Sunday, July 28, 1996

CHILDREN JOIN IN THE EXCAVATION

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Dozens of children are spending their summer searching for clues to a 200-year-old mystery in a very important sandpile.

"You will be reading and studying about the history here," Dana Ste. Claire tells his young archaeology students. "You will have been part of it."

Ste. Claire, an archaeologist who's curator of history at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, said the discoveries in New Smyrna Beach's Old Fort Park have exceeded his expectations when the excavation began in May.

The park's ruins have been regarded as the foundation for a mansion or a smaller home, a military site or a Spanish church. Evidence rising from the dig now suggests the site may have been part of a military outpost at one time.

That is about as close as the research has come to making the ruins live up to their popular name of the Old Fort.

One significant discovery was a three-layer tabby floor constructed of oyster shells and bonded with homemade mortar. The three layers attest to a heavily trafficked use, such as a warehouse.

The site has drawn Volusia pupils to join Ste. Claire and his two amateur archaeologists, Dot Moore and Bob McKinney.

Beneath a scorching summer sun with stifling humidity, the kids and adults work on their hands and knees, scraping away thin layers of soil and then brushing away debris with a small broom.

Digging crews have found artifacts that appear to date back to the British attempt to colonize this area. Some of the artifacts will be sent out for carbon dating to pinpoint their age.

A silver pin with a globular head is typical of the time when colonists led by Scottish physician Andrew Turnbull lived in New Smyrna Beach. So is a shutterdog, a piece of hardware designed to fasten shutters.

Hand-wrought screws with fitted threads, an iron shoe buckle, a pearl button and some Mocha ware pottery, all popular during the late 18th century, have been collected from the site.

Pearlware, a type of ceramic in use about 1790, also was found in one of the layers of tabby floor, indicating use by the colonists who remained after Turnbull left.

The British colonization attempt by Turnbull lasted nine years from about 1768 to 1777 and ended with many of the colonists heading for St. Augustine.

The Spanish, who had settled in Florida in the 16th century, returned to the New Smyrna area in about 1783 after most of Turnbull's party left.

In about 1804, Ambrose Hull arrived from the north and secured vast acreage from a Spanish grant and a year later built his home on the foundation of the Old Fort ruins.

Hull's home and his holdings were destroyed during the War of 1812, and he fled to St. Augustine. Some artifacts being found at the site may have come from Hull's brief tenure on the land.

Besides the three-layered tabby floor found at the site, the kids were on hand to assist in the excavation of the northwest chamber of the old ruins.

That led to the discovery of brass military buttons and a military-issue spoon. Ste. Claire says these artifacts lend support to the idea a military outpost was at the site during the Seminole War of 1835.

At that time, Thomas Stamps, a South Carolina sugar planter, had a 100-acre plantation that included the site of the ruins in Old Fort Park. His plantation was destroyed by fire set by the Seminoles.

Ste. Claire's summer archaeology program is partly underwritten by a grant from the state Division of Historical Resources. In addition, participants pay between $100 and $150 a week to take part in the excavation. Scholarships for the program also are available from Daytona Beach Community College and the Museum of Arts and Sciences.

"It is important to keep an open mind approach," Ste. Claire told his volunteer work crews. "We want to reconstruct all periods of occupation here, to know how this particular piece of land was used."