Jamestown Rediscovered

By Brian Morgan

In 1994, when archaeologists were deciding where to begin their latest excavations on Jamestown Island, the decision came down to very practical considerations: a place where the ground seemed to sag into a back-filled hole, a place clear of the modern service road, and a place in the shade.

In 1994, when archaeologists were deciding where to begin their latest excavations on Jamestown Island, the decision came down to very practical considerations: a place where the ground seemed to sag into a back-filled hole, a place clear of the modern service road, and a place in the shade.

Those efforts quickly grew out of the shadows and into the national spotlight.

"Almost immediately the 20th century topsoil gave way to a plow zone full of the earliest artifacts yet found at Jamestown, and below that, undisturbed traces of what had to be the early settlement," William Kelso, director of archaeology at Jamestown for the Association for the Preservation of Viginia Antiquities (APVA), wrote in the APVA's first annual publication describing he excavation efforts.

Beneath the tilled earth, workers found soil stains from a long-vanished split-log palisade and with it evidence of the long-lost Jamestown.

Nicholas Luccketti, the APVA's director of field operations at Jamestown, spoke about the APVA's work at the annual meeting of the Norfolk Historical Society in March, 1999, showing slides of some of the nearly 200,000 artifacts that have been recovered at the site.

For some two centuries it was believed that the James River had engulfed the site of the original fort, Luccketti said. But the APVA's excavations indicate that much of the area once occupied by the triangular-shaped fortress lies behond the river's reach, protected by a 1901 seawall.

With each passing season, representatives of the APVA are slowly piecing together the early history of America's first permanent English settlement.

There is a broad range of artifacts, from coppery jewelry made at the site for trade with local Indians, to a generous display of armor and armament, to everyday items such as coins, tokens and homemade pipes.

Among the most startling finds was the discovery of a skeleton with a .60 caliber lead bullet still lodged in the shattered right leg bone. The body was buried in a pine coffin within the confines of the small fort, and researchers believe it was one of the original 104 settlers. The wound indicates the young man was shot from behind, but researchers can only speculate whether the wound was accidental or intentional.

Although only a small portion of the fort has been excavated, the artifacts recovered so far are making a substantial new contribution to understanding the past. Many of the objects recovered are not necessarily represented in English collections. This is because early Jamestown was a bit of a "dumping ground" for England's excesses, including obsolete arms and armor, Luccketti said. This has resulted in many rare and unusual objects clustering in the Jamestown colony.

Ironically, Jamestown survives as a rich trove of artifacts as a result of its eventual abandonment. Unlike most of the nation's earliest outposts it did not grow into a thriving, modern city.

". . . Jamestown gave way to the new capital at Williamsburg after the settlement's first century," Kelso wrote. "Thereafter, progressively-abandoned Jamestown became an archaeological time capsule, free from the destructive forces of industrial age construction."

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