Archaeologists uncovered new layers of complexity in the soil this week while digging from the west wall of historic James Fort toward the settlement's center. Numerous postholes and ditches from the 1600s emerged from under a Civil War earthwork, revealing a landscape that changed several times after the first settlers built the fort in 1607.
Artifact of the week
Excavators sifting though the 17th-century fill used to construct the Civil War earthwork have turned up a small silver knife-handle cap engraved with the initials "F" and "P" and the year of a notorious Indian attack - "1622." Separated by a tiny star, the initials could be those of colonist Capt. Francis Potts, who later commanded the English outpost at Old Point Comfort. Or they could be linked to an as yet unknown settler who died in or survived the massacre, Jamestown Rediscovery curator Bly Straube said.
Archaeological feature of the week
Numerous features emerged from the ground this past week, including a right-angled, mid-1600s boundary ditch more than 80 feet long. "We always get excited when we find a boundary ditch," senior staff archaeologist Eric Deetz said. "There are a significant number of plats floating around without a home because they weren't defined by permanent boundaries. This could tie into one of those and establish the property's ownership."
In the lab
Laboratory Assistant Caroline Taylor spent hours sorting through the huge number of artifacts emerging from the Civil War earthwork and the 1607 fort's west bulwark moat. Dividing the metal from one context into piles of copper, iron and lead, she identified and counted such objects as bells, straight pins, tacks, buttons, buckles, spurs, musket parts and a lock escutcheon. "I counted a thousand wrought-iron nails the other day," Taylor said, "and that didn't include all the fragments." n Outside the dig
Host Steve Thomas and his crew wrapped up nine days of taping for a future broadcast of the History Channel's "Saving Our History" program. In addition to screening for artifacts, the former host of "This Old House" examined skeletal remains with a forensic anthropologist and fired a reproduction musket. "Telling the story of something that happened 400 years ago is difficult because-What do you look at? What can you see now?" Thomas said. "So we've tried to find ways to bring that history alive by having me stand in for the viewer and feel what it's like to fire a musket or screen for an artifact. And let me tell you, being the first person to pick an artifact up in 400 years is amazing. It can be a little addicting."
Putting the puzzle together
Three seemingly unrelated postholes and a refuse-filled, mid-1600s ditch have emerged in the leading square of the dig, complicating the drive to the fort's center. "We've got a lot of features that don't add up yet. So they're not telling us where to go," Deetz said. "But they still have to be excavated and recorded before we can look for the early 17th-century layer."