Artifacts rewrite Jamestown's history
It's only midmorning on a cold April day, and already the parking lot at Historic Jamestowne is so crowded that newcomers must park their cars on the grass. As the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English colony in America approaches, "America's birthplace" has become a hot destination. Even more visitors will wind up at nearby Jamestown Settlement, where they can see replicas of the three ships that brought the first colonists over in 1607, a Powhatan Indian village, and a somewhat dated re-creation of James Fort. Some will never know that they haven't seen the actual Jamestown but a museum instead; the settlement is an attraction built by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
A mile away, however, William M. Kelso, head archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery project, has spent the last 13 years excavating the real thing: James Fort, the triangular, palisaded structure the 1607 colonists threw up in 19 days to protect themselves from Indian attack. It had long been assumed that the river, over four centuries, had swallowed up most of the original Jamestown colony. With careful scholarship and spadework, Mr. Kelso has proved them wrong.
What Mr. Kelso and his team have found is rewriting the history that began with the 104 men and boys who landed on this swampy bit of land on May 14, 1607. Historians have dismissed the colonists as inept, lazy, feckless, or unprepared. But they hung on by the skin of their teeth, until the European consumer craze for tobacco threw them an economic lifeline. The new archaeological finds have begun to reveal how they weathered those first hard years and decades.
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
A mile away, however, William M. Kelso, head archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery project, has spent the last 13 years excavating the real thing: James Fort, the triangular, palisaded structure the 1607 colonists threw up in 19 days to protect themselves from Indian attack. It had long been assumed that the river, over four centuries, had swallowed up most of the original Jamestown colony. With careful scholarship and spadework, Mr. Kelso has proved them wrong.
What Mr. Kelso and his team have found is rewriting the history that began with the 104 men and boys who landed on this swampy bit of land on May 14, 1607. Historians have dismissed the colonists as inept, lazy, feckless, or unprepared. But they hung on by the skin of their teeth, until the European consumer craze for tobacco threw them an economic lifeline. The new archaeological finds have begun to reveal how they weathered those first hard years and decades.
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