THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 1, 1996 TAG: 9609010094
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DONALD P. BAKER, THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: JAMESTOWN LENGTH: 64 lines
Archaeologists don't expect instant gratification. But the first day that William M. Kelso stuck a shovel into the soil here at the site of the first permanent English settlement in the New World, he knew he had struck pay dirt.
Kelso's discovery of the foundations of the first fort built by English settlers after they landed on this scenic island in 1607 - the fort long thought to have been destroyed by erosion - will be trumpeted to the world here next month, when the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities plans a gala ``for a global announcement of extraordinary archaeological finds.''
It was April 4, 1994, when Kelso, a deeply tanned man of 55 with white hair and mustache, uncovered a piece of broken pottery at the site.
The shard matched pottery he had seen only weeks earlier in Portsmouth, England, that had been taken from the shipwrecked Mary Rose, part of King Henry VIII's fleet that sank off the English coast in 1545.
``Since that first day, we knew we were at ground zero, and every day since then has been exciting,'' said Tim Kolly, an APVA spokesman.
The APVA, which for the past century has owned the most historic 22.5 acres of this 1,600-acre island (the rest belongs to the National Park Service), hired Kelso to conduct a dig with the idea that some new clues to Jamestown's founding might be uncovered in time for its 400th anniversary celebration in 2007.
Kelso and his crew are more than a decade ahead of schedule.
Kelso, who had been working at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello near Charlottesville, Va., had never accepted the conventional wisdom of the past 200 years: that the first permanent settlement at Jamestown had been washed into the two-mile-wide James River. The theory had long discouraged others from digging at the site, which was retained in pristine condition as a shrine to America's first English residents.
Soon Kelso found a palisade trench, post holes of a decayed building and a network of drainage ditches ``that we knew was not just a garden fence,'' Kelso said.
``It was a military signature,'' he knew, from the time when Capt. John Smith and his fellow explorers expropriated the land from the Powhatan Indians and the family of Pocahontas, who, the legend goes, twice saved Smith's life.
Subsequent poking around by Kelso and a staff of nine archaeologists, along with more than 100 college students and local volunteers, has unearthed more than 90,000 artifacts.
The booty includes a full helmet and breastplate of armor, jewelry, ceramic coins, clay pipes and a brass book clasp. All are being cataloged in a makeshift laboratory along the James River.
Because they don't want to detract attention from the preservation's Sept. 12 announcement of the fort discovery, Kelso and Kolly won't say directly that the first Jamestown fort has been found. But Kelso concedes that ``no site of this significance to United States history predates this.''
The APVA has mailed invitations to about 600 people and organizations, including representatives of the British government and local Indian tribes for the announcement. Virginia Gov. George F. Allen will be the main speaker.
The excavation has been supported by several organizations, including technicians at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration lab at nearby Langley Air Force Base in Hampton.
The lab's X-ray equipment has cut through deterioration to reveal fine details, including images and words, on some coins.
So far the project has cost about $700,000, about $400,000 of which was covered by the state. The federal government chipped in $190,000. by CNB