Putting Jamestown into context
By Malcolm Billings
BBC News, Jamestown
The Queen has arrived in the US to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia – although many Americans will still tell you it was in Plymouth, Massachusetts – 13 years later.
“They all thought that I’d taken leave of my senses,” archaeologist Bill Kelso told me when we met by the James River.
“Everyone,” he said, “believed that the Jamestown fort of 1607 had been washed away and lost to the river”.
“When I started to dig in 1993 my archaeological expedition had a staff of one and that was me.”
Bill Kelso led me to the river bank where he began to dig with a trowel in 1993.
“Quite near the surface I struck some pieces of pottery and a clay pipe. I’d seen the same sort of thing on 17th century sites in England so I kept digging,” he said.Archaeological remains
By 2003, archaeologists had revealed the remains of the triangular palisade and the towers of the fort which the settlers had built in only 19 days.
Half of them died soon after from heat and exhaustion.
The fort is just over one square acre in size and is packed with archaeological remains.
They found the foundations of Elizabethan half-timbered houses with thatched roofs.
More than 750,000 artefacts have been recovered from the site – the site that was not supposed to be there.
Another archaeologist came up with a paper sack full of things he had found that morning.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6616037.stm