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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