Let’s take a look at what the Museum’s Finders, Binders, and Minders have been up to for the last 20 years and what they have accomplished. Here is a sampling of a few of their more noteworthy achievements.

1980–1989 Molasses Reef Wreck archaeological project produces thousands of artifacts. Return of the collection to the TCI following conservation and analysis provides the impetus for creation of the TCNM.

Grethe Seim is the Turks & Caicos National Museum's founder.

1990 Grethe Seim creates the TCNM with the help of Governor and Mrs. Bradley. Its mission statement: “The Turks & Caicos National Museum is a not for profit organization aimed at recording, interpreting, preserving and celebrating the history of the Turks & Caicos Islands and its people.” Guinep House Lodge is purchased and remodeled to become TCNM.
1991 A Ships of Discovery team creates and installs the exhibits.
1991 Museum opens to the public on November 23.

1992 Sherlin Williams leads a Museum team in conducting a survey of all windmills on Grand Turk. Ships of Discovery technician Juan Rodriguez builds a fully- functional scale model of the last standing windmill.
1992 Museum Manager Brian Riggs oversees conversion of the lot north of the Museum into the “National Arboretum” after the historic Bascombe House burns to the ground.

1993 Prince Philip tours the Museum during a visit to the Turks & Caicos Islands.

1996 Capt. Bob Gascoine finds a Lucayan Paddle underwater on Grand Turk. Following conservation treatment is becomes the centerpiece of the new Lucayan Gallery.

Turks & Caicos National Museum team members document Grand Turk's windmills.

1997 Barry Dressel, the Museum’s first Director, presides over the opening of the Science Building, providing the Museum with badly needed work and storage space.

1997 Editor Kathy Borsuk accepts the Museum’s invitation to publish its newsletter, the Astrolabe in each quarterly issue of Times of the Islands.

1998 Ted Philippona donates his collection of photographs of the TCI taken in the early 1960s. Other photo collections are also donated.

1999 A Ships of Discovery team moulds many of the inscriptions on Sapodilla Hill. Sherlin Williams assists in making casts of the moulds now on display in the Providenciales International Airport.

2000 Founder Grethe Seim establishes a small endowment for the Museum before her untimely passing.

2000 A Ships of Discovery team surveys and maps the Cheshire Hall ruins.

2001 Nigel Sadler, the Museum’s second Director, presides over the creation of the Lucayan Gallery and publishes three booklets on sale in the Museum.

2003 Smithsonian Institution lends artifacts in their collection originally found in the TCI to the Museum for exhibit. A Lucayan duho stolen from the Victoria Library decades ago is returned.

This Ted Philippona photo shows the last of TCI's salt rakers at work.

2003 Tanya Streeter, world renowned international free diver, visits TCNM after breaking two world records on Providenciales and donates a range of items from these dives.

2004–8 A Ships of Discovery team locates and test- excavates remains of the Spanish slave ship Trouvadore.

2005 The TCNM Children’s Club is created.

2006 Grand Turk Cruise Ship Center opens. Visitation to the Museum increases exponentially.

2008 Trustee Donna Seim publishes Where Is Simon, Sandy? All proceeds go to the Children’s Club.

2008 A Ships of Discovery team identifies remains of the US Navy warship Chippewa on Provo’s Northwest Reef.

2008 Neal Hitch, the Museum’s third Director, is thankful that damage to the Museum is minor with no loss of collections following the devastation of Grand Turk by Hurricane Ike.

TCI museum team members excavate a small building on Ft. George Cay.

2009 A Ships of Discovery team surveys Ft. George Cay, revealing that the site is much larger than previously thought.

2010–11 Contract archivist Melanie Clifton-Harvey identifies, catalogs, and evaluates archival assets in the TCI under a grant from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Program.
2010–11 Pat Saxton, the Museum’s fourth Director, secures funding to transform the National Arboretum into a Botanical and Cultural Garden that is now a tour destination.
2011 Funding is also secured to create a walking and driving bird trail on Grand Turk, in cooperation with the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum.

2011 Museum Manager Jackie Garbarino revitalizes the shop and oversees the knowledgeable staff and volunteers as record numbers of cruise ship tourists visit the Museum.

3D view of the planned new National Museum on Provo.

2011 Museum purchases property in the Village at Grace Bay on Provo and begins capital program to build a second museum.

For the greater good
Collecting, preserving, and disseminating: everything the Museum does is for the Greater Good. In other countries the National Museum is normally supported by the government. But this is not the case in the Turks & Caicos. The National Museum is supported primarily by donations and grants from foundations and individuals.

Our Museum’s greatest benefactor is the Founder, Mrs. Grethe Seim, who created the Museum’s Deed of Trust, purchased the Guinep House, renovated it, and filled it with exhibits. Realizing that any competent museum needs laboratory, office, shop, storage and meeting room space, she also constructed the Science Building just behind the Guinep House exhibits facility. The National Museum is her gift to the people of the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Until this year, the National Museum has existed only on Grand Turk. But thanks to a grant from the Krieble Foundation it now has property in the Village at Grace Bay on Providenciales where it plans to establish a second venue.

Looking ahead
So much for the past, what about the future? Where is the Museum headed? The Museum’s greatest challenges for the next few years will be to keep up with the dramatic increase in visitation from the Cruise Ship Center on Grand Turk and to create a new campus on Provo. This provides us not only with an opportunity to unveil new exhibits specific to the history of the Caicos Islands, but also to update old exhibits and create new ones on Grand Turk.

Because the Molasses Reef ship, the earliest shipwreck found in the Americas, wrecked on the Caicos Bank, we want to move its exhibit to Provo and replace it on Grand Turk with an equally exciting one about HMS Endymion, a 44-gun warship that wrecked on the Turks Islands Bank south of Salt Cay in 1790. Grand Turk will also get a brand new exhibit on the History of Diving in the TCI, starting with the exploits of early helmet diver Jeremiah Daniel Murphy, who lived and worked there for almost 50 years. To fill out the story, we can add Tanya Streeter, who set a free-diving world record off Provo, and another extraordinary marine philosopher and record-holder, Jacques Mayol, who had a home on South Caicos for many years.

Being one of the oldest buildings on Grand Turk, the Guinep House is the perfect place for exhibits depicting life in the 19th century, during which the salt industry peaked and then slowly but steadily declined, the victim of changing times and technology. In addition to converting one of the rooms into “Jeremiah Murphy’s Dive Locker” and another into a re-creation of the Colonial Administrator’s office, complete with furniture, clothing, documents, maps, letters, tea set and Sword of Service, we plan to showcase the original kitchen and install plaques in each room explaining their original use.

The Museum on Provo will feature a major exhibit about the Islands’ original inhabitants, the Lucayan Indians, who settled in the Caicos at least 700 years ago. The Museum has been accumulating Lucayan artifacts excavated in the Caicos Islands for many years. Now, at last, they can be viewed.

Other brand new exhibits planned for the National Museum on Provo includes the brief but hugely important period from about 1790 until 1840, during which the most fertile land in the Caicos Islands was cleared for cultivation by Loyalist refugees displaced after the American War of Independence. They and their slaves planted cotton and sugar cane, built docks, roads, homes and settlements, bringing civilization to the Islands for the first time.

One of the boldest ideas for the Provo Museum will be the “Caicos Heritage House” exhibit. This will be a masonry home typical of the type built in the Caicos Islands throughout the 19th and 20th centuries disassembled, moved to the Museum’s grounds, reassembled, and fitted out with all the normal household appurtenances such as cookware, tableware, gardening tools, etc.

Perhaps the most historically significant exhibit in the Provo Museum will be about the two slave ships, Esperança and Trouvadore, that wrecked on Middle and East Caicos. When Museum researchers stumbled across the story of the slave ships we immediately recognized how important these forgotten events were to the history of the nation and its people. After years of research, the story turned out to be even more enthralling than we imagined. Museum-sponsored expeditions in 2004, 2006, and 2008 combed the area where Trouvadore sank; resulting in the discovery of hull remains and artifacts that we believe are all that is left of the ship.

Of course all of this is just the Museum’s potential. It will take a lot of effort by a lot of people — finders, binders, minders and funders — to make it a reality.

I love plants. I can go out into my garden anytime and see my plants. Plants don’t have an optimum time to view them, unless it is a midnight blooming cactus, which only happens once in a blue moon. Plants stand still, and actually pose for photos. I love plants, but I do like birds.
Like most folks here, I see the brown pelican flying outside my window over the sea, and watch the flamingos in Town Salina and believe I am an established “birder.” Reality is that I can identify less than 5 birds of the 200+ in TCI. Then I met Dr. Mike and Ann Pienkowski. Boy, was I in for a crash course in birding!

Dr. Mike Pienkowski is a leading ornithologist in the United Kingdom. He is also the Honorary Executive Director of the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum (UKOTCF). I first met Ann and Mike when Mike was my son’s boss. To my son’s horror, as we entertained Mike and Ann in our garden, I would point out “Big Bird” (yellow-crowned night heron) and “Tweety Bird” (yellow warbler). Yes, I was a birder extraordinaire!
Both Ann and Mike made many trips to TCI over the last 15 years to count and identify the bird population. They were instrumental in bringing the plight of the salinas (and the effect on the bird populations) to the TCI Government, which in turn bolstered the case for protecting Town and Red Salinas. To say birding is their passion would be an understatement.
Fast forward to 2010, when Mike and Ann heard about the Carnival/TCInvest/TCIG/Infrastructure Fund. They approached the Turks & Caicos National Museum to partner with them and present a proposal for funding a bird trail. The concept of a Bird Trail is not new, in fact it has been on the back burner for almost nine years. Lack of funding — not enthusiasm — was the culprit. We pitched the idea, and were awarded a grant from the Infrastructure Fund.
Now my world was really “going to the birds.” Mike and Ann already had a Bird Walk and Bird Drive Trail in mind, so a lot of the technical work was already done. This included the bird trail cards which had been designed and redesigned with the help of the Pienkowskis, Dace and Richard Ground, and my son. We went out and walked the trails, and drove the trails over and over so that we could get the “best birding for our buck.”
Finally the trail cards were sent to the printer. Now all we needed to do was set the trail markers — easier said, than done. Trying to keep the trails as “green” as possible we decided that downed telephone poles from Hurricane Ike would be the best solution for mounting the trail markers. So on weekends, my husband Neil and I would do a “downed telephone pole raid.” The only problem was we could not move them, and our chain saw was not up to doing the job of cutting these massive poles. Out of frustration and defeat we approached Turks & Caicos Utilities. Not only did TCU agree to help us find poles, they cut them to size (five feet), and dug the holes with their big auger. After seeing how those guys could dig a hole to sink the pole in minutes, Neil and I both realized we had found our new best friends!
After all the poles were in place, the TCU guys went back to cut the poles at angles to accommodate the walking and driving trail markers. While all this was going on, the trail markers came in and looked great — orange squares for driving and blue ovals for walking. Yet another obstacle, the markers were smooth on the backside and the poles were rough cut. If we screwed them directly to the poles they would surely crack or worse, be lifted off. Solution: mount the new trail markers on painted wooden plaques.
Since I was busy doing day to day Museum work (hey, it’s my story and I’m sticking to it), I enlisted the help of my husband once again. For a week he cut, painted and glued the signs to the wooden plaques. We were only one week away from the bird trail grand opening, and three days away from Mike and Ann’s inspection. Neil and I worked all weekend driving around Grand Turk and placing the signs on the poles, 40 in all.
A funny thing happened while out in the field. Although it was hard work, we took time to check out the birds we could see from each particular bird stop. We used the clear and concise Bird Drive Trail Cards to identify the birds by the North and South Wells, Hawke’s Nest Salina, and Bayle’s Pond Salina.
Before we knew it, we were finished with the driving tour. Now on to the walking tour. Again, with the help of the Bird Walk Trail Card, we watched as flamingos fed in Town Salina, one of the two salinas which have been granted protection. Brown pelicans, ruddy turnstones (named because they actually turn stones over to look for food), and many varieties of terns came to feed in the salinas right before our eyes. Not daunted at all from the sound of power tools we used, the flamingos lifted their heads to investigate, but went back to feeding as though they knew we were friend, not foe.
We finished the bird trails with a day to spare! I picked up Ann and Mike from the airport, and on the way to the Museum they saw the first Bird Trail Sign. Hearing the excitement in their voices, I knew we had accomplished the task at hand.
The next day we started with our “Bird Week Extravaganza.” Tuesday we had movie night at the Museum, and before the “feature film” watched a great DVD that Ann had made, showing the importance of the salinas and beautiful birds of TCI entitled, “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”
Wednesday morning, as part of our dedication to educate students, we had an early morning bird walk. Armed with binoculars loaned from DECR, Mike and Ann led the students and teachers on a bird hunting expedition. At first the students were a bit uninterested, but it was 7 AM and they are teenagers! But, true to form Ann and Mike started engaging the group and the birders were beginning to take interest. Halfway through the trail, the students were identifying birds and asking questions. Success!
Thursday was the day set aside for the Bird Drive Trail evening. With 22 adults and two children we met up at Jack’s Shack. After a few refreshments, we boarded a bus loaned to us from Caribbean Tours International. Everyone received a Bird Trail Card and the use of binoculars from Caribbean Tours International. Bill, our bus driver, took directions from Mike Pienkowski until a cattle egret decided to land in front of the bus by North Wells. The egret obviously knew the trail better than Mike (after all, he has been doing this for generations). For about 200 yards this egret walked in front of the bus, only diverting to catch a gecko from the bush alongside the road. I guess he needed a snack. Finally he flew away, and we continued our tour.
As we approached Town Salina we saw an osprey sitting atop an old windmill, used during the salt industry. While driving down Pond Street, seven flamingos took off from the pond and flew directly over our bus. We stopped the bus and watched as they gracefully landed on the salina. Most folks on the bus had never seen a flamingo in flight, and were amazed at the black colouring of their flight feathers. (I wanted to charge extra for that view!)
With all of these wonderful sightings under our belts we headed back to Jack’s Shack so we could loosen our belts with delightful food. Jack’s Shack stayed open for this party, and also donated money back to the Museum from the sale of drinks and food. Another corporate partner we can always count on!
Friday was the official grand opening of the Bird Trails, and the ribbon cutting was led by Mrs. Lillian Swann-Misick. Following the ribbon cutting, a presentation was given by Dr. Mike Pienkowski at the Osprey Beach Hotel on the trail cards and trail itself, and all attendees received an official bird trail osprey pin and were given the opportunity to purchase the trail cards to re-sell at their retail establishments.
The Bird Trails will be the first of their kind in the Caribbean, and were presented by Dr. Mike Pienkowski at the July 2011 conference of the Society for the Conservation and Study of Caribbean Birds (SCSCB) in Freeport, Bahamas. SCSCB plans to encourage and market such trails throughout the region in a network of Caribbean birding trail experiences.
When I took the position of director of business development for the Turks & Caicos National Museum, little did I know I would have the opportunity to learn so much about birds, and how they depend on our salinas. I also never knew that TCI is one of the best birding places on earth, where one can see many different species of birds even without the use of binoculars.
As I sit in my backyard, I watch the pelicans over the ocean, an osprey sit atop a telephone pole and eat a fish, and cattle egrets tease my dogs by landing on trees just out of their reach. But as I write this I am reminded not to take too much of my work home with me, so Tweety Bird and Big Bird will always have a special place in my heart.

“Divers find oldest shipwreck in the Caribbean . . . and treasure that could be worth MILLIONS” screamed the headline in the Daily Mail on April 29, 2011. Nicknamed the “Precioso site” by the American treasure hunters working it, the shipwreck is located off the east coast of the Dominican Republic. This caught my attention immediately because for the last 30 years the Spanish shipwreck we excavated off Molasses Reef in the Caicos Islands has been recognized as the oldest ever found in the entire Western Hemisphere.

I read on, eagerly, curious to know how they dated the wreck and what was on it. By the reference to “700 silver coins” in the third sentence I was already suspicious. The presence of coins meant the ship went down some time after the Mexico City mint was established in 1536. By the end of the article I knew that the Molasses Reef Wreck’s title was still safe. The “Precioso” went down decades later, probably after the middle of the 1500s based on the dateable coins. Furthermore, the remains of the ship seemed to be widely scattered and already picked over by local divers.
The story brought back memories of the way the Molasses Reef Wreck burst on the global media scene in 1980, complete with similar hyperbole and outlandish claims made by Caribbean Ventures, the treasure hunting group that announced the find. They claimed it was one of the three ships Columbus used on his first voyage to the New World, La Pinta, and that it sank in 1498 loaded with a cargo of “red pearls” worth $100,000,000!
A visitor quietly perusing the Molasses Reef Wreck exhibit in the Turks & Caicos National Museum today would never imagine the dramatic struggle between treasure hunters and archaeologists that preceded the site’s excavation, or appreciate the fact that if the archaeologists had lost the fight there would be no Molasses Reef Wreck exhibit or, for that matter, Turks & Caicos National Museum!

Armed confrontation on Molasses Reef, 1981.

Caribbean Ventures convinced the TCI government to give them a contract to salvage the shipwreck in exchange for a cut of the “profit.” I got involved a month after the discovery was announced when Governor John Strong asked the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), which I worked for at the time, to send someone who could visit the site and give the government an independent assessment. I got the assignment and soon found myself aboard the R/V Morning Watch, headed for Molasses Reef with South Caicos fishermen Tim Hamilton and Sam Hall guiding us to the site.
Far from land, on the edge of the abyss, Molasses Reef is a diver’s paradise. While we inspected and photographed the site, giant sea turtles glided past. The reef teemed with all manner of marine life. Curious parrotfish and angels followed us around like friendly puppies. Sharks and barracuda glided by as if on patrol. The main part of the site was a mound of ballast stones about 40 feet long and almost as wide, garnished with different types of cannons and a single anchor lying in water only about 15 feet deep. You could stand up in knee-deep water on the shallowest parts of the reef less than 50 yards away. It was a nautical archaeologists’ dream.
The warm, clear, shallow water meant that divers could work on it virtually all day without fear of decompression sickness. Protected from the worst wind and seas by its location on the southwest side of the Caicos Bank, 12 miles from the nearest inhabited island, it could only be worked from small, shallow draft boats operating from a fairly large mother ship moored in the shallows of the bank on the other side of the reef.
The bad news was that all the visible artifacts and the ballast stones were heavily concreted to the seabed. It would take a lot of effort to free them without breaking something in the process. The constant surge and shallow sand deposits at the site made it unlikely that we would find much of the ship’s wooden hull or other organic material like fabric, leather, cordage or bone, but metal preservation seemed to be good.
What interested us most was the ordnance—the guns. They were not your normal, garden-variety cast iron muzzle-loading cannons like the ones you see in front of the Post Office on Grand Turk. Instead, they were four different types of spindly-looking wrought-iron breech-loading ordnance typical of the 1400s and early 1500s. Together with the long-shanked, short armed anchor on top of the ballast mound they told us immediately that the ship was from the earliest period of Spanish exploration and discovery in the New World.
This was an exciting find! But what ship was it? Caribbean Ventures’ insistence on giving the wreck a name at this stage without the benefit of clues gained through excavation was a transparent attempt to take advantage of the average person’s ignorance of history and use the fame of Christopher Columbus to capture media attention and inflate the “value” of the remains.
After my trip to the site I wrote a report to the TCI Government in which I recommended that the site receive proper archaeological attention. Even though the chances that it might be La Pinta were vanishingly small, and the red pearls claim was absurd, it was still one of the earliest shipwrecks ever found in the Americas. Thinking that the site was under contract to be salvaged, I submitted my report and put the whole thing out of my mind.
Meanwhile, Caribbean Ventures never returned to the TCI to consummate their contract. Instead, another outfit calling itself Nomad Treasure Seekers (some of us thought “Nomad Treasure Sneakers” might be more appropriate) showed up on Grand Turk in the Fall of 1981 claiming they had “inherited” the site and its “priceless cargo of red pearls,” from the original discoverers and demanding a contract from the TCI government. I was dragged back into the fray when Chief Minister Norman Saunders asked me to fly down for a face-to-face meeting with Nomad’s leader, Roger Miklos. It was my first time to meet a real Florida treasure hunter, and I must say I was impressed. He wore a white, pressed workshirt with Pinta Recovery Team emblazoned in five colors across the left breast, a heavy gold-colored chain around his neck supporting a mounted gold-colored coin surrounded by three gold-colored sailing ships (the Pinta, Niña, and Santa Maria, of course!), gold-colored rings on every finger, a heavy stud-link gold-colored bracelet, and a diver’s watch on each wrist, both held on with bands made of coins. How could anyone not be impressed?
For me it was a disappointing meeting. I offered, on behalf of the Institute, to excavate the site, conserve and analyze all the artifacts, produce a full report and return all artifacts to the TCI Government all at no cost, which I thought was a pretty good deal. But I couldn’t compete with Nomad. Miklos promised to build a museum complex with a conservation lab on Provo, to hire 40 natives at high salaries plus “a percentage” of the take, to build new schools and bring untold good publicity and prosperity to the Islands. Funding, he assured us, was no object because he had millions in the bank that he would pour into the project. Oh yes, and he had an “in” with the National Geographic Society so there would be plenty of favorable publicity. In a nutshell, there simply wasn’t anything he couldn’t do.
Chief Minister Saunders wanted some time to think about it, and put Molasses Reef “off limits” to all would-be salvagers until a decision could be reached. It had been his hope that Nomad and I would agree to work together, but that wasn’t going to happen. At Saunders’ request I submitted a formal proposal to excavate the site on behalf of the Institute while the TCI Government deliberated what to do.

Homemade pipe bomb on Molasses Reef

In November 1981 I returned to (hopefully) sign an agreement that would let INA excavate the Molasses Reef Wreck. But (surprise!) there were problems. Nomad was back, this time with two ships and a large group of people. Saunders told me that it was now apparent Miklos was “a bad egg.” He explained that although he had given Nomad permission to “prospect” for wrecks, they did not have permission to take anything. Now he was receiving alarming reports that Nomad was picking up every artifact they could find. Gary Adkison, the marina manager on Pine Cay, called to say that he and Wayne Kafsac, the divemaster at the Prospect of Whitby Hotel on North Caicos, had just prevented Nomad from taking up the cannons lying in shallow water off Ft. George! Where were they going next? I had a strong suspicion that they were headed for Molasses Reef and volunteered to fly to the Caicos Islands to find Miklos and get him to return to Grand Turk.
Because Nomad’s last reported location was near Pine Cay, I flew there to start my search and quickly hooked up with Gary and Wayne, who were already incensed at Nomad’s audacity. In the pre-dawn chill of November 24, Gary, his wife Barney, Wayne, and I climbed into a Pine Cay 19 ft. Mako piloted by Joe Gardiner and set a course across the Caicos Bank for Molasses Reef. An hour and a half later we could make out Nomad’s two vessels in the early dawn light, peacefully at anchor on the seaward side of the reef and a big round buoy over the shipwreck site. I could not help but notice that diagonal red stripes had been painted across their bows in a clumsy effort to mimic the US Coast Guard.
At first it seemed no one was up yet, but all at once frantic activity erupted on the nearest of the two boats, a fishing trawler named Captain Jack. Her siren blared wildly as people spilled out of the deckhouse and began milling around on the deck to pull a dingy alongside. We had been spotted! Joe maneuvered us skillfully through the shallow reef up to the buoy and kept the engine running as the dingy shoved off from Captain Jack with two men on board and headed for us. As they drew closer the man in the bow raised something over his head: a mean-looking M-1 carbine assault rifle with a flash suppressor and banana clip. We looked at each other in dismay. Twelve miles from the nearest inhabited island, outnumbered, unarmed, and hemmed in by the reef to the north and Captain Jack to the south we were at a considerable disadvantage. Just how crazy were these guys? Would they really shoot us just so they could rape the site at their leisure? It had to be a bluff.
The dingy drew alongside and the man at the tiller shouted with great authority that this was a restricted area and we must leave immediately. From the corner of my eye I noticed Barney raising her camera. I told the man who I was and that the Chief Minister asked me to check up on them and the site. As he prattled on about how putting a buoy on the site made it theirs, an odd thing happened. The gunman in the bow suddenly laid his M-1 down in the bottom of the dingy and folded his arms over his chest, as if in surrender. I turned to see Barney snapping photo after photo of the confrontation. The gunman realized the tables had been turned. We now had photos of him doing a very naughty thing indeed, and they could be very damaging. I asked him to hold the M-1 up again so we could get a better shot, but he wisely declined. Disarmed by the power of the lens, no power on earth could make him pick the rifle up again.
Once the threat of being shot was neutralized, I told the men in the dingy we were going to have a look at the site and they should just go back to Captain Jack and have breakfast, which they did. Gary and I rolled over the side to free dive the site to see what Nomad had been up to. In the dim light we could see their tools and equipment scattered across the seabed. Gary shot a whole roll of film to document the fact that Nomad was flagrantly violating the ban on conducting salvage on the site.
Back on board again, we cruised over to the other ship, a large sea-going tug called Heather Glynn, where Roger Miklos was watching the morning’s little drama from a safe distance. Our sudden appearance out of nowhere, the photos we had taken documenting his shenanigans and the shrugging off of his biggest and most imposing armed crewmen had caught him unprepared and unable to do anything except bluster. The shank of a very large, very old anchor, illegally salvaged, could be seen protruding above the bulwarks. I asked Miklos where it came from. He said, “Somewhere else.” I suggested that he and I go back to Grand Turk to talk things over with Chief Minister Saunders. Miklos responded that if Saunders wanted to see him, he was welcome to come out to Molasses Reef. There being nothing else to gain by remaining on the reef, we returned to Pine Cay.
Gary immediately processed the films we shot and I flew back to Grand Turk. The next day I showed the photos to the Chief Minister and made him aware of what Nomad was doing. He immediately called the Police Commissioner, ordering him to arrest Nomad’s boats and search them for purloined artifacts. Unknown to us Nomad had already left Molasses Reef, headed for Grand Turk where they arrived the next morning.
The police searched Nomad’s boats after they docked and confiscated the giant ancient anchor but found little else. That afternoon I got a call from Mike Spillar, a local divemaster, who said he had been diving under Nomad’s boats and found the sandy seabed littered with bronze and iron nails and spikes, broken bits of ceramic and glass vessels—which explained why the police hadn’t found much on board!
The whole grand drama, which had been building to a crescendo for weeks, came to an abrupt conclusion when Nomad’s boats slipped their moorings and put to sea without notifying anyone or bothering to clear with port officials. Before I was able to conclude an agreement with the government, the INA Board of Directors called me back to Texas, ostensibly because Caribbean Ventures threatened to sue the Institute, the University, and everyone else they could think of to compensate themselves for the $100,000,000. they said they expected to make from “marketing” the shipwreck. But years later I learned that the Chairman of the Board of Directors of INA, who had insisted on pulling me out of the TCI, was a friend and great admirer of the man who headed up Caribbean Ventures.
Months passed. Nomad never returned. The original discoverers never returned either. They had been arrested for “poaching” treasure on shipwreck sites in Florida and had their hands full trying to stay out of jail. Finally, in March 1982, I reached an agreement with the TCI Government allowing us to excavate the site and take the artifacts back to Texas A&M University for cleaning, conservation and analysis at no cost to government. All artifacts and samples were to be returned to the TCI following completion of the project, which would take several years.
But when we arrived on Molasses Reef on April 6, 1982, prepared to begin excavation, a sickening sight awaited us: some time between my confrontation with Nomad at the site and our return, the site had been visited by treasure hunters again. A huge crater had been dug or blasted into the ballast mound, and many artifacts had been intentionally mutilated. The three-inch thick iron shank of the anchor had been snapped in two by the force of a blast from a homemade pipe bomb. Wooden timbers preserved beneath the ballast mound for centuries had been ripped out and left to disintegrate in the surge. We found the remains of the pipe bombs and their detonators scattered across the site.
But if the treasure hunters hoped their wanton destruction would foil our intentions, we disappointed them. Fortunately, I had made a plan of the site two years previously during my first reconnaissance of Molasses Reef, which enabled us to make sense of the chaos on the seabed. Altogether, we spent six months on Molasses Reef and thousands of hours under water. During three phases of field work spread out over four years we were assisted by many different people including Sam Forbes, Stanford Handfield, and Calvin Harvey.
Working underwater is a peculiar, but not unpleasant business. Most of the discomforts associated with performing hard manual labour on land—overheating, thirst, accumulation of grime, insect bites, sunburn and tired feet—are absent. The water medium actually assists certain tasks. Our underwater induction dredges act like vacuum cleaners, effortlessly removing sand and coral debris from the excavation area. Immersion in seawater actually reduces an object’s weight. The weight of heavy objects can be easily neutralized underwater by attaching air-filled lifting bags. Using this technique, a single diver can move a cannon or an anchor that ten men couldn’t budge if it were out of the water. Marvelous distractions abound on all sides. Expedition photographer Dennis Denton wistfully eyed the shoals of brilliantly colored fish attracted to our activity. Much later, when his films were developed, we were amused to find technical photographs of site features interspersed with single frames of angelfish, Nassau grouper, octopus, and parrotfish.
The artifact conservation and archival research took even longer, a total of eight years, but eventually we were finished with the artifacts and it was time to return them to the TCI. In 1990, concerned citizens formed the Turks & Caicos National Museum, a publicly-funded, non-profit trust fully sanctioned by, but independent of the government, and authorized to collect, preserve and exhibit objects pertaining to the cultural and natural history of the Turks & Caicos Islands. Mrs. Grethe Seim, the Museum’s Founder, donated the “Guinep House,” one of the oldest buildings on Grand Turk, to become the Museum’s home.
Rather than merely placing an anchor here and cannon there, we decided to present a coherent and complete story of the MRW project in exactly the same order as we ourselves had experienced it. To do so it was necessary to arrange the interior of the building so that visitors would pass by the exhibits in the correct order. Walls had to be put up, doorways filled in, windows converted to doors. As the exhibit grew, it eventually occupied the entire ground floor of the Museum.
When we were finished, we were satisfied that it adequately presented not only the story of the Molasses Reef Wreck, but also explained a bit about the process of maritime archaeology and the Age of Exploration and Discovery. If you want to learn more about the MRW and what we learned from it, I’ve run out of space here, so you will just have to go see it for yourself.
Telling the Molasses Reef Wreck story now is appropriate because it all happened a long time ago, and some of the lessons that should have been learned seem to have been forgotten. Sadly, “the long view” reveals that shipwreck sites all through the Islands have been pilfered and destroyed almost continuously over the past 30 years. In some cases it was done with government-issued licenses, but most of the time it has been a clandestine activity.
For us at the Museum it is disheartening to see that in spite of the example set by the Molasses Reef Wreck project, the first scientifically excavated shipwreck in the Turks & Caicos, resulting in thousands of cleaned, conserved and analyzed artifacts on display or safely stored in the Museum, the TCI Government continues to condone treasure hunting in the vain hope that it will somehow put money in the treasury.
In the Turks & Caicos Islands, treasure hunters—usually guests in the country—have not only failed to find treasure or put one red cent in the national treasury, but have disgraced themselves repeatedly. They blew up the Molasses Reef Wreck with homemade pipe bombs. Using propwash deflectors they damaged the wreck of Trouvadore, the Spanish slave ship that brought the ancestors of many Belongers to the Islands 170 years ago. In a recent auction on e-Bay someone offered to sell the location of a shipwreck site on the Caicos Bank. Why does the government continue to welcome guests like these?
Most civilized countries bordering the seas and oceans of the world now recognize that shipwrecks are an important non-renewable historical resource that should be treated with respect and used wisely in a way that will contribute to the national identity and benefit the largest number of people. How to do this is no mystery. A decade ago, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) formulated its “Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage” following scores of meetings by hundreds of delegates from virtually every nation on earth. The Convention sets forth 36 Rules of Best Practice. Governments that adopt (and enforce!) these rules can rest assured their shipwreck resources will be used wisely and beneficially, rather than squandered.

He changed from the sick and sad of earth.
To a land that knows not care:
But his heart still clings to his native hearth
And the friends he loved while here
Epitaph of John Samuel Lightbourn (died 1851)

St. Thomas's church and graveyard in Grand Turk

TCI Museum volunteers Duncan and Sally Hutt

Coverley marker

By Dr. Donald H. Keith, Chairman, TCI National Museum

It’s 2 PM on Friday, December 10, and I’m sweating bullets. Not just because it’s hot but because with only 18 hours to go before we’re scheduled to remove 40 fragile boulders covered with ancient inscriptions from the top of Sapodilla Hill on Providenciales, I’ve got nothing: no people, no equipment, no vehicles and only one option left—call the whole thing off. Instead, I go to see Mr. Ken Adams, owner and president of Building Materials Do It Center, to ask if he could loan the project a wheelbarrow and maybe some old timbers. He’s in his office, busily poring over some paperwork. This is not going to work, I think, but make my pitch anyway: the National Museum, the DECR, and some volunteers are trying to rescue a ton of boulders covered with names and dates because they are being destroyed. We need some way to carry them from the top of Sapodilla Hill down a rocky trail to the nearest road and then transport them to the other side of Provo, and it all has to be done tomorrow because we already asked the press to be there and we don’t want to look like idiots. He takes it all in, picks up his cell phone and says “Follow me.” He leads me through the Do It Center and into the cavernous building materials warehouse, calling people on his cell and querying various employees simultaneously. We step outside just as Mr. Chris Haggie, manager of AND Construction drives up. Ken introduces us. Far from being irritated by a request on Friday afternoon for help on Saturday morning, Chris says “Glad to help. We were kind of surprised we hadn’t heard from you after that last job.” I realize he’s referring to the time last year when AND Construction moved an ancient cannon and anchor donated to the Museum to our facility at Grace Bay. They have a brief chat then Ken turns to me and says, “OK, It’s all set.” I gape at him, incredulously. Fifteen minutes earlier I had been ready to throw in the towel, now it’s all set: people, vehicles, and equipment will meet me at Sapodilla Hill Saturday morning at 8 AM. As he turns to leave, Ken says “Next time, call us first!” It’s demonstrations of community support like this that keep the Museum—and me!—going in the mission to preserve the history of the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Rock inscription from Sapodilla Hill, Providenciales

Inscribed stones overlook Sapodilla Bay

AND Construction team and volunteers

POSTSCRIPT: Now that there is a clear plan to protect the Sapodilla Hill site and preserve the stones and inscriptions, the National Museum and the DECR encourages anyone who may have removed inscriptions in the past to return them so that we may include them in the moulding, casting, and recording process.
Please contact Pat Saxton, director of development at the National Museum, at 946-2160 to arrange the transfer. No questions will be asked and donors may remain anonymous, if they so desire. Similarly, if anyone knows of other places in the Islands where ancient rock inscriptions exist, please contact the Museum so that we can add them to our database of TCI sites of historical importance.

Story & Photo By Sherlin Williams

I’ve been doing projects at the National Museum on Grand Turk for the last 15 years or so. I rebuilt the mechanism that used to turn the light in Grand Turk’s lighthouse. Then I worked on making a detailed record of the iron parts of a windmill that we fished out of a salina and brought back to the Museum. I also helped make plaster casts from rubber moulds of the inscriptions on Sapodilla Hill.

When I heard the Museum was interested in the salt industry and windmills, I volunteered my services as a guide and interpreter. You see, when I grew up on Grand Turk, salt was still king—but he was a shadow of his former self. Even then, a lot of the ponds were in service so I watched how they did it. It’s a lot more complicated than people think! There was a lot of engineering involved, and a lot of maintenance, too!

For example, every windmill had to have a brakeman. He paid attention to the wind because if it blew too strong he had to apply the brake to slow the mill down or stop it altogether so it wouldn’t just fly apart. When you look at the Town Salina now, all you see are dirty water and a few rocks and posts sticking out here and there. But back when salt was king it ran like clockwork! The walls between the pans were watertight and wide enough to make paths along their tops. You can’t see them now because they’re always underwater, but there are wooden troughs that used to connect various ponds. They crisscross each other like overpasses on the freeway! The flow was controlled with wooden gates. Everything had to be made out of wood, even the fastenings, because the high concentration of salt would dissolve iron like butter.
I’m more knowledgeable than most folks about the salinas, but three years ago Dr. Donald Keith took me to see something that had me absolutely stumped. It was in the overgrown yard of an unoccupied house, buried in the bush, but I could tell it looked like a 16 1/2 foot long wooden screw about a foot in diameter with copper sheathing tacked to the outer edges of the screw.

Oswald Francis with the Archimedes screw

By Dr. Donald H. Keith, Chairman, TCI National Museum

This year, 2010, marks the 30th anniversary of the archaeological investigation of the Molasses Reef Wreck, the event that led to the establishment of the Turks & Caicos National Museum. As the archaeologist who directed the excavation, I received a government license permitting me to take all artifacts and samples back to my lab at Texas A&M University for conservation and analysis. Ten years later the collection was ready to be returned to the Islands.
But where to put it? Fortunately, some far-sighted people on Grand Turk recognized that the remains of the oldest shipwreck ever found in the Western Hemisphere deserved to be exhibited. A museum was needed, but what kind? I suggested that it should be called the Maritime Museum, but wiser heads prevailed and in 1990 the Turks & Caicos National Museum was created as a non-profit, non-governmental (private) entity mandated by government to collect and preserve the cultural and natural history of the Turks & Caicos Islands.
It has now been 20 years since the Museum was created. Much has changed in the intervening decades. Many of the businesses and professional services based on Grand Turk in 1990 moved to Providenciales. The Museum’s founder and principal benefactor, Mrs. Grethe Seim, passed away. Cruise ship visitors became the Museum’s main clientele. Finally, in 2008, Hurricane Ike forced us to recognize how vulnerable the museum’s location, less than a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean, is to disaster. These and other developments convinced the Museum’s Board of Trustees to build an additional facility on Providenciales. The lead article in this edition of the Astrolabe elaborates on our plan and tells why and how YOU — individuals, corporations, businesses, and anyone who calls Providenciales home — can help.

JAL Consultants' rendition of proposed museum for Providenciales

What’s in a name?
Over the years, the Turks & Caicos National Museum has often been referred to as the “Grand Turk Museum,” due to its location. But in reality it has always represented all the Turks and Caicos Islands. A National Museum is not a particular building, or location, or special exhibit — it is an idea. It is the collective memory of a nation. Is that important? You bet! What makes a nation? What makes England England instead of France? What makes Scotland Scotland instead of Ireland? What makes the Turks & Caicos the Turks & Caicos instead of the Bahamas? It isn’t the gene pool, because most populations are composed of many different kinds of people and the gene pool is constantly changing anyway. It isn’t political divisions — lines drawn on a map — as those change almost every day. No, it’s history. The history of your country is your history and to a considerable extent it tells the rest of the world who you are.

Current museum home at Guinep House on Grand Turk

A unique history
So what is the history of the Caicos Islands, and how is it unique? What kind of stories will the National Museum on Providenciales tell? Let’s start with how the Islands got here. It will surprise visitors to learn that the geologic history of the Caicos Bank started millions of years ago at the time when the North American continent separated from Africa. “Beautiful by nature” yes, but how did it get that way? The Islands’ hard rock core is now buried beneath thousands of feet of marine growth and sediments, some of which are mineral dust blown all the way across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa! The land that we see now has been both above and beneath the sea at one time or another. During the ice ages, the Caicos Bank was a single giant island almost 100 miles across and 450 feet above sea level, honeycombed with a vast cave system. At the end of the last Ice Age sea level rose again, drowning all but the highest 150 feet of the Bank.
Plants and animals found their way to the Islands and established themselves in the new environment. Then, about 1,300 years ago, the first humans — Arawak-speaking Tainos from Hispaniola — arrived in dugout canoes. Over the centuries they explored and modified their environment and developed their own distinctive “Lucayan” culture. Their settlements and campsites have been found all over the Islands. Following the arrival of Europeans at the end of the 1400s, the Lucayan population rapidly dwindled, disappearing altogether in just a few decades. Their sites were quickly swallowed up in the bush and forgotten for centuries until the 1890s, when guano miners found their well-preserved wooden artifacts hidden in caves. Since then, archaeological surveys and excavations have discovered evidence of large, elaborate Lucayan villages on Middle and North Caicos as well as smaller coastal sites where Lucayans harvested the sea’s bounty. Because the duho (ceremonial wooden stool) now on display in Grand Turk was probably brought there from the Caicos Islands, it will be moved to Providenciales to become part of the Lucayan exhibit.
The Caicos Islands are clearly indicated on the best and earliest map of the New World, the Juan de la Cosa map of 1500. There are tantalizing indications of very early European presence in the Caicos Islands such as the Molasses Reef Wreck and a Spanish coin found on West Caicos, but little is known about who was here or what they were doing in the 250 year period between 1500 and 1756 when the first detailed maps were made by a French cartographic expedition. Because the Molasses Reef Wreck was found on the southern edge of the Caicos Bank only 15 miles from Providenciales, we plan to renovate its exhibit and move it from Grand Turk to the new facility.
The outcome of the US War of Independence created the next wave of pioneer settlers of the Caicos Islands, the Loyalist planters, who began to arrive around 1789 to transplant their families, slaves, homes, and way of life from the southern colonies to the Caicos Islands. Although the plantation period lasted only about 40 years, the transformations it brought about in the Islands were numerous, profound, and still visible today in geographical place names, family names, plants and animals that they introduced, traditions, and of course in the forlorn but majestic ruins scattered through the bush. An exhibit about this period will examine who the new emigrants — Loyalist and slave families alike — were, what their homes, industries, and daily lives were like in their own words, and what the archaeological record has added.
A very important part of the history of the Caicos Islands was utterly unknown until just a few years ago when Museum researchers discovered that two slave ships wrecked in the Caicos Islands. The first was the Portuguese flag vessel Esperança which grounded somewhere off Middle Caicos in 1837 with 220 Africans on board. Most of the survivors were sent to the Bahamas, but some escaped into the bush. Only four years later a second slave ship, Trouvadore, with almost 200 Africans on board, wrecked on East Caicos. This time all the Africans were taken to Grand Turk and freed to become citizens. One theory holds that the town of Bambarra on Middle Caicos was founded by one or both of these groups of freed slaves. No one knows exactly when or by whom Bambarra was established, but in a landscape where other settlements have names like Prospect of Whitby, Kew, Blue Hills, Five Cays, Balfour Town and Cockburn Harbour, its name begs explanation. Bambara is both an ethnic group and a language spoken in Mali, West Africa. Could Bambarra have been founded by the Africans who escaped into the bush following the wreck of Esperança? Or possibly by Trouvadore survivors following an initial period of inculturation on Grand Turk?

What about the existing museum?
Will the National Museum on Grand Turk be stripped bare to furnish exhibits for Providenciales? Not at all. The National Museum has literally thousands of artifacts in storage that have never been shown to the public. Our plan is to replace the Molasses Reef Wreck exhibit with one about HMS Endymion, a 44-gun British warship that sank in 1790 at the southern end of the Turks Island Bank. Recognizing that the history of the Turks Islands is mainly about salt production, we will greatly expand our existing exhibits on that subject and add new ones. We also plan to create a new exhibit about the history of diving in the Turks & Caicos, beginning with the exploits of helmet diver Jeremiah D. Murphy, a larger-than-life adventurer who took up residence on Grand Turk in the 1850s and salvaged shipwrecks all over the Caribbean. After exploring the Royal Mail Ship Rhone, sunk in the Virgin Islands in 1867, Murphy brought its giant bronze bell back to the Islands. It now calls the faithful to services at St. George’s Anglican Church on South Caicos. South Caicos was also part-time home to the late Jacques Mayol, a world-famous free-diving record holder in the 1970s, author, lecturer and philosopher. More recently, in 2002, Tanya Streeter took advantage of the deep water just off Providenciales to set a new free diving record by descending to 525 feet on a single breath!

The tide of history . . . .
Reflecting on the Museum’s progress over the last two decades I am reminded of Shakespeare’s verse, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood lead on to fortune: Omitted, all the voyage of the life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” We have been talking about and planning to open a facility on Providenciales for 20 years, but now it is a necessity. The generous offer of the use of a small but very attractive building in the Village at Grace Bay has given the Museum a toe-hold, but it is just a start. Taking Shakespeare’s advice to heart, “On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures,” the Museum’s Development Committee on Providenciales has launched a Capital Campaign to make the National Museum on Providenciales a reality.
The plans are big, the numbers are large, and its success depends on enthusiastic public support. Our goal is to break ground for the new museum on Providenciales in November, 2011, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the day the National Museum first opened its doors on Grand Turk.
Since its opening day the Museum has been collecting and safeguarding objects, conducting historical research, inventorying sites of historical and archaeological interest throughout the Islands, advising government, cooperating with local civic and educational groups and coordinating the field work efforts of visiting researchers. All of this has been in addition to the basic function of creating exhibits to enlighten and entertain the public. We even managed to get some artifacts back from the Smithsonian on indefinite loan! The Museum has benefitted everyone in one way or another. Without our National Museum, both the past and the future would be noticeably dimmer.

For more information, visit www.tcmuseum.org

During the early 1950s, the US Military constructed two facilities on the remote, out of the way isle of Grand Turk. The base to the extreme north of the island served as a listening post for the US Navy’s Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS, program of tracking Soviet submarines. The Grand Turk Auxiliary Air Force Base at the southern end of the island served as a downrange station of the Eastern Test Range operated under contract by the Pan American Company. These two bases became known as North Base and South Base.

Temporary barracks 1952

Photo of South Base in 1963

Grand Turk NavFac facility in 1976

By Betsy Carlson
Photos Courtesy Turks & Caicos National Museum

For a week in February 2010, two archaeologists from Southeastern Archaeological Research, Inc. (SEARCH) out of Gainesville, Florida joined Neal Hitch of the Turks & Caicos National Museum and Brian Riggs of the National Environmental Center to do a preliminary study of an area on northwest Grand Turk known to contain a previously untested prehistoric archaeological site called GT-4. The goals of this initial survey were to find the boundaries of GT-4, characterize the site (who lived there and when) and identify specific activity areas (what inhabitants were doing there). During the survey, the remains of a historic structure from between 1780 and 1840 were identified. Also associated with the house were two freshwater collection basins that were hand-dug into the limestone bedrock. Because humans often choose to live in the same prime locations over time, one piece of land can contain evidence of many different settlements.

Beads from Grand Turk site

Taíno traders of Grand Turk
The prehistoric peoples of the Bahamian archipelago were the Lucayans. They maintained close ties to the Taíno peoples of Hispaniola and Cuba throughout their history and traded extensively. Both Lucayan and Taíno settlements are found in the Turks & Caicos Islands, but only Taíno settlements have been identified on Grand Turk.

Lucayan pottery is called Palmetto ware and is recognized by its red color, crumbly texture, and burned, crushed conch shell added to the raw clay (called “temper”). Palmetto ware was made throughout the Bahamian archipelago, including the Caicos Islands, by approximately AD 1000.

Imported Taíno pottery can be easily recognized by rock tempers (commonly quartz and feldspar) not available in these limestone islands. Taino pottery was made from high quality clays and are hard, thin, and typically darker in color. Taíno pottery was commonly traded into Lucayan villages in this region. Lucayan sites have both imported pottery and Palmetto ware, but Palmetto ware will be dominant. Between AD 600 and 1500, there were three major types of pottery manufactured nearby in Hispaniola: Ostionan, Meillacan, and Chican. These styles have all been found in Turks & Caicos archaeology sites.

Grand Turk was first discovered by Taíno Indians from Hispaniola who traveled here to fish and hunt in approximately AD 700. Other resources were soon exploited. Salt was a valuable trade commodity readily available here as were colorful shells, which the Taíno manufactured into high status ornaments.

All the Grand Turk sites identified to date are short-term settlements where people gathered, processed a trade item, and returned to Hispaniola.

Grand Turk prehistoric sites
Four prehistoric archaeological sites have been recorded for Grand Turk. GT-1 is a small scatter of pottery that may have been associated with the nearby site of GT-2. GT-2 is a 13th century Taíno site that was a workshop for the production of small, red beads made from the cherry jewelbox shell. The site contained Meillacan pottery and only a few sherds of Palmetto ware, which was likely traded into GT-2 from Lucayans living on Middle Caicos. Excavations at GT-2 recovered 1,495 complete beads, 4,147 broken beads, 431 bead blanks, and chert (imported hard stone) used to drill the beads. These beads were made into jewelry and decorated baskets, belts, and clothing.

GT-3 is a regionally significant site because it is the earliest known settlement in the southern Bahamas (AD 700). The site contained only Ostionan style pottery. The unique character of the animal bones in this site points to the first human exploitation of this island. Evidence of over 1,000 individual animals was found at GT-3. Over half the individuals were terrestrial species such as rock iguanas, land tortoise, and birds, including two varieties of parrot. None of these species were found at the 13th century site of GT-2. It was thought that maybe the occupants of GT-3 overexploited the terrestrial species of Grand Turk to the point that they were no longer readily available for later Grand Turk occupants.

GT-4 is the fourth recorded prehistoric site on Grand Turk. In looking at the locations of these four sites, it is noteworthy that all are located within 1 km of the historic period water collection features called North and South Wells. The first use of these wells dates to the Bermudan period and they are still used today to water livestock. Perhaps these wells were built where a freshwater lens naturally collected. Access to fresh water has always been a primary factor in site location.

What we know about GT-4
First of all, we know GT-4 is a Taíno site because testing recovered 19 ceramics, all but one of which are imported and several are Meillacan in style. A single tiny Palmetto sherd was recovered that was likely produced in the Caicos Islands. This shows some interaction between the Grand Turk visitors and the people living permanently in the Caicos Islands.

Some of this pottery was burned on the exterior showing that these vessels were used to prepare meals. The midden — the trash deposit where much of the pottery was found — contained many fragments of burned limestone, which result from hearth building and cooking activities. Burned rocks and black soil are often the most visible elements of prehistoric archaeological sites. The sand turns black from burned materials being placed in the trash midden, including charcoal, and from decaying organic materials such as food remains.

This midden contained substantial numbers of shells and animal bones, which are the remains of meals. A single shovel test produced 357 bone fragments and 73 pieces of shell. During the project, a field laboratory was set up and all of the animal bones were identified and quantified. The site contained the remains of three species of reptiles, 14 species of fish, and 21 marine shell species. The reptiles (sea turtle, rock iguana, and giant tortoise) are notable because these animals were common at the colonization period site of GT-3, but until now had not been identified elsewhere on this island. The dominant foods in GT-4 were parrotfish and conch. Conch shells with a round hole near the spire are a common prehistoric site indicator in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Charcoal was recovered from the midden and submitted for radiocarbon dating. GT-4 dates to the 13th century AD and was occupied at the same general time as GT-2. Like GT-2, we know that GT-4 was occupied by bead-makers.

GT-4 shell bead-makers
To understand the bead forms recovered at GT-4, a basic explanation of how these beads were manufactured follows below.

Taino bead making tool

Across the site, nine whole beads, 33 broken beads, five pieces of chert, and 76 pieces of bead-making scrap were recovered from shovel testing. Importantly, a shell bead-making activity area was isolated that contained no evidence of kitchen-related activities (e.g., bone, fire-cracked rock, charcoal). Beads were being produced at GT-4 in a specialized area that was kept separate from other daily activities. Walking between the cooking/living/sleeping areas of the site and the bead-making area of the site is the equivalent of checking in at the office for a day of work.

Since GT-4 was occupied at the same general time period as GT-2, the activities seen here may be part of the larger-scale bead-making activities at GT-2. It is curious that very little food was processed or thrown away at GT-2 (only grunt and a few parrotfish were recovered). Perhaps the food processing activities seen at GT-4 supported the work being carried out at GT-2.

From this first glance, GT-4 reminds us of both GT-2 (the bead-making site) and GT-3 (the colonization period site). GT-4 contains evidence of bead manufacture for export, along with exploitation of turtle, iguana, and fish. Also, there is minor evidence (one Palmetto sherd) for interaction with people living in the Caicos Islands. In this sense, GT-4 differs from previously studied Grand Turk sites and expands on our knowledge of the prehistoric use of this island.

Historic site near GT-4

Artifacts from historic farmstead on Grand Turk

Several small piles of rocks were noted in the surrounding area that appear to be the result of clearing fields for agriculture. The recovery of a single pig molar shows that the past residents of this area were raising animals in addition to farming and fishing.

From careful study of the ceramic collection, the occupation has an estimated date range of 1780 to 1840. The population of Grand Turk in 1781 was recorded at 921 persons, 805 of whom were Bermudans who came annually to rake salt and then returned to Bermuda. Those other 100 or so people were likely living on small farmsteads scattered across the Grand Turk hills.

Grand Turk historic water pit

Cultural connections
What connects the various people who have lived on Grand Turk in the past is that they all attempted to support themselves off its natural resources. Whatever your cultural background, all people have issues finding potable water on a dry, limestone island. How these challenges are met connects everyone who has lived in the Turks & Caicos throughout all periods of occupation.

At the same time, this island has always had riches to offer the people willing to travel here. The Taíno first recognized and benefited from the abundant resources of the Turks & Caicos Islands. Food sources have always been plentiful in Grand Turk’s waters, but in prehistoric times the terrestrial environment also offered rich sources of meat. Bright red shell beads were a key item in the Taíno political system — important enough to be manufactured in a faraway place and be imported as complete beads to Hispaniola. In this context, the beads became a gift from another world and were highly valued. The Bermudans also traveled annually a long way from their home to extract the gift of salt from Grand Turk, and continued to do so for over 100 years.

The true Turks Islander was not born until people settled permanently on this island. These settlers faced the same environmental challenges as those who had temporarily resided before them, and reaped many of the same rewards. In this way, Turks Islanders are the direct cultural ancestors of all the people who have lived on the island before them.