Archaeology Center opens next week

Historic City News was informed that the City of St. Augustine will hold the official opening of the Dr. Sue A. Middleton Archaeology Center at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, March 30th.

The creation of a center for the city’s Archaeology Division at 30 Pellicer Lane was made possible through a 2007 donation from local psychologist Sue A. Middleton, Ph.D.

The public is invited and, those attending will have the opportunity for a brief tour of the facility in space that became available when the city’s central warehouse moved last year.

The city’s Archaeology Division is part of the Planning and Building Department and was created in 1990 as part of the Archaeological Preservation Ordinance, established in 1986. Director Mark Knight said the division was housed for 16 years at the water treatment plant on King Street and later relocated to the basement of Government House.

The ordinance created the position of City Archaeologist and established regulations designed to protect, through documentation, the city’s archaeological heritage from the effects of ground-penetrating construction activities.

Since the establishment of the ordinance, more than 600 projects have been logged resulting in the collection of hundreds of thousands of artifacts.

The new facility will increase the city’s ability to store, catalogue and curate research artifacts collected over the past quarter century and to maintain their accompanying documentation.