2009-2010

News Release

REF NO.: 227

SUBJECT: Memorial sponsors international conference on 400th anniversary of founding of Cupids

DATE: June 11, 2010

Memorial University is co-sponsoring an international conference on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the first English settlement in Canada at Cupers Cove (Cupids), Newfoundland, in 1610.
Exploring New World Transitions: From Seasonal Presence to Permanent Settlement takes place June 16-19, 2010.
Sponsored by Memorial University, Bournemouth University and the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, the conference will reconsider early colonization of the New World in the context of wider processes of settlement and sedentism, in both northeastern North America and Europe.
People move all the time, but the 16th to 18th centuries were a turbulent time around the North Atlantic, with a great deal of population movement on every scale: national, regional; rural, urban, suburban; international, transjurisdictional and especially transatlantic.
The focus of this conference is the tail end of those processes: sedentism. How, why and when did people stop moving and turn temporary use of a place into permanent occupation?
Experts from Canada, the U.K., the U.S., Ireland, France, Portugal and other countries will discuss important early European sites in North America, including Jacques Cartier’s encampment at Quebec (1541), Roanoke (1585), Jamestown (1607) as well as Cupids (1610) and Ferryland (1621).
Conference delegates will have a chance to visit Newfoundland’s key early colonial sites at Cupids and Ferryland.
The conference will open with a public lecture sponsored by the Newfoundland Historical Society Wednesday, June 16, at 8 p.m. in the Riverhead Room at the Battery Hotel in St. John’s.
Dr. Evan Jones, senior lecturer in Economic and Social History, University of Bristol, will speak on Bristol, Cabot and the New Found Land, 1496-1500.
Dr. Jones has recently done much to evaluate the astounding research claims of the late Dr. Alwyn Ruddock who interpreted some of the documents she had uncovered as evidence of previously unknown voyages by John Cabot to Newfoundland in 1498-99.
The conference continues until Saturday, June 19.

- 30 -