Leiden University Student Repository

Stelten, Ruud (2009)

The Golden Rock. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century metal buckles from Oranje Bay, St. Eustatius

Bachelor thesis | Archeologie (BA)

The Caribbean island St. Eustatius is an archaeologist’s dream. It has the greatest concentration of archaeological sites in the New World. There are an estimated 200 sites on land and 200 shipwrecks in the waters surrounding the island. One of the reasons for this is that the island played a major role in world history in the late eighteenth century. The sovereignty of the United States was first recognized here on November 16, 1776. People from all over the world came to St. Eustatius to make money by trading. As a result, one can find artifacts these people left behind on almost every square meter, on land and under water. One of these types of artifacts are buckles, objects that were regarded as articles of high fashion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this thesis a collection of 55 buckles, that was found in Oranje Bay in the early 1990’s, are investigated. To present a complete picture, their historical context is examined as well. As will be shown, the buckles...Show moreThe Caribbean island St. Eustatius is an archaeologist’s dream. It has the greatest concentration of archaeological sites in the New World. There are an estimated 200 sites on land and 200 shipwrecks in the waters surrounding the island. One of the reasons for this is that the island played a major role in world history in the late eighteenth century. The sovereignty of the United States was first recognized here on November 16, 1776. People from all over the world came to St. Eustatius to make money by trading. As a result, one can find artifacts these people left behind on almost every square meter, on land and under water. One of these types of artifacts are buckles, objects that were regarded as articles of high fashion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this thesis a collection of 55 buckles, that was found in Oranje Bay in the early 1990’s, are investigated. To present a complete picture, their historical context is examined as well. As will be shown, the buckles can be regarded as indicators of the ups and downs of the islands economy and the people who participated in it.Show less

Author

Stelten, Ruud

Faculty

Faculty of Archaeology

Supervisors

Boomert, A.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en