THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 29, 1994 TAG: 9411290265
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: JAMESTOWN LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Jesse Zinn scoops dirt into a shallow, wooden box with a screen floor. As he shakes the box from side to side, a soft pile of fine dirt filters through.
What's left in the box? This time, worms and clods of larger dirt. A few scoops later, a possible fragment of brick from a colonial home. The yield is thin on a recent day of archaeological surveying at Jamestown Island: brick fragments and a few cracked pebbles. The pebbles are byproducts of American Indian toolmaking.
But morale is high at the site. Just before lunch, Kea Duckenfield's shovel breaks into the ground to start the 500th test hole for the crew's archaeological survey of the island that was home to the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
``You've got to have hope,'' Dennis B. Blanton, co-director of the Center for Archaeological Research at the College of William and Mary, says encouragingly to the six-member crew.
Blanton hopes that the crew's painstaking work will turn up answers to a number of questions. What kind of colonial settlements were away from the town of Jamestown and where were they? How were they protected? Where were the Indian sites, and how long before the colonists arrived in 1607 did the Indians leave - or as Blanton says, ``Were the fires still warm?''
The three-month archaeological survey that began Nov. 14 is part of a five-year overall assessment of the island that also includes examining its biology, botany and geology, said Curt Gaul, the supervisor park ranger for the Colonial National Historical Park at Jamestown.
``It's completely interdisciplinary - studying the interplay of the environment and the people of Jamestown,'' Blanton said.
Archaeologists have studied the 22-acre town site at Jamestown several times in the 20th century.
``That leaves the remaining 1,500 acres virtually unknown from an archaeological standpoint,'' Blanton said. ``We're going to discover the sites that are out there.
``That will allow us to make some fairly comprehensive, broad statements about the way the island was used not only in the colonial period, but also in the prehistoric.''
The survey also will indicate good sites for later excavation and preservation. ``You can't protect what you don't know about,'' Blanton said.
The test sites are holes about a foot in diameter and about knee-deep - just down to the undisturbed subsoil. The crew is working its way from one small bright orange flag to the next one 20 meters away.
In just over a week of digging, the crew's oldest finds were chips of flint and jasper left over from toolmaking 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. They also found a stone knife or spear point from the late archaic period that is between 4,000 and 5,000 years old, Blanton said.
As well as identifying possible sites for full excavation, the survey results should produce a series of maps showing land use, information for park service exhibits and a computer data base. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jesse Zinn looks for manmade materials in a tray of dirt on
Jamestown Island. The three-month archaeological survey that began
Nov. 14 is part of a five-year overall assessment of the island.
KEYWORDS: ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARTIFACTS by CNB