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 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

consists of usually long-established families, mainly (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.

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.

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Figure 1: Location of the Ironbridge Gorge and sites mentioned in the text. Drawing by Sophie Watson (Ironbridge Archaeology). Project background and research agenda Despite this impressive history of research, excavation and building recording, several key questions about industrial development within the World Heritage Site had remained unanswered. In particular, emphasis had been placed on the development of iron founding in the Ironbridge Gorge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at the expense of other industries and other periods. Moreover the traditional focus on ‘great men’ and their inventions and discoveries had tended to obscure a more inclusive and interesting story about 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 generations of the Brooke family from the 1540s.

o Non-ferrous industries. Although the Gorge is synonymous with iron making, the landscape sustained a number of other industries. These not only included ‘heavy’ ceramic and non-

ferrous metal trades, but also other ‘light’, more consumer-based, activities, many of which have seen little archaeological research.

o Non-industrial archaeology. Despite a long tradition at Ironbridge of research into later nineteenth century social history, there had been no co-ordinated attempt to examine the archaeology of working-class domestic life. The material culture of Coalbrookdale Company workers had been particularly overlooked.

Figure 2: Excavation of England's first steel furnace in progress. (Photo: author) The desire to investigate these themes led to the identification of the Upper Forge site in Coalbrookdale as having the greatest historical significance and archaeological potential. The Upper Forge was known

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to have been in use for ironworking in the seventeenth century and possibly earlier.10 Documentary evidence also hinted towards the site being the location of the first cementation steel furnace in England, built by Sir Basil Brooke in 1619.11 This was a significant development in the bulk production of steel which enabled the carburisation of wrought iron in bulk rather than on a piece-by-piece basis. One of the successful research outcomes was to discover the remains of this furnace, together with a second furnace constructed in the 1630s (Fig. 2). It was also possible to address the second research 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,

culminating in a day-long visit by the regional BBC news team who made live broadcasts from the site in their bulletins. This attention was extremely flattering, but in truth the story of the steel furnaces was of interest only to a small part of our public. The technical significance of the discovery was difficult to explain to a non-specialist audience. However exciting they may be to archaeologists, lumps of slag and fused brick, and tiny sherds of seventeenth century pottery do not have quite the same effect on the general public. This is particularly the case when the visible remains, although spectacular in plan, are not easily distinguished from surrounding debris.

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.

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.

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.

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 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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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 books19 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

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.

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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

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.

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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

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

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‘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

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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