Forgotten Jamestown well holds centuries-old artifacts (AP/CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

Wednesday, July 26, 2006; Posted: 2:55 p.m. EDT (18:55 GMT)
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"They're the earliest you could find in what is now the United States," explained William Kelso, director of archaeology for the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. The group owns approximately 22 acres (8.8 hectares) of Jamestown Island, including the southwestern corner where researchers made the discovery.
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Year-long commemorations are under way to mark the 400th anniversary of the English landing in 1607 and founding of Jamestown, Virginia -- the first permanent British settlement in America.

At its peak, Jamestown would have been home to about 250 settlers and part time residents -- legislators who traveled there for the earliest governmental sessions in Britain's American colonies, he said. A team of 12 archeologists started digging Monday through what amounted to their trash.

Finds included a halberd, a 17th century ceremonial staff often carried by military sergeants; a hammer; and an intact ceramic bottle called a Bartmann jug or a "bearded man," which was made in Germany and could date back to 1590, Kelso said.
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The items were transferred to an onsite lab to be cleaned, examined and eventually displayed at the site's newly opened Archaearium, a museum of history and archaeology at Jamestown.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/07/26/jamestown.dig.ap/index.html

[theHandpuppet]

1. Fascinating -- thanks for posting this.

And here I thought that area had pretty well been cleaned out of its archaelogical sites.

[blue neen]

2. Jamestown is an interesting site to visit.

You wonder how the English people survived at all.

[theHandpuppet]

4. I've been to both Jamestown and Williamsburg

Thoroughly enjoyed it and would go back if it wasn't so pricey now.

[LostinVA]

6. By the barrel of a gun

The English settlers were basically idiots, and of a class that wasn't too keen about menial labor like... oh... plowing, planting, chopping wood. Soldiers basically had to force them to work.

I agree -- both Jamestown and the Jamestown Settlement are VERY interesting places to go to.

[OzarkDem]

3. Would love to see that

and a Scottish pistol, too.

Great job these folks are doing, preserving the past. Its amazing how they can recreate the lives of these people.

[libnnc]

5. excellent news

:toast:

[kestrel91316]

7. Guess what, guys - they didn't throw their trash down the WELL, they

threw it down the PRIVY.

Old privies are a goldmine. Wells, not so much, lol.

[morningglory]

9. Always lotta good stuff down there, including impetigo (sp?).

My husband, an archaeologist, got an ancient case of empetigo.

[kestrel91316]

10. No bad germs down there after all that time - it's all good compost now.

[bigtree]

8. One of the oddest things I witnessed in my several visits there

was a group of white folks singing 'We shall overcome' in front of the replicas of slave shacks at the urging of their tour guide.