Dr. Edward Harris is one of the world’s top archaeological experts, having invented the ‘Harris Matrix’, which revolutionised archaeological recording methods in 1973 and remains the industry standard nearly four decades later.
Dr. Harris was born to mother, Clarine, and father, Cecil, who owned a business selling sewing machines. He had six siblings—sisters, Martha, Suzanne, Patricia and Jennifer, and brothers, Andrew and Frederick. The family lived on Point Finger Road, Paget, but he spent summers at Hungry Bay.
“I was asthmatic, so I spent a lot of my time reading, mainly mystery stories for children which probably put me in an investigative frame of mind,” he says. “Many Christmases, the first Bermuda archivist—Lawrence Gurrin—used to come to dinner. That probably had an influence on me, too, talking about the Island’s history.”
His fascination with history grew at Mount Saint Agnes Academy, where his teacher—and historical writer—Sister Jean Kennedy would often share with the class her most recent discoveries. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and Dr. Harris soon developed his own love and appreciation of history.
Dr. Harris was educated at Columbia University in New York—he has been named among the school’s top 250 alumni—where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in archaeology. He credits a humanities professor, Lydia Wyckoff, with having a huge influence on his future path. “She suggested that I go to England, telling me that I could work at archaeological digs where they would pay me two shillings and six pence a day, put me up, and feed me,” he says.
He participated, as an apprentice, in archaeological excavations of the ancient capital of England at Winchester, and was involved with the recovery of evidence for the burial spot of St. Swithun, next to the present-day Winchester Cathedral, as well as working at other sites: an Iron Age ditch, Winchester Castle, the Bishop’s Palace, and medieval street frontages. He spent five summers working at archaeological sites in England.
Dr. Harris was also involved with excavations on the Persian Gulf, followed by a year in Bergen, a historical town on the west coast of Norway, in 1972.
But it was his invention of what became known as the ‘Harris Matrix’ that catapulted him to exalted status in the archaeological world. Best described as a ‘new type of calendar’, the Matrix provides archaeologists with a means to visualise the stratigraphic sequences of complex archaeological sites.
“During my year in Norway, I had to use different methods of excavating and recording than I had used before—and so I began to question what I had been doing in England. The clash started there,” Dr. Harris says. “I went back to England, and was given the records of an archaeological site that had been worked on for six years, and told to sort it out. That means making a stratigraphical sequence for a site, which we now know you do not do after the fact of excavation because you have destroyed the evidence.
“I took this huge pile of data that had been given to me, and I began drawing on tracing paper over gridded metric paper. I drew half-centimetre rectangles with gaps between them. I drew them in rows, and soon I had a pattern of half-centimetre rectangles. It was 28 February 1973—and I had a eureka moment, realising that I had devised something that you could put data into and which would standardise the methods used by archaeologists to determine the stratigraphic sequence of a site.
“It took me another five years, including my doctorate period, to realise what archaeologists had been doing wrong—at the end, I wrote my thesis on it, and a textbook. That was 39 years ago, and it is still the industry standard. That is very unusual in science—usually you do something and it lasts for five years, and then someone else overtakes it with a new theory.
“It is the Harris Matrix that gives me the most satisfaction because, as a Bermudian, I have changed the world of archaeology.”
Dr. Harris’ findings, along with its recording methods, were published in 1979 as Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. The book has now been translated into Italian, Spanish, Slovene, Polish, Japanese, German and Hungarian editions. A Chinese edition is expected to be published, too. Dr. Wolfgang Neubauer, a professor at the University of Vienna, Austria, has developed some of Dr. Harris’ original work, and has created a computerised programme version of his system called “The Harris Matrix Composer”.
Continuing his research, in 1977, as the recipient of a Rotary International graduate fellowship, Dr. Harris spent a year exploring the highlands of New Guinea, while he pursued a doctorate in archaeology at London University.
Upon his return to Bermuda in 1980, Dr. Harris assumed the directorship of the Bermuda Maritime Museum, which had been open for five years and was being run by a volunteer staff. Re-branded the National Museum of Bermuda in 2009, the facility has undergone many changes in Dr. Harris’ 32 years in charge.
The restoration of Commissioner’s House, a project that took 10 years, is among his proudest achievements. Once opened, exhibits were added to Commissioner’s House on an annual basis— and it now features 20 exhibit rooms covering 20,000 square feet of exhibit space, making it the largest museum and art gallery in Bermuda. An additional six buildings feature still more exhibits.
In 2009, Bermudian artist Graham Foster unveiled ‘The Hall of History’ in Commissioner’s House. The two-storey, larger-than-life mural depicts five centuries of Bermudian history, and took Foster some 7,000 hours, spread over three years, to complete. The exhibit was officially opened by The Queen on November 25, 2009.
Also in 2009, Casemates Barracks—formerly the site of the Island’s prison—was added to the museum’s assets. Dr. Harris would like to see that building transformed into a museum of international stature to complement the Commissioner’s House at the other end of the Museum.
Dr. Harris found his true calling when he returned to Bermuda, he says.
“I am very lucky because this really is the only job for me in Bermuda in a way,” he says. “It has been a great 32 years. What we are doing at the National Museum of Bermuda is making the past available to the public, who own it. The museum is there to hold the artifacts of the past, not just for the benefit of scholars and collectors, but for the benefit of the people of Bermuda and our visitors.”
The National Museum of Bermuda could be a significant driver of tourism if marketed properly, he says.
“I believe that ‘heritage’ should be right at the top of the agenda in Bermuda’s tourism planning. Tourism really began with the grand tours of Europe, when people travelled to the older parts of Europe to see the grand monuments. That is what the discerning visitor still does, and wants. They want to see what is unique about a place, and that is what we, in Bermuda, should be advertising. Bermuda is an incredible place—it has a very long and involved history, well in excess of what one might expect of a 20-square-mile village.”
While leading the museum forward, Dr. Harris has been involved in additional projects.
In 1997, he completed a 15-year study of Bermuda’s forts with the publication of Bermuda Forts 1612-1957. The work includes some 400 illustrations, as well as more than 100 line drawings by Dr. Harris, who spent evenings working on the project after arriving home from his day job. He is proud that his book was largely responsible for the inclusion of the town’s forts when St. George’s was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000. “I look back now, and wonder where I found the time,” he says. “The book had all the historical data required by UNESCO, and that is why forts were included in the World Heritage Site designation.”
Aside from his work at the museum, Dr. Harris has made additional and significant contributions toward the preservation of Bermuda’s architectural, maritime and cultural history. He has served on a number of Government advisory committees including the Historical Wrecks Authority, the National Parks Commission and the St. George’s Preservation Authority.
Dr. Harris shares his love for the Island’s history on a weekly basis with the informative and entertaining ‘Heritage Matters’ column in The Royal Gazette newspaper. Each week, Dr. Harris converts the newspaper articles into a PDF document, and emails them to more than 100 people overseas who are interested in Bermudian history.
“I receive a lot of feedback about the column, and so I know that people read it,” he says. “That is very satisfying to know—and, of the group overseas that receives the column by email, there is a group in Toronto that comes to Bermuda every couple of years to discover the island’s history. That column has proved to be one of the best things I have done to get the word out to the public about heritage in Bermuda.
“It has been an honour, as a Bermudian, to be able to do what I have done here for the discovery, preservation—and making accessible to all—the wonderful history and heritage of this Island.”
