Skeletons Found Under a Florida Wine Shop May Be Some of America’s First Colonists
...Archaeologists digging under the floor of a wine shop in St. Augustine, Florida, have discovered the skeletal remains of seven people, including three children, believed to be some of the earliest colonists in North America . . . .
... last October hurricane Matthew damaged a wine shop on St. Augustine’s plaza. ... building owner David White decided to renovate the space. ... White offered the city archeologist Carl Hibert a chance to take a peek under the floor before the repairs began.
Hibert accepted the offer {and} . . . after just a few shovelfuls of dirt, he found human remains.
... archeologists first discovered an intact adult skeleton and an adult skull nearby. . . . the bodies have been preliminarily identified as a relatively young white European woman and a man of African ancestry. Outside of the wine shop, they found a leg bone and another skull from two other graves. Last week, they discovered the remains of the children.
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Pottery fragments found with the skeletons date the burials between 1572 and 1586, a few years after St. Augustine, known as America’s oldest city, was founded.
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... Hibert believes the burials may come from the floor of the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Remedios, the parish church built in St. Augustine soon after the colony was established ... in 1565, 42 years before the Jamestown Colony was established by the English and 55 years before the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts.
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“What you’re dealing with is people who made St. Augustine what it is,” Halbirt tells Clark and Guz. “You’re in total awe. You want to treat everything with respect and we are.”
