Historians’ accounts of Jamestown are unflattering, at best. The colonists who settled at a bend in the James River in 1607 have been portrayed as bumblers, gentlemen who survived the Virginia wilderness only by luck (and the intervention of a 13-year-old named Pocahontas). But last summer, when archeologist William Kelso of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities uncovered traces of the original Jamestown Fort, a new picture emerged.
In a previously unexcavated area near an old church, Kelso found stained soil marking the location of logs that held up the fort’s outer walls. He traced the outline of a three-sided structure that matched written descriptions of the original fort, which was damaged by fire in 1608 and was thought to have washed into the river. Inside, he found thousands of artifacts, including armor, ammunition, jewelry, beads, and pottery. He also found the skeleton of an early settler with ...
