William M. Kelso - Jamestown, the Truth Revealed

JAMES TOWN

THE TRUTH REVEALED

William M. Kelso

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS

Charlottesville and London

All illustrations unless otherwise noted appear courtesy of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.

University of Virginia Press

2017 William M. Kelso

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2017

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Kelso, William M., author.

Title: Jamestown, the truth revealed / William M. Kelso.

Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017001103 | ISBN 9780813939933 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813939940 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Jamestown (Va.)History. | Jamestown (Va.)Antiquities. | Excavations (Archaeology)VirginiaJamestown. | Colonial National Historical Park (Va.)Antiquities.

Classification: LCC F234.J3 K47 2017 | DDC 975.5/4251dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001103

Cover art: Forensic sculpture reconstruction of Janes face on a digital resin copy of her skull (Studio EIS); John Smiths map of Virginia (courtesy of the Library of Virginia)

For Ellen

and my mentors

Ivor Nol Hume

J. C. Harrington

Stanley South

John L. Cotter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The achievements of the Jamestown Rediscovery project at Historic Jamestowne, Virginia, are due in large measure to the many individuals and organizations who have provided leadership, generous financial support, scholarly advice, and expertise.

Among the hundreds who could be acknowledged, I highlight a few here for special recognition: The Jamestown Rediscovery National Advisory Board, especially chairman Dr. Warren M. Billings, Dennis B. Blanton, Dr. Edward Bond, Dr. Jeffrey P. Brain, Dr. Cary Carson, Dr. Kathleen Deagan, Dr. Rex M. Ellis, Dr. Alaric Faulkner, Frederick Faust, Dr. William W. Fitzhugh, Ms. Roxanne Gilmore, Ms. Camille Hedrick, Dr. James Horn, Dr. Carter L. Hudgins, Dr. Jon Kukla, Dr. Henry Miller, Dr. David Orr, Dr. Douglas Owsley, Mr. Oliver Perry, Dr. Carmel Schrire, Dr. George Stuart, Dr. Sandra Treadway, Dr. Edwin Randolph Turner, Mr. Robert Wharton; APVA Preservation Virginias Trustees, especially Presidents Peter I. C. Knowles II, Ivor Massey Jr., William B. Kerkam III, and John Guy IV; Executive Director Elizabeth S. Kostelny, and the staff and membership for the constant interest and support; and our special partner, the National Park Service. Many of the new discoveries happened during a collaborative program with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which had been artfully managed by Dr. James Horn, Colonial Williamsburgs Vice President of Research and Interpretation. There have been numerous generous benefactors during the twenty-year (19942014) Rediscovery Project, including the U.S. Congress, the Commonwealth of Virginia, National Geographic Society, National Endowment for the Humanities, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, James City County, City of Williamsburg, the Mellon Foundation, the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation, Jessie Ball DuPont Fund, 1772 Foundation, the Morgan Foundation, an anonymous Richmond foundation, the Garden Club of Virginia, the William Byrd and Colonial Capital Branches of the APVA, the Beirne Carter Foundation, Anheuser-Busch, Dominion Resources, Universal Leaf Corporation, Wachovia, and Verizon. My most sincere gratitude to the Anonymous Donor, Roy Hock and Margaret Fowler, and Forrest Mars and the Mars Foundation, and also for the generosity of Don and Elaine Bogus for funding this publication, Mark and Loretta Roman, Martha R. Rittenhouse, the William M. Grover Jr. Family, Mr. Ivor Massey Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Peter I. C. Knowles II, Mr. and Mrs. John H. Guy IV, Mr. and Mrs. D. Anderson Williams, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Prince, the Alan M. Voorhees Family, Mrs. T. Eugene Worrell, the Edward Maria Wingfield Family Society, the Fontaine C. Stanton Estate, William G. Beville, Mr. and Mrs. John H. Van Landingham III, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Kirwan King, and Mr. and Mrs. William Garbee. I am especially grateful to Patricia Cornwell for her timely support and enthusiastic encouragement, and to many other generous individuals.

The project has been very much a staff team effort from the start and is now very much an experienced team effort. With an open mind to ways of improving the process, over the twenty years of the project the staff has had an opportunity to fine-tune the way things have been done. I am especially grateful for their ability to decipher together the ever-widening archaeological story at Historic Jamestowne. I am indebted to senior curator Bly Straube for her unequaled and ever-expanding understanding of postmedieval material culture and for her disciplined and insightful reading of seventeenth-century Jamestown documents; curator of collections Merry Outlaw for her long-standing interest and knowledge of colonial material culture and collection organization skills; former senior staff archaeologist Eric Deetz for his growing mastery of fieldwork, insight into postmedieval vernacular architecture, and education of students and visitors; senior staff archaeologist Danny Schmidt for his insightful directing of the fieldwork, interpreting the fine signs in the earth, his visitor tours and reporting of field discoveries; senior archaeologist and graphic artist Jamie May for her skillful fieldwork, her exceptional artistic eye on the computer and extraordinary ability to research the Internet, and for organizing and creating the images for this publication; senior staff archaeologist and information technologist Dave Givens for creating our GIS archives, and for his vast field experience, for his insight into Virginia Indian archaeology, and for his many and varied mechanical skills; and staff archaeologists Mary Anna Richardson for her fine excavation and data organization skills and public interpretation; the late staff archaeologist Daniel Boyd Smith for his tenacious field, computer, and historical research work, and for his undivided love of Jamestown; Don Warmke for his tireless excavation and conservation ethic; and Dr. Carter C. Hudgins for his field skills, interpretive insight, and commitment to the archives and historical research; Dr. Douglas W. Owsley, Curator and Division Head of Physical Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, for teaching me about forensic science and its tremendous contribution to understanding the people of Jamestown and for the extraordinary scientific scholarship of his assistant, Kari Bruwelheide; Ashley McKeown for her dedication, insight, and ability to unravel the art and mystery of Historic Jamestownes skeletal biology; conservator/photographer Michael Lavin for his uniquely experienced conservation touches and photographic eye; Dan Gamble for his ever-diligent and talented conservation work; Caroline Taylor for her careful artifact processing; Catherine Correll-Walls for accumulating the insightful Early Jamestown Biographies database; and to the many, many skilled archaeologists along the way, for their diligent and talented fieldwork, especially Nick Luccketti, Luke Peccarero, Seth Mallios, Sarah Stroud, Heather Lapham, Elliott Jordan, and the very many others who served on the staff. The efforts of twenty seasons of University of Virginia annual field schools are especially recognized and appreciated, as are the public relations work of Paula Neely; the diligent administrative work of Bonnie Lent; the managerial talent of program coordinator Ann Berry; and Sheryl Mays for her multitude of administrative successes. I also want to acknowledge the talented and instructive editing of this volume by Kenny Marotta and my 2004 Virginia Foundation for the Humanities fellowship, which gave me some much-needed writing time in Charlottesville. I am especially grateful for the stalwart and always encouraging corps of Historic Jamestowne interpreters and the field and lab volunteers. Andrew Scott, James Halsall, and Edward and Joanna Martin made the Gosnold DNA study in England possible.