The Brownstone Journal >> Issues >> Vol. XII Spring 2005

The Rediscovery of Jamestown

Casey Horna (CAS 06) attended the Jamestown Field School during the summer of 2004. She is majoring in Archaeology.

Any student reasonably well-versed in American history knows the general significance of Jamestown, the 1607 colony famous as the first permanent English settlement in the New World. Yet Plymouth and the Pilgrims dominate early American history, while details of the Jamestown colony's accomplishments—which began fourteen years before the Mayflower landing—are either ignored or dismissed by scholars and the general public alike, surpassed by rumors of a failed colony ripe with lazy gentlemen bowling in the streets. Perhaps this is because while Plymouth with its rock and its Thanksgiving celebration almost immediately entered into American national mythology, the political capital of Virginia moved from Jamestown to Middle Plantation, later known as Williamsburg, in 1698. By the twentieth century, Americans had forgotten the importance and significance of the Jamestown settlement's achievements, aside from the romantic lure of John Smith and Pocahontas.

The fort and settlement itself were thought to have been lost to time and coastal erosion, and the documentary evidence that survived was not substantiated by misconstrued archaeological remains excavated in the 1930s and 1950s. Then, in 1993, Dr. William Kelso, a noted historical archaeologist, approached the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, co-owners of Jamestown Island with the National Park Service, with a proposal to excavate their portion of the property. He did not believe that the original fort and settlement had completely succumbed to river erosion and time. He would attempt to do what no other archaeologist or historian believed possible: find, excavate, and publicly interpret the archaeological remains of the 1607 James Fort. Seventeenth-century Jamestown was only waiting to be rediscovered, and Kelso's work over the past ten years is not only changing the world's perception of early American history, but making breakthroughs in historical archaeology.

English Colony to American National Historic Site
Queen Elizabeth's successor, James I, ascended the English throne at a time of unprecedented stability and prosperity, following the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. This naval victory allowed strong hopes for successful New World colonies to linger in the minds of the Virginia Company of London's investors, who in 1606 were granted a charter to colonize Virginia (Cotter 2-3; Billings 12). The Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery formed the fleet of three ships which carried over one hundred all-male settlers to Virginia, arriving in May of 1607 (Cotter 4).

A palisaded, triangular fort with a bulwark on each corner (Figure 1) was soon erected, along with a wooden church, storehouse and living quarters inside (Cotter 5; Forman 36-9). William Strachey, the colony's Secretary, recorded the dimensions of the fort as 420 feet on the river side, by 300 feet on the other two sides (APVA; Kelso 37).

Figure 1: Pedro de Zuniga drawing of James Fort, c. 1608 (www.apva.org)

As Billings explains, "the fort and the town were synonymous during the colony's first years" (1995: 69). The colonists struggled to adapt to life in America, a process known as "the seasoning (Billings 29), adjusting to the marshy, mosquito-ridden environment, in a climate that was sweltering in summer and harsh in winter, when supplies and moral were at their lowest, as evidenced by the deaths which occurred throughout the 1609-1610 "starving time" winter (Cotter 7; Billings 44). Portions of the fort repeatedly suffered damage from fire and hasty or poor construction, and were subsequently rebuilt as the settlement expanded with each new arrival of colonists, including women and children, from England.

Tremulous relations with local Native Americans, the Powhatan, stabilized for a time, due in part to the interaction of Chief Powhatan's young daughter, Pocahontas, with adventurer John Smith, and her eventual marriage to tobacco pioneer John Rolfe in 1613 (Cotter 8). Tobacco production would become the prime agricultural activity in the Tidewater (Billings 45-7). Exploratory trips throughout the Chesapeake Bay region helped familiarize the colonists with their surroundings. By 1611, settlement was extending beyond Jamestown, at New Towne east of the fort as the population expanded after 1619, and to sites along the James River and Eastern Shore (Cotter 7-9). As the white population continued to grow, and the settlers moved beyond the fort and Jamestown Island, the Powhatan, under the control of Opechancanough, attacked the James River settlements in March of 1622 (Cotter 10). Sporadic periods of peace and fighting between the colonists and the Powhatan occurred until 1646, when the General Assembly ratified a treaty following the death of Opechancanough (Cotter 12).

In 1624 the Virginia Company dissolved under the king's desire to make Virginia a royal colony, leading to the establishment of representative government, in the form of the General Assembly and governor, at Jamestown (Cotter 10). Jamestown again burned during Bacon's rebellion in 1676, with rebuilding following the town's destruction. By 1698, when lieutenant governor Francis Nicholson received instructions to once again rebuild the continually deteriorating Jamestown, the outbreak of yet another fire provided the final incentive to move the capital elsewhere, to Middle Plantation, later known as Williamsburg, seven miles inland (Cotter 14). Though the political capital moved away from Jamestown in 1698, the Travis and Ambler families continued to live on plantations in the vicinity of the 1607 fort and original settlement throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with all traces of seventeenth century settlement disappearing except for remnants of the 1639 church tower (Cotter 15). An earth fort was built in the vicinity of the church by the Confederates in 1861 to monitor naval gunboat activity along the James River (Billings 109; APVA).

The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) received 22 ½ acres of land on Jamestown Island, including the 1639 church tower, from the Barney family in 1893. To prevent further erosion along the western shore of the island, the federal government funded construction of a seawall in 1900, at the APVA's urging. The National Park Service acquired the remaining land on Jamestown Island, approximately 1500 acres, in 1934, as part of Colonial National Historic Park with nearby Williamsburg and Yorktown. Jamestown was designated a National Historic Site on December 18, 1940 (APVA; National Park Service).

Early Archaeological Excavations at Jamestown
Well before the development of historical archaeology as a sub-discipline, J.C. Harrington and John L. Cotter conducted "pioneering" archaeological research on Jamestown Island between 1934 and 1957 (APVA; Cotter ix). Prior to their arrival, however, architects and anthropologists, such as Henry Forman, had unfortunately dug substantially with crews composed of Civilian Conservation Corps workers for the Works Progress Administration, removing artifacts from context and overlooking or shoveling away soil stains (APVA; Hume 31). Digging techniques for seventeenth-century sites such as Jamestown had not yet been adequately developed, described by one author as "primitive," with potsherds and other material culture being discarded, and poor, if any, records being kept (Billings 113). Though Forman knew that the first buildings at Jamestown were built of wood, he was looking for rotten timber or charcoal, rather than post holes and soil stains, and Cotter comments that "he apparently knew little, if anything, about archaeological techniques" (Cotter 27; Forman 1938: 82-3).

In contrast, the Park Service excavations of Harrington and Cotter were ordered and systematic, with storage facilities and a field laboratory, and attempts were made to locate the first fort, traditionally placed near the Confederate earthworks, though excavations "failed to produce unimpeachable results" despite discovery of seventeenth-century burials and artifacts (Billings 113). They designed a grid of ten-by-ten-foot squares to encompass the entire island and "record the provenience of artifacts and their relationship to structure and other features" that is still in place today, and developed a system of cataloguing artifacts (Cotter 29). When their dig ended in 1958, the fort and settlement were believed to have already eroded into the James River, and it was the excavators' wish that no further work be done, unless it was non-invasive, as new techniques should develop (Cotter 166).

The Jamestown Conundrum
After the inconclusive excavations from the 1930s through the 1950s, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities became reluctant to have archaeologists conduct further destructive digs on their portion of Jamestown Island, which coincidentally were the 22 ½ acres in the vicinity of the 1639 church tower and Confederate earthwork. Even legendary historical archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume, reviewing the development of Jamestown and the history of its archaeology, concluded that "the site of Jamestown's fortified settlement has never been found" and was likely eroded in the river (Hume 32). James Deetz likewise thought that "the earliest part of Jamestown had long since slipped into the river," leading to his decision to excavate other seventeenth-century sites, such as Flowerdew Hundred (Deetz 154). Therefore, until the 1990s with the advent of the Jamestown Rediscovery project, there was no incontrovertible archaeological evidence of the 1607 fort and settlement to refute claims that it had eroded away into the James River.

In the 1980s, archaeologists Stanley South and Michael Hartley used maps to study seventeenth-century settlement patterns in the Southeast. They detected a relationship between such physiographic features as "deep water and high ground" and human behavior, supported by documentary evidence that the 1607 James Fort and settlement were "placed on high ground adjacent to the deep-water channel of the river," with "low marshy ground between the high ground of the settlement and the mainland" as a natural buffer against Indian attacks (Dickens and Ward 263-4). Jamestown's location represented a defensive strategy, yet the possible existence of archaeological evidence was rendered slim, as even such noteworthy archaeologists as South and Hartley believed that "subsequent erosion seems to have removed much of the early settlement site" (Dickens and Ward: 264). The scholarly community seemed largely willing to write off any archaeological remains of the early fort and settlement as long gone.

Dr. William Kelso and Developments in Tidewater Archaeology
After many years spent working and gaining experience as director of archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg's Carter's Grove, Monticello and Poplar Forest, as well as commissioner of archaeology for the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission, Dr. William Kelso had developed a reputation "as one of America's foremost historical archaeologists in Early American history" (APVA). His experience in the Tidewater, the "distinct topographical region [which] encompassed all of Virginia between the Atlantic Ocean and the fall line, the point approximately one hundred miles inland at which the eastern rivers were no longer tidal" (Billings 20), supported his proposition to excavate the APVA's property on Jamestown Island for evidence of the 1607 fort and settlement. Though previous archaeological excavations had been conducted on Jamestown Island, the fort and settlement still had not been found. Yet unlike most of his colleagues, Dr. Kelso did not believe that they were gone. He gained confidence from recent developments in historical archaeology, from work done by others in the Tidewater.

Ivor Noel Hume's excavations at the 1619 site of Martin's Hundred in the 1970s, located near Carter's Grove, would prove useful to Kelso in planning the Jamestown Rediscovery project. Kelso was a member of the survey project which uncovered the seventeenth-century "occupation spread over about 150 acres all around the eighteenth-century mansion site" (Hume 19). There was little precedent for excavating a seventeenth-century site in America, as previous excavations at Jamestown had failed to find the fort and settlement: "Historical archaeology in the thirties was even less refined than it was in the early sixties. At Jamestown, the artifacts were there, but more often than not their message had been lost" (Hume 27). Hume's excavations furthered study of seventeenth-century soil stains left by postholes and post-molds, as well as rubbish pits, cellars, well shafts, and burials. The project was also the beginning of substantial American study of seventeenth-century artifacts, of iron, brass, ceramic, and glass, both of widespread European origin and local manufacture, such as armor, hand wrought nails, tobacco pipe-stems, wine bottles, pins, delftware tiles, earthenware, and stoneware. Artifacts uncovered at Martin's Hundred would later provide comparisons with those found at Jamestown.

James Deetz's work at Flowerdew Hundred, George Yeardley's 1619 plantation, also served to support Kelso's belief that the previous excavators at Jamestown had simply not known what the archaeological remnants of a seventeenth-century site would look like. Deetz's studies of "earthfast, hole-set, or post-in-ground buildings" made him an expert on seventeenth-century vernacular architecture in the Tidewater (Deetz 15). Sub-floor pits turned up artifacts similar to those that would later be found at Jamestown, such as bellarmine or Bartmann German stoneware (Deetz 28). Military artifacts such as armor and cannonballs also compare to Jamestown artifacts (Deetz 34). Flowerdew Hundred and Martin's Hundred, both examples of settlements expanding from Jamestown fort and settlement, are important because they were excavated prior to Kelso's work at Jamestown, and provided him with expectations of what typical seventeenth-century archaeological features and artifacts might be recovered.

A Proposal
Kelso went to the APVA in 1993 with a proposal to comprehensively excavate their property in the hopes of making substantial archaeological contributions to the upcoming 400th anniversary celebration of Jamestown's founding in 2007.

From the beginning in 1994, there were two major goals for the project: (1) find, uncover, and recover whatever might remain of the earliest settlement and the growth of the 17th-century town and, at the same time, (2) make that process of discovery as accessible to the visiting public as possible (Kelso Forward).

Kelso and the proposed Jamestown Rediscovery project would operate on the principle that archaeology "is a proper concern of everyone," and would include the public in "the recovery and study of the past" (McGimsey 5). Kelso's proposal was no idealistic fantasy; he had what he considered substantial evidence to support his theory that the fort and settlement, or some portions thereof, remained on Jamestown Island. Subsequent developments in historical archaeology since the 1950s prepared him to look for traces of seventeenth-century vernacular architecture such as postholes and stains in the soil, from the work dune by Hume at Martin's Hundred and Deetz at Flowerdew Hundred (Cotter 17-25). Kelso, along with colleagues Nicholas Luccketti and Beverly Straube, restudied the 1955 National Park Service excavation's field notes and artifacts. They believed that the previous excavators had unknowingly found seventeenth-century soil layers, from features they reinterpreted as slot trenches of the palisade wall, as well as iron and pottery fragments (Kelso 3).

A thorough study of the documentary record associated with Jamestown revealed that as each church burned or was otherwise destroyed, the new church was rebuilt on or in close proximity to the same spot: " . . . it made sense that churches rarely move from original locations sanctified by prayer and human burials" (Kelso 35). Since the 1639 church tower was still standing, it should follow that the original church of 1608, and the settlement, was in the surrounding area. This happened to be near the Confederate earthworks, on the 22 ½ acres that was APVA property. If so, then the building of the seawall seemed likely to have halted erosion in the vicinity of where the fort and settlement would be. It did not seem likely to Kelso that the entire site could be lost. Written descriptions of the fort were backed by the discovery of the Zuniga map, drawn by a Spaniard, a sketch which has come to symbolize the Jamestown Rediscovery project (Forman 1938: 38-9).

Despite his firm belief in the project's future success, to the outside world and scholarly community, Kelso was embarking on what "seemed to be a mission impossible" (Kelso 33). The unlikely probability of accomplishing his goal to find the presumably-lost fort and settlement parallels the successful chances of the original 1607 expedition's colonists, in that "high hopes and unyielding determination were no warrants for automatic success; if anything, the odds always favored failure" (Billings 5). Perhaps because the likelihood of success was deemed slim by so many at the project's conception, the amazing richness of the site as it has been uncovered today is all the more impressive.

Public Archaeology
If Jamestown represents the beginnings of permanent English habitation in North America, then the archaeological remains of the 1607 fort and settlement are the inherent legacy of all Americans (APVA). "This nation's past is contained in its soil" (McGimsey 17). Archaeology must be accessible to the public, and archaeologists must make an effort to educate the public and involve them as much as possible through public outreach. The Jamestown Rediscovery project exemplifies this approach, known as public archaeology, as Kelso recognized early on that "public participation provides the potential for archaeology's salvation," and incorporated this into his research proposal (McGimsey 37). Although archaeological excavation is by nature destructive, the artifacts in context offer a unique contribution to our cultural heritage, as descendants of this early Anglo-American settlement.

Visitors are separated from Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists only by ropes and, in some cases, waist-high fencing. It is thus possible for them both to observe the work and converse with the professional archaeologists in a casual manner, a unique experience compared to other sites where the excavation might be secluded from the public eye. Artifacts can be seen before they go to the lab for processing, still covered in the soil where concealed for hundreds of years. Volunteer guides trained by the APVA and updated regularly are on hand daily to interpret the excavation for visitors, armed with current maps and current information on artifacts and features. More formal tours, including the reconstructed church, are also available from National Park Service rangers (National Park Service). The APVA also sponsors regular lectures and seminars, and there is an annual conference at Jamestown where the year's findings are presented. Kelso and the Jamestown Rediscovery project hope to instill in the public both an appreciation of the site and the information that it yields as a means of effectively protecting Jamestown in the future (McGimsey 7).

Jamestown Rediscovery
When one visits Jamestown Island today, and the "ten-year, multi-million dollar archaeological, research and interpretation program . . . considered by many experts to be the premiere archaeological dig in the United States," it is hard to believe that only a little over ten years ago, the Jamestown Rediscovery project was merely a dream in the heart of one man, Dr. William Kelso (APVA). There was no year-round archaeological excavation, no laboratories for conservation and preservation, no vault for analysis and storage, as exist today. Dr. Kelso was alone when he dug the first excavation square, though soon joined by colleagues Nicholas Luccketti and Beverly Straube. Had Kelso's first solitary attempt in 1994 not yielded the seventeenth-century artifacts which it did, it is unlikely that the project would have continued, and grown, as it has over the past ten years.

Kelso and Straube have been constantly involved with the project since its conception in 1994, gradually adding field archaeologists, conservationists and preservationists, and lab technicians to the growing staff. The dig continues year-round as weather permits, with artifacts being sent to the Dale House laboratory for clean-up, conservation, and preservation, before going to Straube in the Yeardley House for analysis and further study, by outside experts such as forensic specialists from the Smithsonian, as necessary. Artifacts then go on display in the Rediscovery Center, which is currently undergoing construction for the new archaearium, a joint venture with the National Park Service. An annual field school, arranged through the University of Virginia, is conducted for six weeks in the summer, teaching students methods and theories in American historical archaeology through excavation and recording. The staff operates very much within the public eye and ear, always willing to explain and demonstrate their work and findings to site visitors. Jamestown is part of every American's heritage, and this is evident in the willingness of the archaeologists to eradicate the confusion often exhibited by those site visitors unfamiliar with archaeology.

The Jamestown Rediscovery project also accomplishes one of the most important, yet often neglected goals of archaeology. That is, to make the findings and results of fieldwork and analysis available to the academic community through publishing within a reasonable amount of time. As McGimsey states, "it is not enough to make adequate records. Those records must be made available to the public" (1972: 11). Kelso and his staff work extremely hard to accomplish this priority. Annual field reports are promptly published, with those from 1994 to 1999 available online. They are also published in book format, available for sale both onsite and online. A cumulative book is in the works for 2007, to coincide with the 400th anniversary celebration of Jamestown's founding. The Jamestown Rediscovery staff is active in professional organizations, such as the Society for Historical Archaeology, presenting their findings to colleagues at annual conferences. Results are also made available to the general public via the official website, and in newspaper and magazine articles, including such popular magazines as National Geographic and Smithsonian, as well as educational television programs on the Discovery and History channels.

Findings and Results: 1994-2004
On April 4, 1994, Dr. Kelso excavated the first square. In that same field season, working along the river, a section of palisade trench with a parallel line of postholes in close proximity was discovered (Kelso 37). The team needed to match the descriptions in the documents to the physical remains of the fort, as well as date the fortification to the early seventeenth-century. The 1994 season "served to anchor the hypothetical south wall of the document-based plan" (Kelso 37), and by the fall of 1996, a moat, curved wall trench, and segments of palisade trench leading to the east bulwark were discovered. "The two sides of the fort came together at 46 ½ degrees, the exact angle the reported dimensions of the fort would create" (APVA). Large numbers of artifacts dating to the early seventeenth-century, including crucibles with glass and copper residue, Borderware ceramics, and armor, were being uncovered. A powder magazine was also excavated near the southeast bulwark. Governor George Allen declared September 12, 1996 James Fort Day, as he formally announced the discovery of James Fort (APVA).

In the subsequent field seasons, John White's warehouse ca. 1640, an "out" building that may have been a jail, and the other palisade walls were excavated (Kelso 2004). Slot trenches around the projected north bulwark, near the Confederate earthworks and the 1639 church tower, yielded such artifacts as copper scrap, cracked rock, and tobacco pipe stem fragments (APVA). Cellar-like pits, many of which were backfilled and thus particularly rich in artifacts, hearths, burials, especially in the vicinity of the 1663 Statehouse site, and a seventeenth-century well have all produced numerous artifacts detailing everyday life in the early days of the colony. There is evidence of "mud and stud" architecture, particularly in conjunction with a possible military barracks.

Since the first field season in 1994, the Jamestown Rediscovery crew periodically revises the existing archaeological site plan and excavation goals to incorporate features uncovered in prior seasons, and take into account information gained from artifact analysis and ever-growing documentary support (Figure 2). They conduct open area excavations, following what Kelso calls the "quilt method," moving from one area, and ten-foot square patch of the quilt, to the next (Kelso 35).

Work continues along the inside of the western palisade wall, on the inside of the fort, to determine what structures may have been present. Features include multiple brick hearths, including H-shaped hearths, and a long building, possibly a rowhouse with a cobblestone foundation, known as Structure 172, have been found (Figure 3).

Regarding Structure 172, 167 feet lengthwise, by 18 feet wide, have thus far been excavated. It was probably built between 1607 and 1622, and with the presence of a brick foundation toward the north end, it may turn out to connect to the governor's house (APVA). A wine cellar dating to the late seventeenth-century was excavated in the summer of 2004, yielding numerous intact wine bottles, including one bearing the seal of Governor Francis Nicholson (Figure 4).

Evaluation
The Jamestown Rediscovery excavations are conducted according to strict professional standards. Every square is carefully measured and laid out according to the grid system developed by Harrington and Cotter in the 1930s, and given a number. Paperwork is filled out in the field as the dig progresses, with every feature also receiving a number. The original copies are filed and stored for safekeeping, after the information is digitally scanned and saved onto computers. Thus context is preserved. Soil samples are taken of each square, one for storage and one that is sent out for analysis. Anything culturally modified is saved. Excavators use ¼ inch screens, pushing the soil through by hand so that nothing is lost or overlooked. Custom-designed and built mechanical power screens are also used, and water-screening is done particularly in the excavation of the bulwarks.

Every artifact bag is labeled with the square number, the excavators' names, the date, and a brief description of the place. As a precaution in case something were to happen to the bags, bag tags with the same information are placed inside each artifact bag. Once the bags arrive in the laboratory, before the artifacts are processed, the bags are recorded into the catalogue. There are full-time conservators and lab technicians who process and preserve the artifacts before they are either stored or go to the curator for study. Outside experts help with flora and faunal analysis, soil samples, geology, as well as skeletal analysis and facial reconstruction of human remains. In addition, the Jamestown Rediscovery project has the funding to purchase and implement such technology as a laser transit, for mapping in new squares, features, and even piece-plotting artifacts, creating digital information that can be transferred into GIS to create maps and graphs.

Coincidence of Results with Original Goals
Dr. Kelso and the Jamestown Rediscovery team, over the course of ten field seasons from 1994 to 2004, have unequivocally met and surpassed the original goals of the project, to find, uncover, and recover the remains of the 1607 James Fort and town, while constantly interpreting their work to the public. All three palisade walls of the original fort have now been uncovered, as well as the north and east bulwarks, or cannon projections, and west bulwark trench (APVA). Work continues to discover the layout of such features as buildings, wells and cellars, as well as to determine the use of space both within and outside the fort.

The site is profusely rich, and well over half a million artifacts have been uncovered thus far, with many dating to the early years of English settlement at Jamestown. Over ten years of excavation have recovered "the remains of palisade walls, military-type building sites, and the sealed deposits of thousands of English and Virginia Indian artifacts dating to the late-16th and early-17th centuries" (Kelso 34). Far from shoreline erosion by the James River destroying the James Fort settlement, as was taken for granted up until the 1990s and Kelso's Jamestown Rediscovery project, "the exact opposite is true: the archaeological remains of the early settlement are essentially intact" (Kelso 34). The masses of visitors and schoolchildren to the site throughout the years attest to the public's interest in archaeology in general, and Jamestown in specific.

Broader Significance
In addition to the site's national significance, as the first permanent English settlement in the New World, the first blossom of representative government, as well as the historical value and abundance of artifacts and features recovered from ten years of excavation, the Jamestown Rediscovery project is important because it represents something that is essential to archaeology as a field. It symbolizes the importance of always questioning the information that is interpreted and presented at sites, and the power that an individual archaeologist, one who believes in an alternative interpretation enough to make a proposal that goes against all odds and expectations, can wield.

Though archaeology can support the written record, and supplement the documentary evidence, it can also change history, because the archaeological record is true to life in the past, objective and unbiased. In the case of Jamestown Island, visitors today can see with their own eyes traces of the original palisade walls from the 1607 fort, and the surviving materials that the settlers would have used to begin their life in the New World. Prior to 1994, all of this was believed to have been lost to erosion, far beneath the water of the James River. Without the work of Dr. Kelso and the Jamestown Rediscovery crew, people all over the world would continue to believe that the fort and settlement were no longer extant. Instead, the excavation is constantly changing our knowledge and perception of seventeenth-century, post-medieval life. Jamestown Rediscovery has succeeded far beyond the original goals of the project, due to determination, perseverance, and faith, all of which are essential to archaeology.

Jamestown 2007
In less than two years, the 400th anniversary of Jamestown's founding will be celebrated. Preparations are currently underway to accommodate the increased number of visitors expected to visit the site on Jamestown Island. The APVA and the National Park Service are working in conjunction to build an innovative museum, an archaearium, state-of-the-art in design that will comprehensively display the archaeological findings from the excavations of the James Fort and settlement. The artifact collections of both APVA-Preservation Virginia and the National Park Service will be combined, with archaeologists and conservators from both organizations working side-by-side for the first time (APVA). The archaearium will replace the former National Park Service Visitor Center, which was destroyed by Hurricane Isabel in 2003, as well as the present temporary interpretive displays and visitor information centers. Portions of the current archaeological excavations on the inside of the western palisade wall, begun in the 2003 field season, will be left open for continued interpretation to the public, and viewing platforms will be constructed. As further professional recognition and commemoration of Jamestown's founding, the 2007 meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology will be held in nearby Williamsburg, Virginia. TBJ

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program
• The Department of Archaeology
• Journal of Field Archaeology