The only 17th century piece of Jamestown still above ground is the bell tower of the Jamestown Memorial Church.
Preservation Virginia and Jamestown Rediscovery celebrated the future installation of a glass roof on the inside wall of the structure this week. Doing so will protect the interior, said Jim Horn of Jamestown Rediscovery.
“We do want to celebrate the fact that we are going to put a roof on the church to keep the weather out,” Horn said.
The church tower roof and a nearby excavation of a well are ushering in a new phase of preservation at Jamestown, where English colonists first landed in Virginia in 1607 and enslaved Africans followed in 1619. With the surrounding James River encroaching on what could be valuable historic evidence, time is of the essence for archaeologists and preservationists to dig what they can out of the gray Jamestown mud.
Preservation Virginia director Elizabeth Kostelny said preserving the tower is vital to the entire settlement. For many years, she said, people thought the tower was the only piece left of the town.
“Generations thought Jamestown was gone, and we were able to, through the good work of this team here, prove that Jamestown is still here, awaiting to be studied,” she said.
An unexpected find
Everything left from the early days of the Jamestown settlement is in the mud underneath the island.
Finding the well was the highlight of archaeologist Natalie Reid’s three years working at Jamestown.
She heard the bricks of the structure before she saw them.
“And I immediately realized there was either a well or a foundation here, but it was going to be something big — and it was indescribable,” Reid said.
The treasure Reid and other researchers found at the bottom of the 17th century well isn’t treasure in the traditional sense. They were looking for spoons, seeds, leather boots and combs. They also found one sword.
Four hundred years ago, wells were used as refuse pits after they ran dry.
“It means they're preserved remarkably,” Reid said. “The only place around Jamestown Island that we found intact leather shoes and other organic materials is at the bottom of wells.”
Connections to the past
David Givens is the director of archaeology at Jamestown. He found the sword at the bottom of the well that was otherwise full of leather goods, rope, and seeds.
Givens’ favorite find, though, was a copper-alloy spoon. He said archaeologists are supposed to stay professional and impassive as they work. But he found it hard to do that when he touched the mud-caked spoon and felt a strong connection to the past.
“There are poignant moments in which you say, ‘Wow, I found somebody's spoon that they dropped in the well 406 years ago.’ And that is an emotive moment,” he said.
On a much larger scale, Givens said, the Jamestown artifacts tell the story of a fledgling nation.
“It only underscores the importance of Jamestown in a larger discussion and narrative of how we became American,” he said.
“Archeology puts you in touch with an exceptionally diverse past of first peoples, first English and first Africans who were forcibly brought here in 1619. And that's what we're finding.”
