April 2026

Jamestown’s archaeologists are continuing to clear the way for the construction of a new flood-resistant pathway from the James Fort area to the Archaearium museum. Because the construction will disturb the ground, everything in the proposed course of the pathway needs to be investigated by the team. As mentioned in last month’s update, the team is discovering some very interesting features during this work, including one definite and a possible second well. This month the archaeologists investigated two mystery features in line with the 1608 palisade extension. One of the features was confirmed to be a burial. The burial cuts the palisade, meaning it’s newer than the wooden wall.

The second feature appears to be evidence for the purposeful removal of an approximately 4-foot-long section of the palisade, probably to create an opening in the now five-sided fort. If the newfound well turns out to be old enough, the opening may have been created to access that water source just feet away. Soil disturbances on the south side of the feature appear to show the work done by a shovel or spade as it removed soil around the palisade to dislodge some of its wooden posts. Staff Archaeologist Ren Willis excavated a section of the feature and did not find postmolds there, supporting the theory that the posts were removed.

The archaeologists are close to finishing their excavations here, called “North Church” by the team. They are preparing the site for final record photography and then will backfill it. Director of Archaeology Sean Romo plans on doing another ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the well once the site is backfilled, the uniform, level ground providing a better environment for GPR than the brick and mortar rubble pile protruding from the well. Initial surveys suggest the well is between 10 and 15 feet deep. Sean also did a GPR survey of the other possible well, though only a section of its north end is exposed. That section, several feet from the feature’s center, appears go to a depth of about three feet.

But they’ll be back, if only in a few years. The archaeologists’ excavations are being dictated by the demands of construction projects and other priorities but they are eager to excavate the well (and see what the second possible well turns out to be) because Jamestown wells are typically full of artifacts. This is due to them being used as trash pits once their water became unpalatable.

Some interesting artifacts were excavated from the North Church dig this month. Staff Archaeologist Ren Willis found a 6-pointed rowel, the business end of a spur, in the plowzone atop the second possible well. It is made of copper alloy and bears a series of decorative etched lines on each point.

Staff Archaeologist Natalie Reid found a coin minted in 1607, the first coin excavated by Jamestown archaeologists bearing the date of the colony’s founding. The coin is a double denier, a copper alloy coin minted for use in the Netherlands during the reign of Albert and Isabella. The coin isn’t in great shape, but the central crowned arms of Austria-Burgundy over the Burgundian cross is visible on the reverse. On this side, the legend is really unreadable, but amazingly, the mint mark is visible — just to the upper left of the shield is a hand which indicates that this coin was minted in Antwerp. Many parts of Belgium, including Antwerp, were part of the Spanish Netherlands at this time.

Albert and Isabella ruled the Netherlands beginning in 1598, until Albert’s death in 1621. The coins minted during their reign are confusingly French, since they were both the sovereigns of the Habsburg Netherlands (also at this time called the Spanish Netherlands), and also the Free County of Burgundy. Burgundy was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time.

The obverse of our coin should have a central crowned AE monogram with the surrounding legend: ALBERTVS ET ELISABET D G (Albert and Isabella by the Grace of God…) and the reverse with the crowned arms of Austria-Burgundy over the Burgundian cross should have the surrounding legend to complete the phrase: ARCHID AVS DVC BVRG ET BRA (of the Archduchy of Austria, Duchy of Burgundy and Brabant).

The team is now focused on another area that will be impacted by the walking path. Mostly contained within the footprint of the eastern bulwark and thus near to some of Jamestown Rediscovery’s earliest excavations from the mid 1990s, the team is removing the backfill to a portion of the past digs, so as to get soil profiles of the new areas. Examining the profiles helps guide them in their search for features and disparate soil layers. In addition to daylighting some of the old Jamestown Rediscovery excavations, the archaeologists have also run into a trench dug by National Park Service archaeologist J.C. Harrington and his team in the 1950s.

From April 16-25 Jamestown Rediscovery hosted Canadian masters candidate Nicholas Lessard, whose research focuses on metallurgical processes — studying materials found on a variety of colonial sites in the Americas (15th-17th centuries) — to understand metallurgy during initial attempts to colonize the New World. His work entails physicochemical analysis, archaeological data, and incorporates research from historic sources. Mr. Lessard analyzed artifacts found in and around the Blacksmith Shop/Bakery, Pit 17, and other features containing evidence of metalworking using optical microscopy. He took samples of slag for chemical analysis, with one of the goals of his research being to see if there is a change in its composition over time.

Mr. Lessard worked with blacksmiths Shel Browder and Steve Mankowski as they constructed and operated an onsite bloomery. On Saturday, April 18, we offered a special public program where our guests could witness the ancient method of smelting iron ore into metallic wrought iron. Our bloomery furnace was set up to reduce the ore with charcoal and forced air to make wrought iron. In the fall of 1607 John Smith famously recorded “Our best commoditie was Yron which we made into little chissels”.

As part of Jamestown’s community outreach, eight students from Surry County High School visited the island to help look for evidence of “contrabands”, enslaved persons who freed themselves by escaping to Union-held territory during the Civil War. Jamestown Island, controlled by the Union starting in 1862, was a popular destination for these “contrabands”, so called by Union General Benjamin Butler because he considered them captured enemy property. Many of these “contrabands” were put to work for the Union war effort, thus benefitting the Union at the expense of the Confederacy.

Director of Public and Youth Programs Mark Summers gave teacher Jeremy Sanchez and his students a talk and tour of the Archaearium museum as an introduction to the site. The students then joined archaeologists excavating and screening near the eastern end of Smithfield, just north of Confederate Fort Pocahontas. This area is thought to be close to where some of the “contrabands” were first housed, in barracks built by the Confederates for their own men prior to being driven from the island by the Union’s advance.

Lieutenant J.C. Beaumont, commander of the Union gunboat Aroostook, wrote on June 12, 1862 that he and his men “burned . . . the carriages, magazines, and buildings . . . except the barracks in the rear of the battery on the west end, which I found partially occupied by contrabands.”

In addition to digging and screening for artifacts, the students also learned the basics of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) from Director of Archaeology Sean Romo. The technology is becoming an increasingly indispensable tool in the archaeology field.

In the Vault, Curator Janene Johnston continues to catalog artifacts found during the Seawall dig of 2020/2021 as part of a larger effort documenting those excavations. Two pipes caught her eye this month. They are partially intact, with only a portion of the bowls surviving, though the heels are largely intact and have the letter “X” etched into them. One has additional line etchings, possibly intended to be “XI” or “IX”. They were found in Midden 1, a large trash pile close to the Seawall. She’s also working on artifacts found in the field this month. A piece of a copper alloy spur was found in the North Church excavations recently. It’s a terminal, the part of the spur that attaches to the boot and it appears to closely resemble an existing spur terminal found in Pit 1 in the mid 1990s. It’s possible these were a matching pair.

In the lab, Conservator Jo Hoppe is working with glass artifacts, conserving them prior to inclusion in the glass reference collection. One such object is a drinking glass, of the Façon de Venise (French for “in the Venetian style”) style, found in the plowzone. We currently only have one shard of it and it appears rather unremarkable until a liquid comes in contact with it. During her conservation of the object, Jo applied a solvent and the initially dull-looking object transformed into one bearing a criss-cross pattern of white and blue lines. The solvent wasn’t magical; many liquids would have the same effect. Wetting it reduced the light scattering off the damaged surface by filling in air gaps, allowing more light to penetrate into the decorative layers. During the manufacturing process the decorative layers are sandwiched in between two clear layers. But those clear layers have degraded, preventing light getting through them and thus hiding the decorative layers inside the dry fragment.

Just next to Jo, Senior Conservator Dan Gamble is working on an intricately decorated lead buckle. The buckle was excavated from James Fort’s first well, located in the center of the fort. Roughly 5cm by 4cm, the object is ornately detailed, with leaden designs protruding from the base of the object. It is notable that the object was fashioned from lead, a soft metal. Likely not meant for heavy duty as a large force would bend it, it was instead probably meant for light duty or purely decoration.

Glass has also been front of mind for Associate Curator Lauren Stephens. She is working hard on the glass reference collection, sorting, cataloging, and looking for mends. She has been focusing on beakers in April. These are not the containers found in chemistry labs but instead are drinking vessels. While they are all incomplete, there are several highlights among the pieces that give us a glimpse of what those colonists with means were drinking from.

The first example of a beaker chosen for inclusion in the reference collection is comprised of just a base. Found in the Factory, an early fort-period building just outside the 1608 palisade extension, the base is part of a beaker bearing a waffle pattern, part of which can be seen on the base. Another beaker she is working on is of the Façon de Venise style. It bears rigaree decorations — rib-like parallel bands — on the rim of the base. The vessel was mold blown, that is the molten glass was placed into a mold and blown, the glass then expanding to take the shape of the mold.

Another mold blown vessel under consideration for the reference collection is a bossed beaker. Bosses, small circular shapes protruding from the vessel, help provide grip while also filling a decorative role. Six shards of a another beaker, found in the fort’s first well, bear a trailed decoration. Trailed decoration is created when strings of molten glass are applied to an existing vessel. In this case, the trail is very thin, but the same technique could be used to create handles or other larger components. The trail appears as a white string against the dark forest green glass.

Last month’s dig update featured a glass dish decorated with gold leaf. Another glass shard being included in the reference collection also is decorated with gold, and while the glass itself is in good shape, the gilding on its surface is extremely fragile. The curators believe this vessel is a tazza, a shallow, wide dish, used for drinking or holding small portions of food. We only have this one fragment, so the identification isn’t certain. Hopefully additional shards will be found in future excavations. This piece was found in the Factory. Objects containing gold are rare in the Jamestown collection.

Linen smoothers are another highlight of the glass collection. These served the same purpose as modern clothes irons. While today’s irons use heat to remove wrinkles from dry clothes and other textiles, these linen smoothers were not heated but were instead used while the fabrics were wet. The bottom is mostly flat but then curves up on the edges. In the middle of the top side sits a vertical handle. Although deterioration has masked the objects’ original appearance, they were initially a dark green/turquoise color. Jamestown’s archaeologists have found ten linen smoothers during their excavations in the fort.

Today, cupping is perhaps best known as a process used by competitive swimmers to increase blood flow, relax muscles, and speed up healing, leaving a dark circle on the skin. The treatment originated in ancient China and involves heating up the “cup”, a bulbous vessel with a rounded base, and placing the rim on skin. The heat creates a vacuum effect, causing a suction that pulls the targeted skin towards the cups base. There is only one of these in the Jamestown collection, found discarded in the fort’s first well. It may have arrived with other medical equipment sent to the colony in 1609 by London surgeon John Woodall, who stated “there is many necessary works in Surgery performed by Cupping glasses.”

Although the big push for the mending of Jamestown’s delft tiles happened in 2024, our curators frequently find additional fragments to our objects when cataloging artifacts from the archives. In one such instance this month, Senior Curator Merry Outlaw found a sherd of a delft tile that mends to an existing one, containing portions of a pikeman’s body and legs. Pikemen were an integral part of Renaissance-era armies, fighting other infantry, cavalry, and providing protection to musketeers prior to the adoption of bayonets.

Today, timers are a common tool used in cooking, often integrated into ovens themselves. The colonists likely also used timers for cooking, as a number of sandglasses have been found in kitchen contexts (Blacksmith Shop/Bakery, Kitchen/Cellar). Today sandglasses are known as hourglasses and are largely curiosities. Several highly-fragmented examples have been excavated in and around James Fort, not only in kitchen contexts but also in features such as the Factory and the first well, the shards in the latter likely discarded there.

In San Francisco, Curator Emma Derry presented a talk entitled “Can Space Tell Us Time? Burial Alignments and Dating at Jamestown” at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting. Her research focused on the orientation of burials on and around Statehouse Ridge and whether this can give us clues to the chronology of the burial ground. Most of the burials are oriented roughly east-west, following traditional Christian burial practices, but many were not on the true cardinal axis. Many (41 out of 130 measurable) of these almost east-west graves were perpendicular to a short stretch of palisade running through the middle of the burial ground at 17 degrees east of north, meaning that the colonists likely used that palisade as a directional reference point when they were dug. Unfortunately, none of the palisade aligned graves overlapped with graves oriented on a more true east-west axis aligned with the statehouse and ridge, so we cannot use stratigraphy to tell if one group predates the other. This project did help us locate the southern boundary of the burial ground in Smithfield. Historic maps reveal that the ridge used to extend further south to about the same point at which we stop seeing burial features.

Assistant Curator Lindsay Bliss traveled to Philadelphia this month, taking 13 already floated soil samples with her. Lindsay took the samples to the University of Pennsylvania to be used in the classroom of Archaeobotanist Professor Chantel White. Her students will sort the archaeobotanical artifacts found in the samples as part of their curriculum and then will return the sorted material to Jamestown. In this way a new generation of archaeologists are learning using historic materials, and the students are contributing to our understanding of the archaeology of Jamestown. Lindsay will be on the Seawall just east of the Dale House for much of the summer continuing her floatation work, weather permitting. Please stop by and ask her what she’s finding.

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Dig Update Archive, 2004-present