Bermuda must take stronger measures to protect not just old houses but archaeological sites -- or it will lose all traces of its past.

For often the only way to learn what it was like to be a slave in Bermuda and document what they contributed to our history is found in the soil.

And as more land is used up and older buildings are replaced by modern ones, loss of this connection is "alarming''.

That is the opinion of an American researcher concerned that Government approved the demolishing of "Hill House'' in Hog Bay Park and intends to raze Ridgeway House in Pembroke to build the new Berkeley Institute.

Historian/archaeologist Michael Jarvis has led much research on the Island's slave and maritime past and was hired by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries with another academic to investigate Hog Bay Park.

Dr. Jarvis and Neil Kennedy recommended "careful monitoring'' of important sites in the park. An archaeological dig by Dr. Jarvis and other graduate students from William and Mary University in Virginia named a long forgotten ruin "Hill House''.

But Dr. Jarvis described the destruction this spring of the property as another piece of Bermuda's history "irretrievably and unnecessarily'' lost.

Hill House was a ruin at the centre of the park where Dr. Jarvis has found potsherds of Colono-ware, a type of pottery made by Africans and their descendants in the Western Hemisphere.

The building was "probably'' occupied by slaves on the eve of Emancipation 166 years ago and probably lived in for some time after that by freedmen, he said.

"This humble cottage held the potential to tell the story of four centuries of Bermuda's past,'' he wrote in a letter to the Editor.

In an interview, Dr. Jarvis explained: "Bermuda is losing essentially some of the only ways we are going to get to know the daily lives of the slaves.

"Historic documents will sometimes mention a slave or what they may have done but they were written by whites with economic or commercial concerns,'' he continued. "But the slaves themselves left no record. There is little about how they shaped their own lives.

"It could have told us so much about the lives of black Bermudians' two or three centuries ago. To put it succinctly, archaeology offers us perhaps the only window into the lives of black Bermudians for more than half of their history.'' EDUCATION ED