Neal Ferris: Making Heritage Matter Along Bath Spring and Stream, Nevis
From Basit Iqbal
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In the southwest corner of Nevis the Bath Spring flows into and down a ghut less than kilometre, entering the Caribbean Sea at Gallows Bay. These volcanic waters and their ascribed curative qualities have significantly shaped the heritage of this place and of Nevis – a communal tradition of health and wellness dating back to time immemorial – distinct from broader Nevisian histories of displacement, diaspora, exploitation and enslavement. This tradition has also been contested between communal and colonial values ever since the literal imposition of a cut stone English manor house built onto this cultural landscape of wellness at the end of the 18th century. Overlooking and impacting the source of the spring, the Bath House Hotel remains an edifice to colonial aspirations through a time this part of the British Empire became irrelevant, by promoting a colonialist tourism of wellness and of the exotic a half century before the broader emergence of a global imperial tourism began to impact the region. This watery heritage persists today, enmeshing Nevisians and visitors alike who daily come to the hot springs to cure ailments, restore vitality, and participate in the social custom of bathing and being Nevisian. How and why this place has been differently understood and experienced reveals the critical, contested becoming of Nevis locally and globally, especially given ongoing efforts by the St. Kitts Nevis government to articulate an Outstanding Universal Value for this place in order to secure a World Heritage inscription.
Biography: Becoming an archaeologist for me began in a first-year undergrad tutorial for the then Intro to Anthro course I took at McMaster in 1979, which led me to a summer job doing fieldwork near London Ontario. And, too many years later, that continues for me here in London, at Western. That journey led me to become an Ontario provincial archaeologist for 20 years, though, happily, in my last years working for the province I was able to translate a career path heading towards “senior management” into an opportunity to return to Mac and complete a PhD in 2006. This gave me the chance, in 2007, to stop becoming a civil servant and start becoming the Lawson Research Chair in Archaeology at Western, which I continue to play at today. The research interests I pursue thus reflect my experiences and engagement with the record over the past 45 years. So, I like to think about various dimensions of archaeology as a contemporary social practice and contested heritage, and about the material expression and place making of ancient and recent Indigenous and Settler societies over the last millennium or so. A theme that flows through those interests has been how people negotiated Empire, especially the British colonial metropole remade locally across the globe over the last 400 years or so, alongside how people resisted, rejected and made irrelevant that heritage-making during and afterwards in place across North America and the Caribbean.
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Biography: Becoming an archaeologist for me began in a first-year undergrad tutorial for the then Intro to Anthro course I took at McMaster in 1979, which led me to a summer job doing fieldwork near London Ontario. And, too many years later, that continues for me here in London, at Western. That journey led me to become an Ontario provincial archaeologist for 20 years, though, happily, in my last years working for the province I was able to translate a career path heading towards “senior management” into an opportunity to return to Mac and complete a PhD in 2006. This gave me the chance, in 2007, to stop becoming a civil servant and start becoming the Lawson Research Chair in Archaeology at Western, which I continue to play at today. The research interests I pursue thus reflect my experiences and engagement with the record over the past 45 years. So, I like to think about various dimensions of archaeology as a contemporary social practice and contested heritage, and about the material expression and place making of ancient and recent Indigenous and Settler societies over the last millennium or so. A theme that flows through those interests has been how people negotiated Empire, especially the British colonial metropole remade locally across the globe over the last 400 years or so, alongside how people resisted, rejected and made irrelevant that heritage-making during and afterwards in place across North America and the Caribbean.
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