Boosted by extra hands from their summer field school, Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists have removed the last cubic foot of the 10-foot-tall Civil War earthwork that obscured the northeast bulwark of James Fort. They've also reached the 15-foot-deep mark in their painstaking excavation of the historically rich debris that fills the 1607 colony's first well.
Artifact of the week
Summer field school students uncovered numerous 17th-century objects this past week while sifting through the Confederate earthwork piled up on the site of the pioneering English outpost. Among the finds is a pointed piece of deer antler that once was mounted on the business end of a Powhatan Indian arrow. "The settlers wrote about how the Indians tipped their arrows with splinters of bone," Jamestown Rediscovery curator Bly Straube says. "This one is broken out on the base. So it looks like it might have been fired - maybe even fired into the fort." Archaeological feature of the week
After several months in which it produced a rich stream of early 17th-century artifacts - including many rare, unusually well-preserved examples of organic material - the well in the northeast corner of the fort is showing signs of slowing down. "The tenor of the fill has changed quite a bit. We're not finding as many leaves or as much trash and debris as we were finding before," staff archaeologist David Givens says. "That suggests we may be approaching the occupation layer."
In the lab
Conservator Michael Lavin, pictured above, has started cleaning a copper bandolier cylinder discovered during the excavation of a soldier's pit house in 2005. Attached by strings to a wide leather shoulder strap, these gunpowder containers were nicknamed "Apostles" because of the number - 12 - that commonly hung from each bandolier. Copper examples are rarer than those made of tinned iron or wood, and fewer still of any type survive with the string intact. "It's very fragile," Lavin says, cleaning the surface around the string under a microscope. "So you have to be very careful picking away at the dirt with your scalpel."
Pinning down the past
Archaeologists have recovered some half-dozen hair-dressing bodkins from the James Fort site, illustrating the increasing presence of women in the years just before 1620. Made of silver or copper alloys, the long pins sometimes bear the initials of their owners. Most are bent in a distinctive way, possibly reflecting a popular period hairstyle. "You'd pull your hair back, then push the pointed end into your hair," Straube says, demonstrating how to recreate a look captured in many early 1600s paintings. "Then you'd suspend a little jewel or a pearl from the other end so that it hung down next to your face." Hear more about the bodkins at http://dailypress.com/secretsinthedirt/audio
Putting the puzzle together
With most of the overburden in the northeast corner of the fort removed, archaeologists are sifting through the last sections of plow-disturbed soil in an attempt to find and define any remaining evidence of the stronghold's configuration. "All the fort-period features should be revealed in the next day or two," senior staff archaeologist Jamie May says. "So after we see what else we've got, we'll be trying to sort out some of the postholes that have come out of these last few squares." firstname.lastname@example.org, 247-4783