Jamestown dig unearths key colonists

William Kelso, director of archaeology at Jamestown, Va., displays bone fragments of four of the earliest leaders of the settlement Tuesday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. Behind him are 3-D scans of the excavated graves.
William Kelso, director of archaeology at Jamestown, Va., displays bone fragments of four of the earliest leaders of the settlement Tuesday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. Behind him are 3-D scans of the excavated graves.

WASHINGTON -- Archaeologists have discovered the remains of four of the earliest leaders of Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in America.

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AP/The Daily Press

Crosses mark the graves at Jamestown, Va., where the remains of four of its earliest settlers were found, buried for more than 400 years near the altar of what was America’s first Protestant church.

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AP

A well-preserved box believed to be a Catholic reliquary, displayed Tuesday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, was found atop the coffin of Capt. Gabriel Archer at Jamestown.

The four burial sites were uncovered in the earthen floor of what was Jamestown's historic Anglican church from 1608, a team of scientists and historians announced Tuesday. The site is where Pocahontas married Englishman John Rolfe, leading to peace between the Powhatan Indians and colonists at the settlement.

Archaeologists also found artifacts buried with the colonial leaders -- including a Catholic container for holy relics found in the Protestant church.

The Jamestown Rediscovery archaeology team revealed its discovery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The museum is helping to study those buried in the church. The remains were first uncovered in November 2013, but the scientific team wanted to trace and identify its findings with some certainty before announcing the discovery.

Archaeologists have been studying the site since 1994 when the original James Fort -- long thought to be lost and submerged in the James River -- was rediscovered. The church site was mostly untouched and had not been excavated for more than a century before it was found in 2010.

The team identified the remains of the Rev. Robert Hunt, Jamestown's first Anglican minister and a man who was known as a peacemaker between rival leaders; Capt. Gabriel Archer, a nemesis of one-time colony leader John Smith; Sir Ferdinando Wainman, likely the first knight buried in America; and Capt. William West, who died in a fight with the Powhatan Indians. They were buried between 1608 and 1610.

"What we have discovered here in the earliest English church in America are four of the first leaders of America," said historian James Horn, the president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation. "There's nothing like it anywhere else in this country."

The four found at the church site were considered pivotal figures in the early colony, though researchers acknowledge the four are little known outside scholarly circles.

"It is true that people don't know their names. It's not John Smith," said Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian. "Yet these are investors and principals in that colony, and so I see this very much as at the core and foundation of America."

Horn compared the find to the 2012 discovery of the lost grave of King Richard III in England.

Two years ago, the Jamestown team also found evidence of survival cannibalism in the colony.

Perhaps just as interesting as the newly discovered human remains are some of the artifacts buried with the bodies, archaeologists said. Burial items were rare in English culture at the time.

In the remnants of Archer's coffin, archaeologists found a captain's leading staff as a symbol of Archer's military status. Historical records indicate Archer helped lead some of the earliest expeditions to Jamestown. He died at 34 during a six-month period known as the "starving time" when many perished because of disease, starvation and battles with Indians.

A small silver box resting atop Archer's coffin is likely a Catholic reliquary containing bone fragments and a container for holy water. Archer's parents were Catholic, which became illegal in Protestant England. The discovery raises the question of whether Archer was perhaps part of a secret Catholic cell -- or even a Catholic spy on behalf of the Spanish, Horn said.

Catholic relics have been found in the Jamestown archaeological site before, but the placement of this box seems particularly symbolic, the historians said. They used CT scans to see inside the sealed box without damaging it -- gaining a view that wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago.

An alternative theory holds that the religious piece was simply re-purposed for the Anglican church as a holdover from Catholic tradition as England waffled between Catholic and Protestant rule. Historians said more research must be done.

"It was a real kind of ah-ha moment for a lot of us," said William Kelso, Jamestown's director of archaeology. "It was 'oh, religion was a big deal here,' and that's often overlooked. Everyone thinks that people came to Jamestown to find gold and go home and live happily ever after."

"This is the first colony, and it's closely connected to what follows, so what takes place at Jamestown in these early years is not separate from the mainline of development of American society," Horn said. "This is the beginning of American society, and religion is a very big part of that."

The Church of England had a strong role in the creation of an English America with the Protestant church acting as a bulwark against Spain's Catholic colonies to the south, Horn said.

In West's burial plot, archaeologists found remnants of the military leader's silver-edged sash in a block of soil. The silk material was too delicate to remove from the dirt, so archaeologists removed an entire block of dirt for preservation.

Archaeologists will continue searching the church site and expect to eventually find the burial site of Sir Thomas West, the early governor of Virginia who led a rescue mission to save Jamestown when the colony was collapsing, Horn said. West, also known as Lord De La Warr, was the eponym of the Delaware colony. Wainman and William West were both related to the baron.

Of the newly found historical figures, only Wainman and Hunt had children. Those family lines could allow for DNA comparisons after more genealogical research. Researchers first want to learn more about those related to Thomas West.

Artifacts from the burials will go on display within weeks at Historic Jamestowne.

The site also plans to memorialize the men and will keep their bones in an accessible place for preservation and future study.

The Smithsonian created a 3-D scan of the excavation site, bones and artifacts to give people a look at the discovery online.

Researchers were able to recover only about 30 percent of each skeleton, but by overlaying findings from forensics testing, archaeology, micro-CT scans, genealogy and other archival records, the researchers said they were confident in the identities of the men.

Kelso said the team is more than 90 percent certain but will work to complete more testing and potentially DNA analysis. One sample is in a DNA laboratory at Harvard to determine whether any genetic information has been preserved.

The archaeology team said the discovery is like a riddle to be figured out over time.

"It's a real detective mystery, where even small bits of information that don't quite seem to be important on their own fit together, and it makes sense," Owsley said.

"The things that we look at and can read from the bones are simply details that you're not going to find in the history books," Owsley said. "These are men that you might not know their name. But these are men that were critical to who we are in terms of America today."

Information for this article was contributed by Brett Zongker of The Associated Press and Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times.

A Section on 07/29/2015

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