GORINCHEM – Wall remains, cheap pottery and worked cattle bones are the first finds that archaeologist Pieter Floore and a dozen volunteers made yesterday at the Barracks Square. Floore speaks of a good harvest “This morning we used cadastral maps from the sixties to determine where we should start digging. The drawings indicate where the barracks buildings used to be, so we certainly shouldn't be there.
“After all, we assume that Huis Paffenrode stood on the site of the parade ground,” says Floore. He is an archaeologist affiliated with the Albert Egges van Giffen Institute for Pre- and Proto-historical Archaeology, part of the University of Amsterdam. “It is striking how much cheap, simple pottery we find here. Very different from that of the Happy Corner, where a much more varied assortment came up. We also came across so-called paternoster beads, pieces of beef bone that look like a bead. These were generally made at home on farms,” says Floore. Rosary is a name for the Lord's Prayer.
Wall remains on the Kazerneplein
Whether the wall remains that the archaeologist came across were actually part of Huis Paffenrode, he cannot yet say. "It is still much too early for that. The wall remains and the floor remains could have been something completely different. That has to be investigated first," says Floore.
The Dordrecht resident
August 12, 1997
by Anja Broeken