Stefan Anikewich’s Instagram account holds a trove of historical images.

Anikewich, who splits his time between Provincetown and New Rochelle, N.Y., says he has been discovering the hidden history of the town since he was a child. “I’ve been a beachcomber since I was 12 years old,” he says.

Walking the shore from Race Point to Long Point, he says, he occupies himself “looking for fragments of our history: pieces of porcelain, shards of bottles that were discarded, items from the whaling industry, Indian artifacts — not taking it, just observing it.”

He started his Instagram account in the summer of 2021, posting a picture of a shard of porcelain he found on the beach. Within a few hours, he had 45 followers, and the photo had 30 likes. That’s when he realized: “Here’s my opportunity to share my passion about Provincetown.”

An image posted on Oct. 15, 2023 on @provincetownarcheology with the caption “The Great Provincetown Summer, 1916. Mudhead paintings on the wharf, Charles Hawthorne school of art. 

Anikewich’s posts appear the same way a beachcomber’s artifacts do — gems from nearly every corner and decade of the town’s history surface with a strangely pleasing refusal to submit to an orderly timeline. There’s an 1898 photo of Provincetown taken from the harbor, a 1970s photo of a woman with a soft sculpture of the Pilgrim Monument in her bike basket, 1957 footage of a stroll down Commercial Street, and a 1916 photo of students in Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art painting on the wharf.

You can read more in an article by Oliver Egger published in the provincetownindependent web site at: https://tinyurl.com/4nen86ff.