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Search hopes to find 510-year-old Newfoundland church

Newfoundland and Labrador's top archeologist has revealed plans to search for the remains of a 510-year-old church on the western shore of Conception Bay -- a project aimed at adding to a string of recent discoveries about explorer John Cabot's history-making voyages to Canada in the late 15th century.

If the purported church is found near the town of Carbonear -- the site targeted by Memorial University's Peter Pope in what he calls a "longshot" dig proposed for next summer -- the discovery of North America's earliest Christian settlement would join the 1,000-year-old Viking site at Newfoundland's L'Anse-aux-Meadows, Jacques Cartier's recently unearthed 1541 fort near Quebec City and Virginia's Jamestown ruins among the continent's most important archeological sites.

A search for traces left by one of Cabot's expeditions would have seemed laughable just a few years ago.

But the recent emergence of new evidence about his voyages -- including potentially "revolutionary" findings by the late British historian Alwyn Ruddock -- has renewed interest in England's earliest New World ventures during the reign of King Henry VII.
Read entire article at National Post (Canada)