New Discoveries at Jamestown by John L. Cotter

Chances are, you are reading this because you are aware that Jamestown, Virginia, celebrated its 400th birthday in 2007. It was the first “successful” English settlement in America. Although the colonists eventually moved upriver to be quit of the hard luck and difficult conditions on the small island, they left behind a trove of possessions – used, worn out, or forgotten. Did you ever stop to consider just how many different items you have, need, or use, to live, work, and amuse yourself? Chances are that you would seriously underestimate! But once you put such a list together, another person could tell quite a story about the life you lead. The puzzle of archeology is how to tell that story, just from the discovery of the traces you leave behind. Literally hundreds of thousands of artifacts have been recovered from this pioneering community during three major efforts (1903, the 1950’s, and 1994-present) to reconstruct how Europeans of the early 17th century managed to transplant themse