By JOHN L. COTTER
Supervising Archeologist, Colonial National Historical Park
"As in the arts and sciences the first invention is of more consequence
than all the improvements afterward, so in kingdoms, the first
foundation, or plantation, is of more noble dignity and merit than all
that followeth."
--LORD BACON
In the Summer of 1934 a group of archeologists set to work to explore
the site of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown Island,
Va. For the next 22 years the National Park Service strove--with time
out for wars and intervals between financial allotments--to wrest from
the soil of Jamestown the physical evidence of 17th-century life. The
job is not yet complete. Only 24 out of 60 acres estimated to comprise
"James Citty" have been explored; yet a significant amount of
information has been revealed by trowel and whiskbroom and careful
recording.
By 1956 a total of 140 structures--brick houses, frame houses with brick
footings, outbuildings, workshops, wells, kilns, and even an ice storage
pit--had been recorded. To help unravel the mystery of landholdings
(sometimes marked by ditches), 96 ditches of all kinds were located, and
hundreds of miscellaneous features from post holes to brick walls were
uncovered. Refuse pits were explored meticulously, since before the dawn
of history man has left his story in the objects he discarded.
When archeology at Jamestown is mentioned, the question is often asked,
why was it necessary to treat so famous a historic site as an
archeological problem at all? Isn't the story finished with the accounts
of John Smith's adventures, the romance of John Rolfe and Pocahontas,
the "starving time," the Indian massacre of 1622, Nathaniel Bacon's
rebellion against Governor Berkeley, and the establishment of the first
legislative assembly?
The archeologist's answer is that the real drama of daily life of the
settlers--the life they knew 24 hours a day--is locked in the unwritten
history beneath humus and tangled vegetation of the island. Here a brass
thimble from the ruins of a cottage still retains a pellet of paper to
keep it on a tiny finger that wore it 300 years ago. A bent halberd in
an abandoned well, a discarded sword, and a piece of armor tell again
the passing of terror of the unknown, after the Indians retreated
forever into the distant hills and forests. Rust-eaten axes, wedges,
mattocks, and saws recall the struggle to clear a wilderness. The simple
essentials of life in the first desperate years have largely vanished
with traces of the first fort and its frame buildings. But in later
houses the evidence of Venetian glass, Dutch and English delftware,
pewter, and silver eating utensils, and other comforts and little
luxuries tell of new-found security and the beginning of wealth. In all,
a half-million individual artifacts at the Jamestown museum represent
the largest collection from any 17th-century colonial site in North
America.
But archeologists have found more than objects at Jamestown. They sought
to unravel the mystery of that part of the first settlement which
disappeared beneath the eroding current of the James River during the
past 300 years. It has always been known that the island in the 17th
century was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus extending to
Glasshouse Point, where a glassmaking venture took place in 1608. Over
this isthmus the "Greate Road" ran, and its traces have been discovered
on the island as far as the brick church tower. As the isthmus
disappeared at the close of the 17th century, the river continued to
erode the island headward and build it up at its downstream end, so that
the western and southern shores where the first settlement had been
built, were partly destroyed. Thus, the first fort site of 1607, of
which no trace has been found on land, is thought to have been eaten
away, together with the old powder magazine and much early 17th-century
property fronting on the river.
In a series of extensive tests for any possible trace of the 1607 fort
still remaining on land, several incidental discoveries of importance
were made. One was an Indian occupation site beneath a layer of early
17th-century humus, which, in turn, was covered by the earthen rampart
of a Confederate fort of 1861. This location is marked today by a
permanent "in-place" exhibit on the shore near the old church tower.
Here, in a cut-away earth section revealing soil zones from the present
to the undisturbed clay, evidence of 350 years of history fades away
into prehistory.
Within the enclosure of this same Confederate fort was found a
miraculously preserved pocket of 17th-century debris marking the site of
the earliest known armorer's forge in British America.
Just beyond, upriver, lie ruins of the Ludwell House and the Third and
Fourth Statehouses. In 1900-01, Col. Samuel H. Yonge, a U.S. Army
Engineer and a keen student of Jamestown history, uncovered and capped
these foundations after building the original seawall. A strange
discovery was made here in 1955 while the foundations were being
examined by archeologists for measured drawings. Tests showed that no
less than 70 human burials lay beneath the statehouse walls, and an
estimated 200 more remain undisturbed beneath the remaining structures
or have been lost in the James River. Here may be the earliest cemetery
yet revealed at Jamestown--one so old that it was forgotten by the
1660's when the Third Statehouse was erected. It is, indeed, quite
possible that these burials, some hastily interred without coffins,
could date from the "starving time" of 1609-10, when the settlers strove
to dispose of their dead without disclosing their desperate condition to
the Indians.
[Illustration: JAMESTOWN EXPLORATION TRENCHES OF 1955 FROM THE AIR.
LANDMARKS ARE THE "OLD CYPRESS" IN THE RIVER, UPPER LEFT, THE
TERCENTENARY MONUMENT, AND THE STANDING RUIN OF THE 18TH-CENTURY AMBLER
HOUSE.]
The highlight of archeological discoveries at Jamestown is undoubtedly
the long-forgotten buildings themselves, ranging from mansions to simple
cottages. Since no accurate map of 17th-century "James Citty" is known
to survive, and as only a few land tracts, often difficult to adjust to
the ground, have come down to us, archeologists found that the best way
to discover evidence was to cast a network of exploratory trenches over
the area of habitation.
During its whole century of existence, the settlement was never an
integrated town. The first frame houses quickly rotted away or succumbed
to frequent fires. Brick buildings were soon erected, but probably not
twoscore ever stood at one time during the 17th century.
Bearing in mind that the massive church tower is the only 17th-century
structure remaining above ground today, and the only building whose
identity was therefore never lost, you will find only one other
identified with positive assurance--the Ludwell House--Third and Fourth
Statehouses row. The remaining 140 structures so far discovered by
excavating have no clear-cut identity with their owners. To complicate
matters more, bricks from many burned or dismantled houses were salvaged
for reuse, sometimes leaving only vague soil-shadows for the
archeologist to ponder. From artifacts associated with foundation
traces, relative datings and, usually, the use of the structure can be
deduced from physical evidence. Unless a contemporaneous map is someday
found, we shall know little more than this about the houses at Jamestown
except for the testimony of assorted hardware, ceramics, glassware,
metalware, and other imperishable reminders of 17-century arts and
crafts.