SA few months after Hurricane Maria devastated Dominica in 2017, local historian Dr Lennox Honychurch was strolling along the beach near his home in Woodford Hill, in the north-east of the island, when he made a tantalizing discovery.
Erosion of the beach, caused by high tidal waves, had exposed curious ceramic fragments. Intriguingly, they seemed to be from different cultures and time periods. Some of the pottery was American—probably Cajo—and others European, perhaps French or Dutch.
Honychurch contacted Mark Hauser, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University; he had visited Dominica for about 10 years in various field seasons to study the colonial estate sites at Bois Cotlette, Sugarloaf and Morne Patates.
Eager to understand the hurricane’s effects on Dominica’s historic heritage, he was more than happy to investigate the Honychurch discovery.
What Hauser learned on that first exploratory trip was enough for him to organize a small team of experts to return to Dominica to examine the site in more detail.
The area first appears on an anonymous map of 1760 as a settlement called La Soye, but no known history sheds light on who might have lived there, for how long, why it was named so (“la soye” is French for “silk”), or why it was eventually abandoned.
With its mountainous terrain, dense forest, and occupation by a fearsome Kalinago population, Dominica was the last island in the eastern Caribbean to be colonized by Europeans seeking their fortune; they considered it too inaccessible and inhospitable.
The first recorded European settlement was in the early 1700s, when French lumberjacks from Martinique arrived and set up camp on the south coast in an area now known as Grand Bay. Given the lack of information about the La Soye community, the only way to understand its history would be through archaeology.
The first test dug holes at the La Soye site on Woodford Hill Beach certainly caused a stir. Not really knowing what they might find, Hauser’s team discovered a multitude of different objects from a very small sample area.
They included glassware, clay pipes, American and European heritage pottery, trade items such as trinkets and beads, iron items such as nails and a tool for making musket shots, and even a perfect sewing case. It felt like they had fallen into a warehouse or warehouse, but what real meaning could be learned from these relics?
The first real surprise was the date. The discovery of many fragments of Dutch blue Delft pottery suggested the early 1600s – a century before the first records of any kind of European occupation of Dominica.
This was later verified by carbon dating charcoal fragments (related to cooking or blacksmithing) from the same soil layers. Kajo trinkets, beads, and fragments of pottery suggest contact, interaction, and possibly trade between the island’s indigenous inhabitants and newcomers.
We know that expeditions called at the island during this period. Sir Francis Drake’s records state that, with the help of the Kalinago, he had secured his ship in Prince Rupert Bay on the west coast of the island as early as 1565. It is also known that, for a time, Europeans traded with the Kalinago of the Caribbean other eastern islands, seeking tobacco and cotton – valuable goods in Europe.
This was an age and a region of fortune seekers, pirates and privateers. It was also a time when the indigenous Kalinago – and the island’s resources on which they had long depended – came under serious threat.
There is evidence of numerous Kalinago settlements along Dominica’s northeastern coastline, while Marie-Galante Island—an important foraging ground soon to be taken over by the French—sits directly across the water. If La Soye is discovered to be an early trading post, it would be a new entry in Dominica’s historical record.
With his interest piqued, Hauser and his colleagues—including Diane Wallman, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida; and Douglas Armstrong, Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University—managed to secure funding from the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation for additional studies (interrupted only by the pandemic) to further develop the curious story of La Soye.
The last and penultimate field season was in July 2022. Several specialist teams collaborated, mixing different areas of expertise and technologies – including soil and botanical sampling, lidar and magnetronomics.
This resulted in a rough map of the coastal land suggesting about a dozen stone buildings and several stone roads had once existed there. Hauser speculated that the settlement may have extended from the beach into the bay, with rising sea levels possibly covering as much as half of it.
With a theoretical plan of the settlement on their laptops, the team set out to dig small test pits to verify what the technology was showing – a procedure known as ground proofing.
The excavations did reveal the stone foundations of buildings and roads, but they also surprised the team with evidence of wooden post holes – something the technology didn’t pick up. The wooden post holes would have supported framed structures, possibly belonging to an earlier Kalinago presence. One building upon another suggested continuity or displacement.
WWhen the team returns in the summer of 2023, it will be with the aim of excavating as much of the hidden village as possible. There will also be further efforts to understand the significance of Kalinago material culture, as well as the possibility of an even earlier American presence.
So far, the history of La Soye seems to begin with an American settlement that was certainly Kalinago, but it may have existed even earlier. In the late 1500s and early 1600s, European ships arrived in the bay—perhaps at the end of their transatlantic voyages, perhaps to undertake essential care and provision.
We can imagine first contact with the island’s indigenous Kalinago may have involved basic trade for fresh water and food that developed into a more commercial (though unrecorded) exchange dealing in tobacco and cotton.
At some point, that post became a village, and that village eventually displaced the natives who had been there before. (It is thought by some experts that the Kalinago had already begun to move to higher ground from the coastal fringes.) And then at an unknown later date, the village was completely abandoned.
Although the picture is becoming clearer, many questions remain unanswered. Was La Soye the domain of pirates and privateers, or perhaps the trading post of a French settlement at nearby Marie-Galante? How well did the European settlers and the Kalinago engage with each other? Why the name La Soye? And what predicament resulted in her abandonment?
With any luck, a final field season will shed more light on this enigmatic city under the sand.
