Rediscovering Jamestown

Words: 1481
Pages: 6
Open Document
Rediscovering Jamestown: Review and Summary of Significant Findings

Jamestown, Virginia is the location of the first English settlement in America. King James I initiated the settlement process by chartering the Virginia Company to build a fortified settlement. Moreover, the company’s tertiary interests included locating both gold deposits and a waterway route to the Pacific Ocean. In 1607, the first settlers landed and began working on the construction aspect of the charter. The years following this landing were marked by attacks from native populations, disease, famine, and death. Eventually, the settlement was abandoned and left in disrepair. By the late nineteenth century, the site was heavily cultivated due to agricultural activities …show more content…
The results of the initial excavation, by the Rediscovery team, uncovered over thirty-thousand artifacts as well as information about the culture of the historic settlement. For example, excavations revealed dirt roads, foundations of buildings, pottery, Nueva Cadiz beads, a triangular crucible, armor, copper artifacts as well as numerous other findings (Luccketti et al. 1994: 25). Dating for much of the artifacts was largely based on surviving historical records, manufacturing records and early narratives (Horning 2006: 1). Additionally, some of the weapons discovered at Jamestown were dated back to the sixteenth-century such as a small shield known as a buckler which was considered an archaic weapon by the time Jamestown was founded but was sufficient against native arrows. Moreover, since the early nineteen nineties more than a million relics have been uncovered within tightly sealed units which also included accouterments that assisted in dating such as coins, gambling tokens, and cloth seals. Furthermore, the James Fort site has provided the world’s largest collection of late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century English colonial weaponry (Straube 2006: 35). These easily dated artifacts disclosed a wealth of information regarding the military, industrial, and domestic lives of …show more content…
Security soon became decidedly imperative to the early settlers, therefore, the fortified walls of the fort offered safety and protection from Powhatan Indian attacks. Furthermore, as a result of failed trade relationships and other factors, Indian attacks on the colonists were spontaneous and relatively frequent. In addition to violet confrontations, famine, drought, disease, and other factors caused the settlers’ mortality rate to rise considerably. These factors brought about a general malaise within the early population. Additionally, physical and psychological distress had affected much of the early population which significantly reduced colonists’ morale. Even though priorities were poorly and naively arranged, in regard to sustainability and labor, there is evidence to show that many of the colonists put forth a legitimate effort to build and maintain the colony. Therefore, theories that portray the original colonists as a group of weak elites fall short of the historical reality (Straube 2013: 265). The foundational constructions found during initial and subsequent excavations clearly demonstrate the hard work put forth by the first
Show More

Related Documents: Rediscovering Jamestown

The Great Awakening

political and religious ideology that was acceptable fluctuated from the arrival in Jamestown to the mid-18th century. One major example of cultural and political change is the enlightenment. During the early to mid-eighteenth century the new world went through an era known as the enlightenment.…

Words 717 - Pages 3