Before we get into hashing over Edmund Morgan's thirty-year-old book,
about which many 17th-c Chesapeake historians have long had serious
reservations (mine are on record in April 1785 Am Hist Review), it is
important to recognize that Bill Kelso's ten-year archeaological dig at
Jamestown has completely altered the evidential base upon which an
intelligent discussion of the first years of the Jamestown settlement
should rely.

Jon Kukla

> Though, personally, I regard Carville Earle's argument for the effects of
> salt-poisoning from the shallow wells in a time (as Dennis Blanton's team
> has demonstrated more strongly since Earl published in the Tate and
> Ammerman volume of Chesapeake essays) of the worst drought in 500 years as
> a somewhat more persuasive corrective to a solely psychological
> explanation of the seemingly pathological behaviour....
> Jon Kukla
>
>> The best explanation for the "starving time" is : Kupperman, Karen
>> Ordahl. "Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown." Journal of American
>> History 66, no. 1 (1979): 24-40.  She links the failure of will to live
>> in part to the "alien-ness" of America, and the traumatizing conditions
>> of being trapped among enemies.

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