VIRGINIA-L Archives

From: "Nena Smothers" <>
Subject: Jamestown Excitement!
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:03:42 -0700

[If anyone wants to see the pictures of these artifacts, let me know I can
send them to you, they are good pictures~Nena]


Excitement wells up

James Fort's first well produces a gusher of artifacts dating to the English
settlement's earliest days.
BY MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON 247-4783 July 26, 2006

JAMES CITY -- Excited archaeologists recovered some of the most significant
finds of the 12-year-old Jamestown Rediscovery dig Monday while probing the
bottom of a well thought to have been built at the command of Capt. John
Smith.

Working more than 15 feet below the original ground level, archaeologist
David Givens retrieved an ornate iron halberd thought to have been carried
by one of 50 red-coated bodyguards who escorted Gov. Lord de la Ware into
James Fort when he arrived from England in the summer of 1610. [have this
picture]

Smaller but equally provocative is a rectangular lead tag stamped with the
excavation's first, if archaically spelled, example of the words "YAMES
TOWNE." [have this picture]

"On a scale of one to 10, this is an 11," director of archaeology William
Kelso said, gleefully holding the diminutive scrap of metal in his hand.

"We knew we had Jamestown. We knew we had James Fort. But to find a document
like this is just amazing.

"When I first saw it, I thought it was a joke. It's like finding the name
you're looking for on the back of a shipwreck."

Though not identified as a well until early this year, the first signs of
the fertile archaeological feature surfaced with the discovery of a sunken
brick hearth in late 2005.

Picking their way through the much-repaired mass of masonry and mortar -
originally constructed as part of a 1618 addition to the 1611 governor's
house - the scientists eventually unearthed what they now think is James
Fort's first well.

Dug at Smith's orders in 1608-09, the top layers of the well bristled with
early fort-period artifacts - most of them thrown down the shaft by Lord de
la Ware's relief expedition during the massive "cleansing" of the
dilapidated fort carried out after the Starving Time of 1609-10.

But in recent weeks, the frequency and importance of the finds from the well
had markedly diminished, making this week's discoveries even more
unexpected.

"It's really been an incredible couple of days here," said curator Bly
Straube, who took up a station at the top of the well as soon as the
significance of the artifacts became apparent.

"I couldn't pull myself away because you really just didn't know what was
going to come up next."

In addition to the de la Ware halberd and the stamped lead tag, the
archaeologists have recovered several rarely found examples of men's leather
shoes, including both a fancy, decorated specimen and one that has been
crudely repaired.

Both artifacts might be related to the discovery earlier this month of
numerous scraps of leather, other shoes and a leatherworker's tool.

Often working in water up to his knees, Givens also retrieved the perfectly
preserved staves and bottom of the well's bucket, as well as its pivoting
iron handle and pulley chain.

"You have to listen to this," conservator Michael Lavin said, rattling the
handwrought links.

"You can just hear it working when the Colonists pulled the bucket up from
the well."

Other finds include a complete and unusually well-preserved snaphaunce
pistol, a shallow wooden bowl known as a treen, a hammer head and its
handle, and a nearly complete decorated ceramic container known as a
Bartmann jug. [have picture of the pistol]

But it was the stamped lead tag and the halberd that ranked highest in
importance, the archaeologists said.

Decorated with the mythical griffin heads that marked Lord de la Ware's
family crest, the iron halberd consists of a curved ax blade topped with a
spike and backed with a fighting hook. It also includes more than 5 feet of
the original wooden staff, as well as the iron languettes that protected its
sides from the blades of opponent's weapons.

Like a smaller naval boarding pike recovered from the well earlier this
month, the long spike on top of the blade has been bent back to form a hook.

That prompted Straube to speculate whether the Colonists might have been
attempting to retrieve something that fell into the water.

Even in its altered form, it still made for an impressive display as
archaeologist Luke Pecoraro helped lift the large artifact from the muddy
shaft, then carry it to the project's lab for conservation.

Few other artifacts found at the fort site have been so closely tied to an
exact name and date - much less a name and a date that are so important.

"It was like carrying the Olympic torch," Pecoraro said. "It was so cool."

Kelso said the excavation of the well would continue throughout the rest of
the week - and then intermittently until the bottom is found.

But he wouldn't predict whether or not his team would duplicate the finds
that have sparked such excitement over the past two days.

"Wells are funny. You can't see where you're digging. So suddenly they can
just stop and come up empty," he said.

"But the thing about this one is that it just keeps giving - just like the
rest of the site. It's been almost 13 years here - and we're still finding
great things.

"There's a lot of the iceberg left down there."

This thread:

• Jamestown Excitement! by "Nena Smothers" <>