EVIDENCE OF THE 1492 LANDING OF COLUMBUS IN THE AMERICAS
Kathy Gerace
ZOOM REGISTRATION LINK Meeting ID: 875 9116 9750 Passcode: 049553
We are pleased to welcome WMS/LSSAS president, Kathy Gerace, to our January 14 meeting to present an update of her October 2017 presentation.
Kathy will be presenting via Zoom from The Bahamas, in San Salvador, at the Gerace Research Centre. Continuing research on San Salvador has found evidence for the landing place of the man who is known to history, most famously, as Christopher Columbus. For nearly 500 years, there has been controversy among scholars and lay people over the exact location of Columbus’ first landfall, on his maiden voyage in 1492. A review of historic documents, maps, and descriptive photos show why there were numerous theories, but by the 500th anniversary of the landing, in 1992, some undeniable evidence came to light through archaeological research and excavation. During the 1980’s, under the direction of Dr. Charles Hoffman of Northern Arizona State University, excavations of a Lucayan Indian site on the western side of San Salvador Island, Bahamas, unearthed numerous European artifacts were of Spanish origin and dated from the very late 1400’s. The significance of these finds cannot be overstated, as it provides further proof that the island of San Salvador was the location of Columbus’ first landfall in the New World.
Kathy Gerace holds a M.S. degree in Anthropology/Archaeology from Michigan State University. In 1971, she was teaching at Elmira College, in Elmira, NY, when she asked to teach a four-week field course in Historic Archaeology on the island of San Salvador in The Bahamas. Meeting the Executive Director of the field station, Dr. Donald Gerace, led to their marriage, and Kathy became the Assistant Director of the field station which had been founded on an abandoned U.S. military base. Over the years, the field station grew to provide a venue for scientific studies and research for over 100 colleges and universities from the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In 1988, the Geraces formed a Bahamian, non-profit corporation named the Bahamian Field Stations (BFS). The Geraces gave the BFS to the College of The Bahamas (COB) in 2003, and it was renamed the Gerace Research Centre (GRC). When the COB became the University of The Bahamas (UB), the GRC became one of their campuses, and it continues to provide accommodations, lab and field equipment, and all types of logistical support for professors, students, and scientific researchers in the disciplines of archaeology, biology, geology, and the marine sciences.