Herringfleet was occupied by the Roman Empire, and archaeologists have made a number of finds, including a Roman bronze 'patera', a 'soup ladle' vessel with the maker's name 'Quattenus' on the handle, and a Roman nether mill-stone of trachyte, originally imported from Saxony or Koblenz on the Rhine.
In later years he devoted himself largely to petrology, and published memoirs on the trachytes of Hungary and Transylvania; on a new method of determining the species of feldspars in rocks, depending on fusibility and flame-coloration; on the geology and petrology of the district of Schemnitz; and on Santorin Island.
Infants and children were buried closest to the chapel and hold emotional monuments, such as the sculpture for Maria Ugo Ortu (died aged two) comprising the child resting by a broken column behind a short balustrade in trachyte stone from Serrenti, symbolizing the boundary between life and death.
Chira Endress, a student of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States, focused on a section of glaciogenic sediments immediately beneath the same Ice Peak trachyte lava flow sampled and described by Jeff Hungerford during his 2006 studies.