Saving Eighteenth-Century New Smyrnea: Public Archaeology in Action

Abstract

Eighteenth-century New Smyrnea settlement is largely invisible because it lies beneath the modern city of New Smyrna Beach, Florida and most residents are unaware of the original British colony. During the past several years substantial parts of the original settlement have been the subject of archaeological research. Throughout this time a few professional archaeologists have been assisted by an army of local volunteers whose hard work has been vital to saving the remains of the settlement. Their contributions are a major aspect of this paper.

Three Elenis: Archaeologies of the Greek American Village Home

“…Landscape archaeology has contributed to the historiography of the Greek countryside but has struggled to document American immigration, partly because of the ephemeral nature of its material culture (Bintliff 2012). At the same time, the field of historical archaeology has documented the effects of Greek immigration in a handful of American excavations, such as the Greek slave colony in Florida (Grange 2011), the Colorado Coalfield War in Ludlow (Larkin and McGuire 2011), and the textile mills of New England (Mrozowski, Ziesing, and Beaudry 1996). Regional surveys have traced the effects of immigration on the Greek side in the Southern Argolid (Sutton 2000), the Nemea Valley (Sutton 1995), Methana (Forbes 2007), the Western Peloponnese (Kourelis 2008), the Eastern Korinthia (Tzortzopoulou-Gregory 2010), and the Western Argolid (Caraher and Nakassis, forthcoming).…”