Coalbrookdale
and their inventions and discoveries had tended to Company workers had been particularly
obscure a more inclusive and interesting story about overlooked.
the ordinary men and women who made these
achievements possible. The opportunity to rectify this
came about in 2001 with the inauguration of the
Coalbrookdale Historical Archaeology Research and
Training programme (CHART). The CHART
programme was initially established in co-operation
with the University of Birmingham, and in its first year
explored a number of sites within the Ironbridge
Gorge. 9 Three broad research areas were identified:
o The pre-Darby period. There was considerable
industrial development in the Ironbridge
Gorge prior to the arrival of Abraham Darby
in 1708. This included ceramic industries and
mining, but arguably the most important
element was the creation of a kilometre-long
water-powered ironworking complex by four Figure 2: Excavation of England's first steel furnace in
generations of the Brooke family from the progress. (Photo: author)
1540s.
o Non-ferrous industries. Although the Gorge is The desire to investigate these themes led to the
synonymous with iron making, the landscape identification of the Upper Forge site in Coalbrookdale
sustained a number of other industries. These as having the greatest historical significance and
not only included ‘heavy’ ceramic and non- archaeological potential. The Upper Forge was known

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to have been in use for ironworking in the seventeenth culminating in a day-long visit by the regional BBC
century and possibly earlier. 10 Documentary evidence news team who made live broadcasts from the site in
also hinted towards the site being the location of the their bulletins. This attention was extremely flattering,
first cementation steel furnace in England, built by Sir but in truth the story of the steel furnaces was of
Basil Brooke in 1619. 11 This was a significant interest only to a small part of our public. The technical
development in the bulk production of steel which significance of the discovery was difficult to explain to
enabled the carburisation of wrought iron in bulk rather a non-specialist audience. However exciting they may
than on a piece-by-piece basis. One of the successful be to archaeologists, lumps of slag and fused brick, and
research outcomes was to discover the remains of this tiny sherds of seventeenth century pottery do not have
furnace, together with a second furnace constructed in quite the same effect on the general public. This is
the 1630s (Fig. 2). particularly the case when the visible remains, although
spectacular in plan, are not easily distinguished from
It was also possible to address the second research surrounding debris.
theme, as the steelmaking parts of the complex were
converted to a malthouse in the eighteenth century.
Maltings are a little-investigated component of the
post-medieval industrial landscape. Some historical
research, and the investigation of standing buildings
and their associated components has been done both
for the Ironbridge Gorge and surrounding areas. 12
However, prior to the work at the Upper Forge site,
very little archaeological excavation of malthouse sites
had been undertaken. Malting not only provided
ingredients for the brewing process - itself an important
industry before safe piped water supplies - but was also
the principal means of making sugar before the
expansion of the Caribbean trade. The CHART project
provided archaeological evidence for the transition
from steelmaking to malt production in the eighteenth
century, and shed new light on the construction and
operation of the malthouse.

The final phase was the gradual development of part of

the Upper Forge site into a complex of tenement
houses (Fig. 3). This took place piecemeal from the
mid-eighteenth century, but the final transition
occurred at some point between 1838 and 1847 with
the conversion of the former maltings into a substantial
row of back-to-back houses. These remained in
occupation until the 1960s, when they were demolished
as slum housing by the Telford Development
Corporation. 13 The cellars and parts of the ground
floors of most of these houses, which incorporated
elements of earlier phases, survived substantially
intact. Features such as cast-iron cooking ranges and
fireplaces were found in situ. Artefacts were recovered
from inside and outside the buildings which related to
the nineteenth and twentieth century occupation and
use of the tenements.
Engaging different communities
The steel furnaces were the most important discovery
made during the project, and were indeed one of the
most significant finds ever made within the World
Heritage Site. The older furnace was extremely well
preserved and contained metallurgical residues from its
period of use, and dating evidence for its demolition.
Academic interest was high, and visits from groups
such as the Historical Metallurgy Society were
extremely rewarding. Local people who were familiar
with the complexities of ferrous industries were also
enthusiastic. There was considerable media interest,
Figure 3 Tom McCutcheon and Hayley Foster,
students from Canada and the United States, recording
the excavated cellars of nineteenth century tenements
in Coalbrookdale. (Photo: Kate Page-Smith)
Perhaps it is not surprising then that the most
enthusiasm amongst non-specialist communities was
for later periods of occupation, specifically the
tenement houses. These had left substantial upstanding
structures, including walls 20 metres long and two
metres high, brick and tile floor surfaces, coal chutes,
fireplaces, and, above all, a whole host of artefacts.
People found it much easier to engage with an 1890s
chamber pot, parts of a Victorian mangle and
fragments of Codd bottles. In analysing peoples’
responses to these remains it was clear that nostalgia
played an important part in this enthusiasm. Here were
things which were in use within living memory, albeit
sometimes very much on the fringes of that memory,
but nevertheless things which existed within a
collective consciousness of ‘how things used to be’.
There was also much interest in artefacts of the 1960s

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which had been buried in the cellars during the
demolition of the site.
One important community was the diaspora of former
residents of the tenement buildings. The most
impressive of these were Betty Duddell and Bessie
Williams, who had lived in the tenements in the 1920s
and 1930s and visited the site during excavations in
2002 (Fig. 4). They were able to point out individual
houses and name the people who were living there at
the time, as well as describing less obvious features
such as the outside privy that was located over the
culverted watercourse. They also told entertaining
anecdotes, giggling like schoolgirls as they recalled the
story of one young man who would venture up the
culvert with a feather and tickle people sitting on the
toilet - a dangerous occupation one would imagine.
Such stories brought another dimension to the site
which could not have been achieved by archaeological
excavation alone. Another visitor was Andrew
Marsden, who came from Cumbria (a round trip of
over 400km) to see the excavations. He remembered
visiting his grandmother in the tenement houses. The
late eighteenth century Coalbrookdale cooking range
which he played in front of as a child was excavated
during the 2003 season and is now part of the
Museum’s archaeological collection.
Figure 4: Betty Duddell and Bessie Williams,
residents of the tenement buildings in the 1920s and
1930s, describing their memories of the site to students
during the 2002 fieldwork season. (Photo: author).
The locally resident community was also extremely
interested in the site. Visitors from this group included
people from both ‘traditional’ and ‘incomer’ groups.
The former included people such as Melvyn Molyneux,
who had followed in his father’s footsteps as a worker
in the Coalbrookdale foundry. He enthusiastically
joined in the excavations, and used his metal-detecting
skills to assist in the identification of key contexts; he
also made a comprehensive video record of the project.
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We also enjoyed engagement with long-time residents
such as Ron Wincott, who had a regular dialogue with
the site, visiting us for updates on progress which in
turn prompted reminiscences. Reactions of the
‘incomer’ group were generally less proactive, but
there was a strong sense of people trying to engage in
their own terms with the history of the area into which
they had moved.
New World
Bermuda comprises a series of islands in the western
Atlantic, a limestone outcrop which was originally part
of the rim of a gigantic volcano (Fig. 5). The story of
the foundation of the colony of Bermuda is the stuff of
legend, inspiring Shakespeare to write ‘The Tempest’.
In 1609 a fleet set off for Virginia to supply the
beleaguered colony of Jamestown. Unfortunately they
were blown off course during a violent storm, and the
lead ship with the new governor was wrecked at
Bermuda. 14 The expedition leader, Sir George Somers,
discovered that he had arrived at a sunny island with an
abundance of free food, and whilst his comrades built
vessels to sail on to Virginia he mapped the island. Sir
George, a heroic explorer and veteran of Raleigh’s
campaigns against the Spanish, died in Bermuda of a
‘surfeit of pork’, but the ‘Somers Islands’ had captured
the imagination and settlement began in earnest in
1612.
Despite various attempts at worthy protestant
industriousness such as tobacco growing, the main
enterprise of the new colony for most of the
seventeenth century were the equally industrious
protestant trades of wrecking Spanish ships and
evading taxation. In 1685 control of the island passed
from the Somers Island Company to the English
crown, and it has remained a UK dependency ever
since. 15 From this period onwards the economy was
focused strongly on Atlantic trade and to some extent
agriculture and industry. Bermuda’s strategic imperial
role always ensured considerable military investment,
and new fortifications were built almost continuously
from 1612 until the mid-20th century. 16 One of the
most important contributors to the civilian economy
was the ship-building industry. The ‘Bermuda’ rig
which evolved from the late 1600s was spectacularly
efficient, and the eponymous small vessels built on the
island gained a reputation for being fast and well-built.
This industry, as with agriculture and other trades,
would probably not have been viable without slave
labour. 17 Abolition effectively ended this period of
relative prosperity, and in the nineteenth century the
island began to develop as a tourist centre - whilst
maintaining its strategic military importance.
Figure 5: Location of Bermuda and sites mentioned in the text. Drawing by Sophie Watson (Ironbridge Archaeology).
The historical archaeology of Bermuda has been less
well-studied than that of the Ironbridge Gorge.
Nevertheless a considerable body of important work
has been undertaken. Perhaps the most comprehensive
archaeological study has been the work by Edward
Harris and his colleagues at the Bermuda Maritime
Museum (BMM), which has focussed strongly on the
numerous fortifications. 18 The BMM studies have also
explored to some extent the influences of the broader
Atlantic trading networks, and slavery, on the
development of Bermuda. A broader approach to
understanding settlements has been developed by the
Bermuda National Trust (BNT) in their comprehensive
series of architectural heritage books 19 These have
looked almost exclusively at extant standing buildings,
with an inevitable bias towards higher-status sites.
In contrast comparatively little archaeological
fieldwork has been undertaken on civilian settlements
and associated features. The town of St. George’s was
recognised in the 1990s as having great archaeological
potential, and a series of small scale excavations were
organised by the BNT in partnership with overseas
academic institutions. These included excavations in
the 1990s involving staff from Colonial Williamsburg
and William and Mary College on eighteenth century
merchant houses at Tucker House and Stewart Hall.
This work, particularly at Tucker House, did attempt to
explore aspects of slave life and work ‘below stairs’.
More recently work by the University of Bristol in
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2002 and 2003 at the Bank of Bermuda Car Park,
Reeve House and the Unfinished Church (site of the
first Government House) has had a more explicitly
broader rationale. This work was followed in 2004 by
the Ironbridge Archaeology and University of Bristol
excavations at the State House, as well as work outside
the World Heritage Site such as the excavation of
convict burials at Watford Island. 20 Desk-based
research by members of the BNT Archaeology
Committee was then followed by a second Ironbridge
Archaeology season in 2006.
Project background and research aims
As archaeological research in Bermuda has been less
intensive than in Ironbridge, the research agenda is
consequently less focused. In the 2004 seasons the
research agenda emerged partly as a response to the
evolution of the project and more prosaically as a result
of the availability of places to excavate. For the 2006
season a more explicit agenda was formulated which
will hopefully carry through to further work. This was
encouraged by the BNT, who are conscious that much
of their interpretation remains biased towards ‘rich
white men’. Unlike the Ironbridge project, we have not
been fortunate enough to work for several successive
seasons on a single site. Instead we have looked at
several sites which address a number of broad themes
complementing previous work on fortifications and
upstanding buildings.
o Administration. Investigations at the State House
in 2004, and at Government House in 2006, both
explored sites of power and control. The State
House was erected in 1612 as the first seat of
government and remained in official use until
1815. The present Government House was built in
the 1860s and remains the official residence of the
Governor of Bermuda.
o Under-represented groups. Archaeology has
proven to be particularly adept at examining
questions of class, race gender and identity where
gaps exist in the historical record. Two of our
projects have explored this theme explicitly - at
Watford Island in 2004 and at Verdmont House in
2006. Our shipyards project (see below) has also
touched on this issue, as the shipbuilding economy
depended very heavily on slave labour.
o Industry and economy. The mainstay of the
Bermudian economy was always trade in the wider
Atlantic world, but several important industries
contributed to this. Of particular importance was
the shipbuilding industry, which again has been
examined historically but little work has been done
on the surviving sites. A pilot survey of one site
was undertaken in 2006.
Figure 6: Cassandra Newland, postgraduate student at
the University of Bristol, excavating the privy of the
State House in 2004. (Photo: author)
The State House was the first public building to be
constructed in Bermuda, and remains the oldest
English masonry building in the New World. It was
depicted in an engraving of 1624. During the mid-
eighteenth century it became the court house, and
remained in this role until 1815, when Bermuda’s
capital was moved to the new town of Hamilton. Since
then the building has been leased to the Masons on
annual payment of a peppercorn. In the 1960s the
much-modified structure was ‘restored’ to its original
seventeenth century form as depicted in the early
engraving. Our work on this site examined both the
original seventeenth century building (without much
success) and the subsequent modifications. Excavation
of the privy revealed the complexities of the site
history from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth
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century (Fig. 6), and a series of trial holes explored
alterations to the building surrounds.
Two sites were essentially ‘rescue’ responses to
archaeological remains that had been revealed as the
result of Hurricane Fabian in 2003. At Watford Island
trees along the shoreline had been uprooted revealing
in section hitherto unknown graves that were part of a
convict cemetery. British convicts had been employed
in Bermuda after the cessation of transportation to
Australia and undertook many public infrastructure
works as well as the construction of fortifications. Six
inhumations were removed and analysed by BNT
volunteers in October 2004. The work at Government
House in 2006 was a similarly serendipitous response
to post-hurricane garden restoration instigated by the
Governor’s wife, in which a large midden of mainly
nineteenth century ceramics and glassware from the
house was revealed beneath the site of a fallen tree.
Figure 7: Verdmont House, Bermuda. Scene of
excavations in 2006. (Photo: author)
Verdmont House is one of the jewels in the crown of
the BNT’s property portfolio, being a ‘manor house’
built in c. 1700 at the centre of a large estate (Fig. 7).
Traditional architectural analysis and research had
focussed on the house itself, its upper class residents,
and its place within the Anglocentric development of
elite Bermudian architecture. The role of slaves in the
management and development of the estate was
certainly acknowledged but historical documentation
was patchy and little research had been undertaken.
Geophysical survey in the grounds in 2004 was
inconclusive. An adjacent cottage generally referred to
as ‘the slave quarters’ or alternatively ‘the kitchen’ was
investigated in 2006. Finds included examples of high-
status tin-glazed earthenware similar to examples on
display in the main house, but more significantly
included everyday slip-decorated earthenwares and
iron cooking vessels, clay pipes and marbles.
Exploratory excavations elsewhere in the grounds
revealed indications of a second building that will be
further investigated in future seasons.
Engaging different communities
Verdmont House and the State House were the two
flagship sites in the Bermuda project, and both were
well-publicised and well-visited by locals and tourists
alike. Undoubtedly the most active community group
was the BNT Archaeology Committee, without whom
none of the work would have been possible. This small
band of dedicated volunteers braved extremes of
scorching sunshine and lashing waves and contributed
immeasurably to the success of the excavation and
survey work. As might be expected this group is
largely composed of white middle-class people,
although there is real potential for this composition to
change in due course. Much of the work at the State
House was achieved in conjunction with the BNT
summer school for local children of all backgrounds,
and their enthusiastic involvement attracted the interest
of the wider local public and local media (Fig. 8).
Figure 8: Participants in the Archaeology Summer
Camp on the excavations at the State House in 2004.
(Photo: Nicola O'Leary).
The overseas students and volunteers were warmly
welcomed by what might be termed the ‘establishment’
community. A whole series of functions were arranged
involving important local bodies such as the
Corporation of St. George’s and the St. George’s
Foundation, both of whom are instrumental in
managing the World Heritage Site. The archaeological
team were also honoured by an invitation by His
Excellency the Governor for drinks at Government
House. Engagement with other sections of Bermudian
society took place on a more informal basis. Casual
conversations with residents of St. Georges revealed a
tremendous interest in, and enthusiasm for,
archaeology generally and the ongoing projects in
particular. Several useful introductions were made by
the students which enabled us to explore aspects of
island culture that were not usually part of the
‘heritage’ itinerary.
As with the Ironbridge project, non-specialist
audiences were interested in the early history but
became extremely enthusiastic about the remains of the
more recent past. We held public open days at both the
State House and Verdmont House sites. Due to most
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Bermudians’ continuing close relationship with the sea,
there was a surprising (to UK archaeologists) level of
interest in the various marine animal bones which we
had recovered. On the State House site this included
Sea Turtle as well as Barracuda - identification of
which was greatly assisted by contacts in the Bermuda
Aquarium. The presence of Sea Turtle bones in
eighteenth and nineteenth century contexts was
particularly noteworthy as early colonial legislation
had in fact outlawed their capture. The open days
attracted a range of the ‘general public’, as well as
directly engaging members of the BNT who might
otherwise not have had any direct involvement with
archaeology (Fig. 9). However we all felt that the
attendance at the open day was relatively low, and
represented only a small proportion of the wider
mosaic of Bermudian society.
Figure 9: Steve Conway, Chief Executive of the
Bermuda National Trust, and the author backfilling the
excavations at Verdmont House. (Photo: Kate Page-
Smith.
One of our aims in the work on Bermuda is to assist in
the training of Bermudian archaeologists so that
eventually they can develop a home-grown
archaeological tradition. At present there are but three
native Bermudians with archaeological qualifications,
and only two of them are employed on the island. One
works in the government planning office and the other
is director of a museum, so sadly neither are directly
using their archaeological talents in fieldwork and
research as much as they would like or would wish.
We are however optimistic that together with the BNT
we can nurture home-grown talent to increase the
amount and scope of archaeological work that is
undertaken on Bermuda.
Conclusions
Community archaeology is a distinct entity in
archaeological practice in which distinction can be
made ‘between “community-based archaeology” and
reactive or “consent-based” community involvement in
archaeology’. 21 The projects described here are closer
to ‘externally devised projects…[which] serve external
interests’ and attempt to ‘incorporate or involve local
communities’ than to those projects which are entirely
‘initiated by the communities themselves’. 22
Nevertheless the Ironbridge Archaeology experience
has taught us a number of lessons. The first of these is
that there are in fact many communities, each with its
own agenda and political motives. Sometimes these are
overt, or easy to distinguish, but often it takes time and
many discussions to tease out what motivates
individual involvement with a project. For these
reasons it is sadly inevitable that, however hard we try,
the design and management of an archaeological is
likely to be a top-down process. There will inevitably
be contradiction between the well-intentioned desire of
archaeologists to create an objective, neutral and all-
inclusive story, and the desire of different elements
within a community to emphasise their own part of that
story. Of course there are notable exceptions to this,
such as the work done by the Colorado Coal Field War
Project which has deliberately eschewed objectivity. 23
Another lesson is that historical archaeology is often
more engaging to people than more distant remains.
This is partly because it was ‘out of this smelly, gaudy,
moralistic era, so full of paradoxes, that the modern
world was born’. 24 Mainly however the appeal seems
to be one of nostalgia. Indeed the further forward we
came in time, the more people could engage with the
things that we found. The early twentieth century
artefacts recovered from the Upper Forge and
Verdmont house were able to provoke nostalgia about
how peoples’ parents and grandparents had lived. Even
more interesting was the enthusiasm for later twentieth
century remains. At the Upper Forge we found remains
of childrens tricycles, newspapers, and soft drink
bottles dating from the 1950s and 1960s. Many of our
visitors could remember such things from their own
lifetimes. Archaeologists can all too easily forget that a
1960s ‘Tizer’ bottle, or a fragment of 1950s linoleum,
is often a much more engaging artefact to the non-
specialist than a sherd of seventeenth century slipware
or a lump of furnace residue.
Indeed many archaeologists in the UK, even those
dealing with historical archaeology, are often
dangerously dismissive of late twentieth century
archaeology. If archaeologists wish to truly engage
with the public they need to acknowledge that the non-
specialist audience will make different value-
judgments to their own. This is not to say that
archaeological values are necessarily ‘wrong’, or that
non-archaeological values are always ‘right’. What it
does mean is that the ‘general public’ are often very
well informed and need to be engaged with at an
appropriate level. We need to explain our objectives,
our values and our findings much more clearly, and not
be afraid to admit that our interpretations are only
provisional and might even be wrong. For many of us
this means thinking very hard before we begin a
project about what we are doing and why.
Some of the more surprising observations we have
made is on the usefulness of being an outsider. In
Bermuda, our status as outsiders opened a lot of doors
105
that had been closed to the official enquiries of the
BNT. By straying outside the prescribed series of
social interactions we discovered a great deal about
social history in Bermuda, and were taken to see some
interesting parts of the island which otherwise we
would missed completely. Later we found that these
experiences had a positive impact on our work.
Likewise, the Ironbridge Gorge Museum is sometimes
viewed (by those outside it) as an elitist monolith,
uninterested in local views on heritage matters. Here
our secret weapon was the easygoing charm and
warmth of our Canadian colleague and excavation co-
director, Dr. Ron Ross. Many locals approached this
seasonal visitor unaware of his connection with the
Museum, and took him into their confidence, willingly
providing information which they had for years
jealously guarded from the perceived Kafka-esque
ivory tower of ‘official’ Museum historical enquiry. In
both cases a lot of what we learnt was dubious hearsay,
but some it was very useful. More importantly a
dialogue was opened which will inform future
approaches to projects.
Finally, despite the context of this paper, it is worth
remarking that in looking at the archaeologies of World
Heritage Sites we must be aware that in many cases the
physical boundary around our site can be an arbitrary
one. World Heritage Sites boundaries can be
determined by those not always fully versed in the
complexities of present-day communities, let alone the
coherence of historical ones which even archaeologists
often find puzzling. In both Ironbridge and Bermuda
we realised that a strong sense of historical identity
exists beyond the World Heritage boundary, and that to
ignore this not only runs the risk of alienating people
but has a negative impact on achieving research
objectives.
Acknowledgements
The many years of work that resulted in this paper
were only possible with many contributions from
countless individuals, all of whom deserve mention.
First among these are my colleagues without whom
these projects would not have worked at all. In
Ironbridge these include Professor Ronald A. Ross of
Wilfred Laurier University, Dr. Roger White and
Kirsty Nichol of the University of Birmingham. In
Bermuda special thanks must go to Richard Lowry, Dr.
Nicola O’Leary and Steve Conway of the Bermuda
National Trust, as well as Anna Lowry and members of
the Archaeology Committee. Thanks also to Dr. Mark
Horton of the University of Bristol. Current and former
staff at Ironbridge Archaeology who have made an
exceptional contribution to both projects include Anna
Deeks, Emma Dwyer, William Mitchell, Cassandra
Newland, Alexandra Norman, Simon Roper and
Sophie Watson. I am extremely grateful to the
conference organisers and editors for the opportunity to
publish this paper. Eternal thanks for everything to
Katie Page-Smith.
1
Marshall 2002, 211
2
IGMT 2006
3
ICOMOS 1986
4
ICOMOS 2000a
5
Raistrick 1953; Trinder 1977; 1981
6
Belford 2003a
7
Alfrey and Clark 1993
8
Hayman et. al. 1999
9
Belford 2003b
10
Trinder 1981, 271-3
11
Wanklyn 1973, 4
12
Terry 1988; Patrick 1996; Crew 2003
13
Belford 2003b, 62; Belford and Ross 2004, 215
14
Kennedy 1971, 9-27
15
Kennedy 1971; Lefroy 1882
16
Harris 1997
17
Bernhard 1999, 115-136; Jarvis 2002, 587-595
18
Harris 1997
19
BNT 1995; 1997; 1999; 2002; 2005
20
Belford and Lowry, in prep.
21
Greer et. al. 2002, 265
22
Crosby 2002, 363
23
Ludlow Collective 2001
24
Praetzellis 1999, 134

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