November/December 2012 Issue

IDAHO: Excavations at the Cyrus Jacobs-Uberuaga House in downtown Boise have revealed a glimpse into one of the city’s most prominent early families, as well as a look at its most distinctive ethnic group: Boise is home to the country’s largest community of Basques, who originally hail from the western end of the Pyrenees. Artifacts of the Jacobs family include children’s toys and a variety of European home products. Later deposits include items from the building’s 70 years as a Basque boarding house. —Samir S. Patel

BAHAMAS: In the churning waves at Lynyard Cay in the Abaco Islands, archaeologists have found what they believe are the remains of the Peter Mowell, an illegal slave ship that ran aground while trying to avoid capture in July 1860. Finds include ballast stones, bricks, copper sheathing, nails, and spikes. Of the 400 Africans aboard, 390 made it to safety on the uninhabited island, to eventually be made indentured laborers on the island of Nassau. —Samir S. Patel

GREENLAND: The SS Terra Nova lived a full life at the ends of the earth. Built in Scotland in 1884, the ship had a history in the northern sealing industry before being enlisted for Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. After its return from Antarctica in 1913, it went back to sealing for decades before being drawn into wartime supply service in 1942 and sinking the next year. An oceanographic expedition testing sonar equipment in the Labrador Sea has just located the wreck. —Samir S. Patel