The connections between Ireland and Newfoundland are well established. Now an Irish postdoctoral fellow aims to further reinforce those links by investigating the archaeological connections between Newfoundland and Ireland in the 17th century.

Dr. James Lyttleton’s examinations of Lord Baltimore’s settlement at Ferryland and of Clohamon Castle in County Wexford are illuminating English colonial settlement in North America and specifically how Ireland was used as a stepping-stone to later colonization across the Atlantic.

Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, was secretary of state to King James I and as such, was a hugely influential figure in the English government. He was also interested in the exploration and settlement of the New World and had interests in both the East India Company and in the Virginia Company in addition to the colony of Avalon.

One of the few English lords to make it across the Atlantic, Lord Baltimore invested £20,000 sterling in Ferryland before moving on to establish another colony further south in Maryland.

These settlements saw the large scale recruitment, transport and settlement of English settlers and essentially spurred both adventurers and governments to head further west into the North American interior.

Dr. Lyttleton maintained that the connections between the ruins of the Mansion House in Ferryland and that of Wexford’s Clohamon Castle shed light on how the building at Ferryland was used by the Calvert family.

"When you visit a site first, you might think there’s nothing much to see," he said. "But once you start undertaking investigations, taking the sod off, artifacts and structural remains come to light which allow archaeologists to build a picture of how the site was used in the past."

Archaeology can offer a starting off point from which historians can begin to understand how colonists adapted to different cultures and environments.

Dr. Lyttleton said that Newfoundland would have been terra incognita to the colonists with none of the supports offered by the many towns, villages and farms that dotted the English or Irish countryside at the time.

"They would have had to adapt to a new environment pretty quickly or else they would die."

The colonists did employ some defensive measures at Ferryland to protect against the attacks of other European rivals such as the French, employing bastions or flankers that would have been familiar in castle architecture in Ireland. Artifacts found at both sites (Ferryland and Clohamon Castle) such as pottery and clay pipes show that an economy spanning the vastness of the Atlantic was also emerging at the time.

ISER, the Faculty of Arts and Memorial’s Department of Archaeology supports Dr. Lyttleton’s work in Newfoundland, and he is the first archaeologist to receive funding from the MITACS Accelerate program. International research partners include the Royal Irish Academy, Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland and the archaeology department in University College Cork, Ireland.

His research is ongoing and he is currently planning to bring a team of Memorial graduate students familiar with the archaeology at Ferryland to Ireland to work on the excavation of Lord Baltimore’s settlement at Clohamon.

Having thoroughly enjoyed his two years at Memorial, Dr. Lyttleton reserved his highest praise for the QE II library.

“In terms of Irish studies, if you’re going to go to a Canadian institution, the QE II Library is one of the best that I’ve seen.”