Jamestown, the Buried Truth. William M. Kelso. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2006. Pp. 256, $29.95, cloth. ISBN: 978- 0-8139-2563-9. TEL: 800-831-3406• FAX: 877-288-6400
Photographer Ansel Adams used to say, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” William Kelso is lucky to be the Head Archaeologist in the 0 Jamestown rediscovery project— lucky in that he was at the right place in his career as an archaeologist when the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities decided to investigate its property on Jamestown Island in preparation for the 400th anniversary of the 1607 founding of the first permanent English settlement in North America.
But, Kelso’s luck is only partly coincidence. Equally important is his having prepared himself for this fortuitous opportunity. When he visited Jamestown as an undergraduate, forty-some years ago, he asked a park ranger where the original fort was. The ranger“…pointed to a lone cypress growing way off shore [in the James River] and said, ‘Unfortunately, you’re too late. It’s out there—lost for good.’” Kelso writes that he was disappointed to hear that this famous historic site had been eroded away, but he was also confused.“Looking back at the dirt under glass [covering 1955 excavations by the National Park Service]…I asked again, ‘But what about here?’” The ranger merely shrugged his shoulders.
Kelso was intrigued by a photograph he saw of open archaeological trenches created by the National Park Service in that earlier dig in an effort to discover the remains of Jamestown for a celebration of the 350th anniversary of the settlement’s founding. Four decades later, when the APVA prepared to launch another search for the lost settlement, Kelso—by then an archaeologist— got the job.
But, where to dig? “The buried truth lies ahead,” he says at the end of his introduction. “Like any search for something buried, this search requires a map. So the quest begins not in the earth but in the library.” In an effort to find hints of the precise location and configuration of Fort James, he examined whatever documents he could find that were contemporary with Jamestown’s earliest years. As it turns out, Kelso tells us, only two maps and a halfdozen first-hand descriptions survive from this period. This is where he begins his story—by acquainting us with those early documents and introducing us to the methods of historical archaeology.
John Smith’s (the famous John Smith’s) account of Fort James indicated that the structure had five sides, but George Percy, who also arrived in 1607 indicated that the fort was “triangle-wise.” A map drawn in 1608 by Don Pedro de Zuniga, Spanish ambassador to England, seemed to support the “triangle- wise” view.
Deducing what he could from these early documents, Kelso actually dug his first hole on April 4, 1994 and was elated when, almost immediately, he found early seventeenth- century ceramics. Then, he reports, “The incredible chain of discoveries that followed, literally connecting the dots, unfolded like a mystery novel over the course of eleven electrifying years, 1994- 2005.”
Actually, the chain of electrifying events is still going on. To date, archaeologists have uncovered more than two million artifacts, ranging from tiny pottery shards to pieces of armor and weapons and— yes—skeletons at the site.
Visitors to Jamestown during the summer of the 400th anniversary of the settlement’s founding would have seen archaeologists digging with shovels to remove berms inside the fort’s rediscovered and reconstructed pallisade. These earthworks were thrown up as gun platforms by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The cannons were intended to shell Union ships that ventured into the James River, attempting to get to Richmond, the Confederacy’s capital.
Even if those Confederate soldiers were aware that they were working in the vicinity of the first permanent English settlement in North America, they could not have known that they were actually inside the fort’s perimeter. All visible evidence of Fort James had long since disappeared. Fortunately, though, the Civil War digging and the plowing by farmers over the buried James Fort site did not destroy a great deal of the archaeological evidence.
A particularly fascinating section of the book deals with attempts to identify some of the many skeletons discovered in and around the fort. Records still exist listing the names and English places of origin of many of the men and boys who established James Fort in 1607.
The archaeologists have used bone samples from some of the skeletons in an attempt to match up the skeletons with the names. The relative presence of two types of stable carbon isotopes make it possible to determine whether a deceased person’s diet was primarily corn or wheat.
This, in turn, helped archaeologists match up skeletons with different regions of England. It also enabled them to determine which skeletons were those of English immigrants who had been at Fort James for a long time or native Americans. They had diets with high concentrations of corn. Skeletons of recent English immigrants had diets with high concentrations of wheat. Although no definite identifications have made so far, Kelso is hopeful that future technology will make this possible.
Kelso’s association with the Jamestown Rediscovery project is a happy union. A man with a passion for this particular project was on hand just when the project became possible. He has also done a nice job of sharing his enthusiasm while teaching his readers, not only about Jamestown, but about the practice of archaeology as well.
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