The Jamestowne Connection

On Monday I had a day visiting Jamestowne. I had three scheduled visits, firstly to meet and do the 'In the Trenches Tour' with head archaeologist Dr Bill Kelso; secondly to meet with Senior Curator Bly Straube and thirdly to meet with Curator Melanie Piereira.
With great excitement and a bit of nervous intrepidation, I travelled from Williamsburg (where we were staying) to Jamestowne nice and early to get my bearings and hopefully have some breakfast there. There are 2 parts to the Jamestowne experience – the Jamestowne Settlement (see http://www.historyisfun.org/Jamestown-Settlement.htm) which is in essence a re-creation of the original settlement and Fort with tours led by costumed characters and reproduction Ships on the river (a good idea for Bideford to do this); the second part is Historic Jamestowne ( see http://historicjamestowne.org) and is the actual site of the original settlement with archaeological digs providing firm evidence of where the Fort was, the church, and other sites, including the original well. Both places have visitor interpretation and historical exhibits.

The In the Trenches tour was very interesting and a real insight into those early pioneers and early life on the Island. I was in a group of only 6 so it felt even more special (the tour can take up to 30 people)– Dr Kelso started digging, after he giving up his job to do so, and he really started off the detailed exploration of the site, keen to find answers to the puzzle. It was fascinating seeing the archaeological digs - when we were in there, one of the team dug up a piece of clay pipe and a black and white glass bead. We were told to look at the different colours of the earth which signified where possible structures may have been. What was incredibly pertinent was viewing lots of black crosses signifying graves – of the 106 original settlers, half died within weeks of arriving. Interestingly, the graves were within the Fort rather than outside it and Dr Kelso wondered if people were buried in the Fort so that the native Indians didn't see that the Community were sick as that would show a weakness and leave them vulnerable to attack. After the tour I went to meet Bly Straube and she had kindly got some sherds of North Devon Pottery Out for me to view – it was so exciting and felt a little weird being in Jamestowne and seeing pieces of pot that were made in Bideford or Barnstaple (the pieces couldn't be pin pointed). The three pictures of pottery here are reproduced by permission of Preservation Virginia, Jamestowne Rediscovery Project. There was a large piece of a dripping dish with a green glaze – used to catch meat juices during cooking – and a broken vessel that was vase shaped and Bly thought would have been used to transport dried fish (not a butter vessel as that was wider to pack the butter and layer it with salt to stop it spoiling). I also saw some smaller, but wonderful, sgrafitto sherds, with the yellow glaze that so signifies the North Devon style.There was an apparently unique small handleless cup that was used as a drugs cup, I held this one in my hand and took a photo of it. I was able to tell Bly about the RJ Lloyd collection at the Burton Art Gallery and she was very interested in that and will take a look at the website.

The last stop was meeting with Melanie (pronounced Me-lay-nee) and she had 'pulled out' 4 pieces from the millions of sherds they have that have been found on Jamestowne Island – yes that is millions!! That was pretty awesome too; there were 2 complete bowls (that has been pieced together) with a mix of geometric and swirly designs on and that signature yellow glaze; an almost complete mug and an almost whole vase shaped vessel with a rose design on it. She could have shown me all kinds of things and lots more but wanted to show me something to represent the collection. We also took a look together at Alison Grant's book on 17^th century pottery (kindly lent to me by Linda Blanchard at the North Devon AONB) and it was fascinating as she was looking through the pictures and pointing out all the things that there are in the collection.

Wow what a great day – I felt quite humbled by it all and although I am not here to research American history I felt that this is what I was learning a lot about too and the amazing resilience of those early British colonists in Jamestowne.