Welcome to our “Updates from the Field” from this spring semester’s ANTH 424: Archaeological Field Methods class! Throughout the semester a team of students and faculty from the University of Delaware will be excavating the grounds of the historic Old Swedes Church in Wilmington, DE. A visit to the Old Swedes site is like taking a walk back in time – the building is beautiful, filled with stained glass windows and antique wooden pews, each representing another ‘layer’ in the church’s 300+ year history. We are certainly quite lucky to be working at such an incredible site! Our team is composed of 10 undergraduate students and 2 graduate students, under the direction of Dr. Lu Ann DeCunzo, Professor of Anthropology and Interim Chair of the Anthropology Department at UD. Some members of our team have experience with archaeology but the majority of us will be experiencing archaeology for the first time during this project. We’ll also be working with Andrea Anderson, UD Anthropology Lab Coordinator, and Rebecca Wilson, Executive Director of Old Swedes Foundation. We hope you’ll follow our journey this semester as we dig and discover!
Now, a little background on Old Swedes…. The first Swedish settlers in the Delaware Valley founded Old Swedes Church in 1698-1699. The church and surrounding churchyard has a rich and dynamic history and is still an important part of the culture of modern day Wilmington. Over the next few months we will be excavating around the church in hopes of learning more about the history of Old Swedes. Besides conducting archaeological fieldwork, we’ll be searching the church archives to form a comprehensive understanding of the Old Swedes site.
During our first visit on February 27th we met with Rebecca Wilson to learn more about the history of Old Swedes and to tour the property. Rebecca told us about the early history of the Swedes in Delaware and we set out our expectations for the semester. As Old Swedes has undergone a lot of construction during its 300+ year history we’re expecting to find construction materials, such as nails and wood, as well as fragments of stained glass during our excavations. We’re also interested in taking an anthropological approach to our fieldwork as we hope to learn more about the historic parishioners of Old Swedes. We also met with Travis Smith of South Bridge Connects to learn more about how technology can be used to link citizens of all generations with information about historical sites. We’re excited to form these connections with the local community and hope that our work will provide some new insight into the history of Wilmington and the Swedish colony that was once there.
Sophiana Leto
