James Building time capsule

In today's Royal Gazette, news that a 1961 time capsule was recovered this weekend from the James Building in Hamilton, just demolished for new Bermuda Police Service headquarters. Interestingly and perhaps appropriately, the capsule has been offered to the James family. In lieu of their interest original builder Robert George Peets, who raised the alarm about the capsule, will maintain the capsule. The story raises interesting questions about 1) personal connections to local archaeology, especially that which lives in living memory; 2) private versus public ownership and maintenance of such archaeological finds and attendant conflicting legislation, government stances and public attitudes; 3) and the lack of archaeological requirements on redeveloped sites in Bermuda, which mean without the intervention of knowing individuals such as Mr. Peets archaeology simply gets bulldozed and destroyed prior to redevelopment. This is in contrast to guidelines in the UK that require developers to withstand, and crucially, fund archaeological inspection, survey, excavation and conservation of redeveloped sites and their finds as required according to the nature of the site. In other words, developers are held accountable to preserve and translate the archaeology they are destroying through their commercial development into a comprehensive public archaeological record. In the UK this has provided not only for the archaeology of redeveloped sites but supports archaeological units to carry out other priority reserach that benefits the community. No such sustainably-funded archaeological units exist in Bermuda despite the intensive redevelopment of the island.

For the story see http://www.theroyalgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060711/NEWS/107110147