Good to read this... as is the current issue of National Geographic.
-Melinda
--
Melinda C. P. Skinner
Richmond, VA
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Bob Shriner <[log in to unmask]>
>
> It's good to see that our English colleagues are attempting to tell the correct
> story. This story appears in the May 3 on-line edition of the BBC.
>
> :-) Bob
> *******************************
> Robert D. Shriner ([log in to unmask])
> Warrenton, Virginia U.S.A
> 540/349-8193 Cell: 703/795-4355
> *******************************
> Blessed are the flexible, for they shall
> not get bent out of shape
> -----Original Message-----
>
> Putting Jamestown into context By Malcolm Billings
> BBC News, Jamestown
>
> The Queen has arrived in the US to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the
> first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia - although many
> Americans will still tell you it was in Plymouth, Massachusetts - 13 years
> later.
> "They all thought that I'd taken leave of my senses," archaeologist Bill Kelso
> told me when we met by the James River. "Everyone," he said, "believed that the
> Jamestown fort of 1607 had been washed away and lost to the river". "When I
> started to dig in 1993 my archaeological expedition had a staff of one and that
> was me." Bill Kelso led me to the river bank where he began to dig with a
> trowel in 1993. "Quite near the surface I struck some pieces of pottery and a
> clay pipe. I'd seen the same sort of thing on 17th century sites in England so I
> kept digging," he said.
> Archaeological remains By 2003, archaeologists had revealed the remains of
> the triangular palisade and the towers of the fort which the settlers had built
> in only 19 days. Half of them died soon after from heat and exhaustion. The
> fort is just over one square acre in size and is packed with archaeological
> remains. They found the foundations of Elizabethan half-timbered houses with
> thatched roofs. More than 750,000 artefacts have been recovered from the site
> - the site that was not supposed to be there. Another archaeologist came up
> with a paper sack full of things he had found that morning.
>
> " Historians in the 19th century were looking for a more noble beginning and
> opted for The Pilgrim Fathers. They landed in Plymouth in 1620 - 13 years after
> Jamestown."
> -- Bly Straube, museum curator
>
>
>
> He tipped them out on a trestle table - pottery shards, clay pipes and short
> lengths of greenish looking metal. "That's copper," Bill Kelso explained. "They
> had this, along with beads, to trade with the Indians." The first settlers had
> among them the younger sons of gentry families who kept up appearances and
> continued to dress like gentlemen. Buttons from jackets give a clue to the
> quality of their clothes. One personal item must have belonged to a man of
> means. It is made of silver, about two inches long and in the shape of a
> dolphin. Coming out of the dolphin's mouth is a curved pick used to clean teeth
> - while the other end - at the tail of the dolphin, there is a tiny silver spoon
> used for getting wax out of gentlemen's ears.
> Damp conditions The Queen will see some of the finest objects that are now
> in the newly opened site museum which the Americans curiously call an
> Archaearium. One exhibition is a reconstruction of a deep well that was packed
> with stuff that had fallen in or been thrown away. There were parts of a suit
> of armour - a breast plate and helmet. There was an axe head and other iron
> tools. Part of a bucket and rope survived, loads of pottery and the remains of
> deer and fish bones. The damp conditions in the well meant that everything
> including leather shoes had been preserved. Jamestown as a settlement had
> always been known to historians. It is the discovery of layers of objects that
> add such an important new dimension to the story of the founding of English
> America that is new. So why was Jamestown largely ignored by Americans? It
> was, after all, the capital of Virginia for almost 100 years. "It's partly to
> do with image and a bad press," Bly Straube, the curator of the new site museum
> explained. At the beginning it was a nightmare of a place. They arrived in a
> drought with a charter from King James to find gold, keep the Spanish out of
> North America and find a new route to the riches of the East. But in 1609 they
> starved and died like flies. There is even documentary evidence to suggest that
> at one point they ate each other.
> Pilgrim fathers Nineteenth century historians had little respect for the
> settlers whom they described as lazy and incompetent. In short, Jamestown was a
> fiasco. Virginia was also on the wrong side in the civil war. Sitting on top
> of Jamestown fort are the remains of a confederate gun emplacement.
> "Historians in the 19th century were looking for a more noble beginning and
> opted for The Pilgrim Fathers," Bly Straube explained. "They landed in
> Plymouth in 1620. They had their women and children, and were determined to
> forge a new life with religious freedom in a new England." That read much
> better than the story of the commercially driven Virginia company with its
> slaves and tobacco in the background, and reports of violence and cannibalism.
> With the history of settlement re-versioned, the Thanksgiving holiday became
> associated with the ideals of the Pilgrim Fathers and although nothing remains
> to be seen of Plymouth's original settlement today most Americans will tell you
> that Plymouth is where it all began. Remarkable archaeological discoveries
> have put Jamestown back on the map and all we need now, says Bly Straube is
> another holiday straight after Thanksgiving called Jamestown day.
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