Jamestown Rediscovery: A World Uncovered

In December 16 0 6 3 small ships carrying 104 men and boys set off from England for the new world. They were sent by the Virginia Company of London a trading enterprise chartered by King James the First. The people in those ships the Susan Constant Godspeed and discovery came not so much to plant a new nation but to find gold silver and timber to establish a commercial base. It took them four hard months to reach about Ruka. They anchored near a low lying Peninsula Chesapeake Bay and started building what became the first permanent English settlement in the New World. They called it Jamestown in honor of their king. It was May 13th sixteen hundred seven. Hello I'm Roger Mudd and I'm standing on Jamestown island in the James River

about 60 miles downstream and southeast from Richmond Virginia. It was here are quite close to here that the Englishman some gentleman some adventurers some soldiers some craftsmen some laborers began to breathe life into what was to become the United States of America a Spanish colony at St. Augustine in Florida it was already 40 years old. But the English colony at Roanoke Island North Carolina had mysteriously vanished about 20 years before. And the pilgrims would not land in Massachusetts for another dozen years. And so it was here that the English got their toehold and began the task of building what became England's first permanent settlement in the New World. Their initial priority was to protect themselves against the Spanish by sea and against the power town Indians by land led by the young explorer and Soldier of Fortune John Smith. The newcomers build a triangular Fort called James fort at the river's edge and then built the Hudson storehouses to go along with it.

For Jamestown founders the gentle spring of their arrival gave way to a stifling Virginia summer which must have shocked the English you were used to chillier weather. Then came a first brutal letter. It took over a dozen years before Jamestown was assure the survival the settlers endured disease cold starvation fire and war with the Indians. Still the Virginia Company kept sending more and more people. During the winter of 16 0 9 16 Tam 440 died. There were even reports of cannibalism. But Jamestown hung on. Not until the rigid martial law was lifted in 69000 however did the English concepts of government and capitalism really take root. The company not only allowed the colonists to begin working for themselves but also allowed them to elect an assembly to make their own laws.

It was on July 30th 16:19 that the first representative legislature in the Western Hemisphere convened at Jamestown. As the town grew and spread down the island. The original fort its military significance diminished became unnecessary. Jamestown however remained a port. The colonial capital for eighty years it was burned twice in sixteen seventy six and then in sixteen ninety eight in sixteen ninety nine. The seat of government moved to Williamsburg. The town's population began to shrink. And the region was given over to tobacco. Despite the presence of a Confederate artillery battery. Jamestown escaped significant damage from the civil war but not from the eroding power of the James River. In 1903 the Association for the preservation of Virginia antiquities the

AP in order to preserve the Jamestown church on the battery site acquired a twenty two and a half acre parcel of the island. The Army Corps of Engineers then built a protective seawall along the shoreline. No one knew it then. But the sea wall flanked the varied and forgotten remains of the original 16 0 7 fort. During the first half of the century. Both the AP and the National Park Service which have acquired the rest of Jamestown Island. Conducted a variety of archaeological digs but none of them uncover the original fort. And in 1956 all formal exploration stopped. In 1994 in anticipation of the 400000 averse story of James Townes founding the APBA began digging again.

Well the Park Service. Had funding for a massive noninvasive approach to archaeology which is simply not putting a shovel in the ground. And we granted them permission to look at our twenty two and a half acres and hope to share in that information build on the other hand brought to the project a very normal method of archaeology which is to really get your fingers dirty and to open the ground. The good hands were those of the director of archaeology Dr. William Kelso the assignment for Kelso and his team of archaeologists and historians was in effect to find ground zero of the United States of America. It's a purpose of the Jamestown rediscovered project to find the earliest part of the cornerstone that is to find the archaeological of the early Jamestown story that is laid buried now for almost four centuries on the 8th

property. Discovery of this significant landmark as its 400 anniversary celebration approaches in 2007. Among the major American archaeological find of the century. Not many thought had much of a chance to find the first footprint. But they were wrong. It took Kelso and his colleagues less than two years to be convinced that they had found the original James fortune of 16 0 7. What they wanted to be sure. One more day the rover. Found James. You know I mean. Ninety nine point nine on. The official announcement was made by Governor George Allen September 12th 1996. Thus from the Jamestown fork foundation we all are reminded that on this unequalled hallowed ground the foundation of free people and free enterprise was begun today. I'm very pleased to officially

announce a finding of monumental significance. We have discovered America's birth place the original Jamestown fort. Thank. You new in the city of the early settlement and then the palisade confirmed. That. There is a piece of fortification here somewhere but it took a lot more excavation to uncover the entire pattern. Once we began to see enough. Of the outline the military outline of this and that it began to. Coincide with the historical descriptions. To the point where there was very little question if any. Then we could we could come out and say it was for this fort behind me is an approximate recreation of the second Jamestown fort built around 16:10 constructed and maintained by the Jamestown Yorktown foundation. It's roughly a mile

from the original site. Finding the original fort then of course at the Jamestown rediscovery project was on its way. Finding the site so quickly was exhilarating enough but anticipating what lay ahead was breathtaking. It was the start of a long rich and remarkable journey into this nation's distant beginnings. Archaeology is a science which retrieves and examines what's been left behind.

It has always been and still is time consuming labor intensive and difficult to master. Machines no matter how sophisticated cannot match skilled hands or trained eyes. Thomas Jefferson in a sense invented the time and the methods that we use in archaeology to tell you how much it has not changed. And this is in the late 18th century and it technology helps us manage these thousands of pieces of information that we find. But to actually find these cases from a ship it takes human physical labor hand digging. And that's that's the bottom line. Killer cow disease is extremely physically taxing. And yet it's exciting in that. There's always that. Carrot out there in front of you that you can discover something. That you didn't even. Expect a foreign and. And which often happens. And.

It's very different than just digging the soil to make a hole in the ground because the purpose is kind of it's almost like Rebirth construction. The effort required to excavate a certain area. We now have field tested and we know from three seasons that. We can take two people or. Two and a half weeks to an average to dig one of our units which is a ten foot square. At this point I think it's fair to say that we have in three seasons of excavation with a number of people that we have have been able to. Look at maybe 5 percent of the ridge a fortified area as far as I can. See technology dating the work that's being done at Jamestown is that it's more of an aid in the managing of all the data that we find in each artifact is a fact. And it needs to be put in a place that it can be. Because it has been drawn out when we come to interpretations and that it also through computer manipulation and interpretation that we're finding. It's a tremendous aid there.

In my job in particular. The computers and things have come in. Amazingly handy. Something we can do is show people the actual soil stain and then the drawing above it show it actually how the building would rise out of the ground. The Internet has been tremendously helpful in several ways one with a with a website we've been able to get the information to the general public quickly and they've come on when they come here and understand having some understanding of the project. Another way the Internet is helped is that we are in direct contact with all the time lag with researchers in England and in the Netherlands and who are researching the same period as Jamestown and we've learned a lot through that on the X-raying of. Metal objects that we found we think these things have been the ground for over 400 years they're so rusted you can't tell what they're what they look like so and in using the mass of X-ray

capability we've been able to. See how to preserve things and also to identify things we couldn't ordinarily do before. They actually start. Why conservation also has an implication to us. By getting three feet through all this corrosion and all the things that make it really difficult to see where things are. And it also helps us bike ride us take a peek at really well structured Melisse where programmers not. Aware it's yes it helps this sort of play or have tree rings. To. Be the. Point of stress for. Me. Probably. Has to. Reinforce that. As far as ground radar we've used it. We're finding more and more that it really isn't helping because what we're looking for that are not part of foundations stones and bricks and all that kind of thing and but it's just these these stains in the soil and they don't show up in ground radar very readily.

I don't see anything replacing the. Daily grind of digging slowly through the soil physically that's the only way you can get to the information. To the archaeologist the ground is not just a place to stand on. It's more like a book full of stories waiting to be read. Assembling those stories interpret. Them and putting them into historical context is what archaeologists do. And the ground that Jamestown has turned out to contain a huge and extraordinary volume. It's been undisturbed. We're lucky in that way. But I think we've hit the hot spot the beginning area of settlements the luck of the project was because Jamestown had failed to grow and prosper.

That meant there was little or no development and that meant that none of the intrusions that routinely contaminate historic sites and destroy artifacts ever occurred. But previous archaeological digs were cursory and missed the fourth because the evidence was subtle rather than eye catching. Well people certainly found traces of it without knowing what they were looking at necessarily there's never been a research driven large scale research research driven project on this section of the property with the exception of the stuff inside the Confederate earthworks Jamestown rediscovery However overlook nothing. And once the team had found Ground Zero a whole new world opened up. Being an optimist I thought we're going to find part of the fort. I thought it was here. I thought it would exist. I was hoping a kind of in the best case scenario we'd find us a small section. To be honest in the fact that we have found almost 80 percent is still intact the site it is of course still intact is just a total bonus you know that's fantastic. We had hoped to find artifacts that

had never been found in Virginia before the types of things because of the fact that Jamestown is the oldest settlement. What we found has been a link between England and America in a sense that this is a sort of missing link. And then I had hoped that we would be able to preserve these things and involve the public in the process and that's that's definitely happened. The potential of the project to peel back the layers of 400 years of history aroused interest from the start. Teachers graduates. Students historians archaeologists all answered Kelso's call for volunteers to help the APBA staff. Visitors came not only intrigued by the excavation. But also because Jamestown rediscovery encouraged them to come look ask questions and learn. It was an unusually open project. I think the word is getting out people are very interested in knowing what's going on this expedition is going on down here.

And we spend a lot of time interacting. No more than. Yeah. A lot. Right. Soon the project began producing a rough portrait of earliest Jamestown of its people who they were what they did why they did it. The portrait was unlimited by thousands of artifacts on the one hand and the simple buried stains of wood posts on the other. And in many ways the Jamestown portrait was a surprise. Why. This sort of archaeology also is difficult to understand at

first glance because we don't find brick foundations the fort and the buildings. Leave simply holes in the ground or trenches. And for somebody who's really not used to that are not educated or versed in that to make that leap from looking at a field in a hole in the ground to a standing building is something that takes some explanation. Would not bricks not mortar but wood was the material of necessity for those who came to Jamestown in 16 0 7. What of course does not last forever. If the UK is. And it disappears. But to the trained die would also leave the signature and impression. The posts used to Bill James for so long ago left their signature stains in the soil. It was those stains which gave Kelso and his team evidence of the handiwork of James town's earliest sufferers. But there was other

evidence as well. He did all this reading before. I've been doing it for 30 years actually. But before the excavations even started and you get a mental model of what should be here and then as things are going covered it turns turns it around and you ask new questions about the same time you read again and words jump out at you say oh that's what that means. William strait she came to the colony on us by the way Bermuda actually where where his wife's ship was wrecked and he wrote the most detailed description of the fort. He became the secretary of the colony and in fact we found the ring that we think belonged to him and that his writing that in that same by it's a manuscript to describe his ship wreck of the Sea Venture and commuter became Shakespearean basis for the tempest play. The so-called Zune Zune Weygand that. Has been a puzzle to historians since it was first significant late 19th century turned up in the Spanish archives

and it's a tracing everyone feels the earlier draft that was done by John Smith shows a fort in a way that it people thought was just simply symbolic of A4. As we began looking at it more and more in looking at we found in the ground it's been. Revealing I think that the map is more accurate than people thought for a chart and very accurate chart of danger. It turned up about a year and a half ago in The Hague and it shows James Island and it shows a symbol of a building or a fort or whatever. On the island in such a way you can tell where. Jamestown was located specifically on this piece of ground. It turned out to be like finding the treasure map if you find a treasure. It would if we had that four years ago we would have been much more confident they would have found much more of the fort before we push on the ground. Bill Kelso has said that for him finding the original fort was like scoring a

touchdown in the Super Bowl then finding and unearthing the artifacts around the fort must have been like winning the game and over time. The merchants the investors the gentleman and the soldiers who came to Jamestown Captain John Smith in his company are usually depicted as unsure of themselves incompetent and unprepared. But the project began to find evidence that those descriptions were off the mark. I think it's a startling departure from what's the kind of conventional understanding of the nature of the English experience at Jamestown. A number of historians have written that Jamestown was a and it's a quote fiasco. You know it was a lot of people died it just barely survived physically and it was a disaster for the Virginia Company didn't make any money and it was all because they sent the wrong people. I I don't see that archaeologically I mean it's

they knew enough to produce the right goods to trade for food. They knew enough to fortify themselves in a place on the island. The choice of the island was strategically militarily a good choice. The choice of where to put the forts on the island was a good choice because it didn't go the way it was the highest piece of ground. It would be more easily defendable than other places on this island or other places on the river. In that sense. What I think it's doing is asking questions about what was what was right about the settlement of Jamestown and to look at the other side of the coin and archaeology can often do that we find something to say what's this you know why is this Dutch coin here or what is it saying and we began to look into some connection you'll say ah because these people were soldiers in Holland you know for four years and they built forts and they knew how to do it and they did so in their first shot at. So I think it's saying let's get up it let's get a fair picture

here yeah there was a lot of mistakes but there were a lot of also successes and things that were right about the settlement. It now seems clear that the Englishman who came to Virginia early in the 17th century ran an expedition that was better than most historians of thought. From a strictly military view the James forte makes that clear. And the newly unearthed artifacts make clear that many of the colonists far from being incompetent were men of commercial station who brought with them to Jamestown the niceties of their lives in England. Looking at the material that they use often has some sort of surprising because here they are in this rugged environment. And they have very nice things. They have very expensive German stoneware and silver. Their silver hair pins and their silver thread sound so there. They didn't give up all their amenities of life to come live it in the wilderness. They brought them with them.

Life went on with fewer and fewer things to support it. But having said that you know these guys were bringing over some fairly sophisticated and personal articles evidence of the full variety of life that we're going to see the physical debris that that small urban culture on the edge of the American wilderness left behind. Whether personal or professional is critical to the understanding of the Jamestown world and the people who lived in it. They rarely tells us who owned what but it does help give us an historical context for the lives of the settlers. We immediately almost from the beginning realized that they were more. Than just. Going from a total genius cultural background they were Englishman but.

They also had spent a lot of time. In the low countries Belgium the Netherlands. Fighting against the Spanish before they came here so they had. It's very reflective in the artifacts that that there was there was more of a Western European culture blooming here. Other artifacts for instance reveal that the men of the Virginia Company knew before they landed how important copper was to the local power town Indians and how that knowledge helped the colony survive. We know that in 15 70 the Spanish mission was here and we know the Indians wiped that out out and people said they don't want the mission here and they got rid of and course the Roanoke colony is considered a mystery or some sort of mystical disappearance. But you know ultimately it's just it was a fallacy and was a failure because the Indians didn't didn't cooperate didn't trade with over the long term continue this trading relationship with with the English. And

yet here that's different out there and trades extensively with English there's marriage between English and Jamestown. There is a friendship and that friendship seal or it's signified and sealed through trading. The most important. The access the unions have. For a long time. Thought that was the most important thing. That name was Brian Wells was a new source of copper. We have definite evidence from that. The craftsman that were here although didn't find gold they weren't spending their time refining precious metal. They were made they knew enough to make copper to trade for food so there were no farmers but they could trade for food and they knew how to do it. What we have found in the the food remains the bones animal bones is is the fact that they were living off of the kinds of things that were easy to get. And

that in fact there's a record of that where they they complained to to England say send us more food because we're not good hunters like the local politicians are and so they're catching turtles which doesn't seem to me to be a great challenge for hunters and it's in fish. The Jamestown artifacts not only provide a look at early 17th century life in Virginia but also how columnist adapted to their new surroundings throwing away what had been useful in England but impractical in Virginia for altering what did not quite fit. It was the beginning of an American identity in particular that famous American pragmatism one can detect in this a slight differences in the material culture that are creeping in not just responses to the Indians but things within the culture of the TCL colony itself. And so one can see in them the seeds of what happened subsequently in American history. So I think the historians and anybody interested in history that's a particularly useful thing to do.

You've got a fracture of the lower leg that is from a gunshot

wound. So you've got someone that is is going to be classified as a trauma death due to the personal violence. Indeed shot JR. More to the point who was JR or JR One told to see the names of the Jamestown original 104 are all known. But the name of the well preserved skeleton may never be. Today he is called simply Jr. standing of course for Jamestown rediscovery. Tieing Jr. to one of those 104 names has been daunting. Yet this was a skeleton of a human being with a history and a family of someone who stood beside Captain John Smith. Who gave up what was perhaps a successful and bustling life in London for the dangers of the Virginia wilderness. Someone who was killed by a devastating musket shot for reasons lost to history. To me finding the actual remains of a settler buried in the fort

was a powerful emotional experience because it's one thing to find objects that people use and food that they ate and the forts that they lived in the houses that they built. And that's kind of inanimate objects. But to find the remains of someone that had used all these things and had created this settlement is quite another. Also what we added was there were many ways of dying here. Not only was there. Rampant disease no question about that starvation. There were attacks from an Algonquin. But also. There may have been infighting political intrigue certainly accidental deaths within the within afford to so it was a tough place and I think it comments on that it does. So here's a 19 year old the remains of a 19 year old soldier

likely and has to die at 19 is kind of tragic and didn't last long with maybe a few months and then to die of either an accident or maybe even a murder or fight amongst themselves is is I just it's just another thing to consider when trying to understand what James time was like in those first few months were experts maybe an excavating remains but we're not an expert in analyzing. And so we needed to pull in the best possible specialist Dr. Douglas Owsley from the Smithsonian and is the world's expert. So he was consulted and brought in. This is believed to date from the very earliest days of the settlement. Human burials from this time period are extremely rare. If you. Look at the number of skeletons that have been found from the 17th century it's going to be probably about. Maybe a hundred I'd say. And the. This site what it offers the

potential is telling us about the very earliest. Part of the 17th century. I often say the difference in archaeology and in treasure hunting or digging up bones that we don't dig things up that we don't cover them. So to get to this these remains we had to go slowly uncover in that process took a long time and just uncovered in the ground the human skeleton is very dynamic and you can tell a lot about that individual you can examine the bones First off to determine how old the person is. You can determine sex ancestry. You can look at the bones and tell much about the activity in the occupation of that individual. It's probably going to be impossible to to put it exact name on the burial that we found but we can certainly narrow down the possibilities. And the reason be so difficult there's no gravestone. There are no great objects that could relate. We can relate to the person. We look at that individual. What it can tell us about his life and in the same sense when we're looking at the. Up and down let's about what in this instance you can tell us about that really something sensory.

He's very young he's probably about 20 or 25 years of age. He's white all of the features in the cranium and features in the skeleton suggest that we assume this burial was a gentleman because it's in a coffin at that time it would only be a gentleman or the higher status people that would rate a coffin would have that kind of a burial most people buried just in a winding cloth or a shroud I would look at him as being moderately robust healthy individual that bespeaks a lifestyle that was not engaged in heavy heavy physical labor. He is not someone in terms of the development of this muscle attachment areas that you would say as a particularly active person in terms of the strenuous physical existence the cause of death is going to be late it related to that fractured leg. You've got the gunshot wound that fractured both the tibia and fibula. We felt that it was so important to understanding what life was like in Jamestown

that he was worth recovering as a whole. In archaeology you use the most effective tool that you need at the time. And there are places where you can use bulldozers and there are places where you can use dental picks. We dug around the outline of the remains made of pesto and removed it and passed. Through. Trial and error really. No. 3. No. Fortunately more. Success than error. The real surprise to me in uncovering the burial was to find that there was a musket ball lodged

in the lower leg of this burial. Further X-ray show that there were a number of smaller projectiles in their small shot so that he was shot from behind in the lower leg with a load that would have been intended to. That seems to me kill people rather than used in hunting. There's no evidence of any types of. Healing in any sort of. Repair response and there's no evidence that they even tried to treat this treat this way by setting it or trying to. Deal with it. So what I think happened is. With a gunshot wound. They. Didn't have an. Artery. Major vessel was damaged. And. He died as a result of. Loss of. Diapers. I think the ultimate goal of archaeology is to understand life in the past so that we can understand light. And certainly artifacts give some indication of the way people live their lifestyle. The remains of their bodies give you

another more intimate look I think much more into their lives personally difference between looking at an inanimate object and what I would say an animate I view although it's not moving. We find the remains or burial is that it's it's almost a direct link back to the past to to to some something that could almost tell you the story of what went on. There's an outside chance that through reconstruction of of his face. That we could. Connect with. Portraits or portraits of relatives in England. Of someone that would have that appearance. Dr. Owsley called me and. Told me about the project. I had seen articles in different magazines and I actually had seen the skeleton flattened.

So I said to him. You know you got a bikini how you could get schooled together enough for me to do that. He says don't worry we can do it. I think about this person. As being alive. I think about what he could have been doing. I can see him out there. Trying to. Cut down these logs and build this fort so. Try to make him. The person. Could he he has a story to tell and people that are 9000 years old have a story to tell and by looking at those walls that's a way that I think were vitally interested in that. And I think that it is relevant to us today and so on and the sense is very much the way that we honor them is by my learning about their life story. Or

good or. The project is slated for 10 years but I I think that it will go beyond

my career I mean it's going to take a couple generations of people to study this which was the first town in a town is a very big and very big site. The Jamestown rediscovery project began in the spring of 1994 with the excavation of a modest eight by eight foot patch of ground. But the goals were ambitious and the hopes bright. A decade of work lay ahead. As the dimensions of the original dig got bigger. The projects hopes got higher and the public's interest in it soared. This archaeological trip to the nation's earliest beginnings in thrall of the people who were drawn to Jamestown and fascinated by the lives of its settlers. Television has carried the story to millions nationwide. Cadre of volunteers invited and selected by Doctor Council. Has come

regularly to Jamestown to help his staff. Many of these volunteers are teachers excited to be present at the uncovering of history and anxious to share their experience and knowledge with their students. And year after year I've just been coming down to increase my knowledge bring it back to my class. Learn about its history and it is a very. Grassroots level. And. It's just become a part of my summers come July. I find myself going south on 95 to Virginia. Jamestown has also appealed to students who are working on advanced degrees in history and archaeology but spend their summers at the site. Most of the time it's it's very it's hard work it's rather tedious. And mundane artifacts keep coming up all the time. But then every now and then you'll find either that that strange feature popping up in the ground or you don't know what it is maybe a trash pit maybe a moat maybe a you know an important post or an

important artifact. We work really hard and you get so dirty and so sweaty and you can just walk into the parking lot at the end of the day with just dragging ourselves along feeling like we've really put in a full day's work and it's just so exciting finding these little pieces and add effects. And some balm and tears are true profession. Established historians and archaeologists. Who cannot resist the temptation to be part of the Jamestown project. Can be a long slow process. This took a little over a year to do just this. Still others come as volunteer interpreters prepared and briefed by the professional staff. They answer questions and provide information for the increasing tide of tourists. The moment of discovery is often kept from it from anyone except the archaeologist and it's that moment of discovery really is the connection back to the past that instant when an artifact has been laying in the ground or whatever is discovered has been sitting in the ground. The last person to touch that

lived 400 years ago in this case. And it's that moment that we want to share with the public. From the beginning the project has been run as a unique work in progress for the public to observe. Unlike so many digs in remote locations the Jamestown dig is easy for the visitor to reach. And while this is occasionally slow the work the project team decided early to include the public take time to answer its questions and generate interest in the rediscovery of the country's formative years. We have only. Found the tip of the iceberg. And it's a big ice it's bigger iceberg and we have a green evergreen. I thought that well of trying the fort that's pretty manageable you know. Maybe less than an acre and a half. And yet what we're finding

is that the first sound that it grew and expanded and contracted and changed and. So we have. 100 years of excavation work and I can sit down and draw this up and in there it's a town and when you began to talk about exploration of the town. It it's it's an ongoing study after four seasons of excavation. Almost every day we're finding something new about Jamestown. Some other pieces to the pattern. And there had been unexpected things have been things that we would predict and they would show up there. And that's that's almost as much excited as exciting as the surprises because it gives you a little more confidence and feeling that you know you begin to understand what's here. There's so much here there's more here than we even expected in the beginning. More of the fourth survives. More of the expanded for the village survives next to it.

And. At the rate we're going in it's in we're not exactly dragging our feet. There's an excavation here for years and you're working it at Jamestown has to be an American like yeah. Marcus welcome back now to. The absolute. Pinnacle. Resort. White. America became. Began a James. As far as personal career. And this is my dream. I'm living the dream. This is the greatest thing that could happen. And. What more can I say. Archaeology is really the first step in the search for the forward. And the results being that we have artifacts coming in from the field that need conservation curation storage. We hope to someday exhibit this wonderful collection. It

talks about the first hundred years. And so these things are expensive and we're looking to to the American people to help support this effort. As we look at 2007 which we believe will be a great celebration of the founding of America. One hundred four Englishman and boys sailed into the James River May 16 0 7 and built their fort. They were hoping to establish a base for capitalism in the New World and even find gold and silver. They never did find the gold or the silver but against overpowering odds they did find a way to survive. And in so doing they left a record of how they did it. Jamestown rediscovery was launched to find that record. To read it to understand it to put it into historical context and then to learn from it. Jamestown rediscovery was dedicated to making contact with a distant American past and coming face to face with the lives of the Jamestown center. The project has allowed us to cross nearly four centuries to meet the people who took the first step on the American journey and has allowed us in the last decade of the 20th

century to shake hands with those in the first decade of the 70s. As the project progressed as it sees more and more clearly through the fog of history that country will become firmer and stronger.