Jamestown Archaeology: Remains to be Seen uses archaeological discoveries to greatly augment what we know about the settlement from written records. It discusses how the archaeological revelations recreate the backdrop where, amid Jamestown’s growing fortifications, its houses, government buildings, churches, graves and village streets, the rule of law, representative democratic government, and venture capitalism took root in America. The volume examines the archaeological discoveries that date from the time of the first fortifications (James Fort 1607–1624) to the middle of the eighteenth century. It includes a chapter devoted specifically to how the fort was built, then redesigned and enlarged. It also addresses the archaeological examination of sites and artifacts relating to the Virginia Indians including a discussion of Pocahontas and the location of her lost grave in England. The 1676 “Bacon’s” Rebellion is explored along with various episodes of destruction and the building of the first Virginia Capitol building, the Ludwell Statehouse Complex. The last chapter presents a comparative review of Jamestown Island maps drawn every century since the town was founded showing photographically and cartographically how much of the Island and its archaeological sites have been lost to erosion and rising water for 400 years, ending with thoughts about the need for rescuing sites today in the face of climate change, sea level rise, and more Island land erosion.

This book is for historical archaeologists and historians as well as readers with an interest in the beginnings of America.

Jamestown Archaeology: Remains to be Seen uses archaeological discoveries to greatly augment what we know about the settlement from written records. It discusses how the archaeological revelations recreate the backdrop where, amid Jamestown’s growing fortifications, its houses, government buildings, churches, graves and village streets, the rule of law, representative democratic government, and venture capitalism took root in America. The volume examines the archaeological discoveries that date from the time of the first fortifications (James Fort 1607–1624) to the middle of the eighteenth century. It includes a chapter devoted specifically to how the fort was built, then redesigned and enlarged. It also addresses the archaeological examination of sites and artifacts relating to the Virginia Indians including a discussion of Pocahontas and the location of her lost grave in England. The 1676 “Bacon’s” Rebellion is explored along with various episodes of destruction and the building of the first Virginia Capitol building, the Ludwell Statehouse Complex. The last chapter presents a comparative review of Jamestown Island maps drawn every century since the town was founded showing photographically and cartographically how much of the Island and its archaeological sites have been lost to erosion and rising water for 400 years, ending with thoughts about the need for rescuing sites today in the face of climate change, sea level rise, and more Island land erosion.

This book is for historical archaeologists and historians as well as readers with an interest in the beginnings of America.

Listed in the household of Captain William Pierce in Jamestown in 1625, “Angela,” like the other Africans who ended up in the colony, was a victim of brutal wars in West Central Africa. Angela and hundreds of other Angolans were put on board a slave ship bound for Veracruz, Mexico. En route, the ship was attacked by two English privateers who then sailed to Virginia, and afterwards Bermuda, to sell the Africans as enslaved laborers to wealthy tobacco planters. Once in English America, the Angolans survived, persisted, and adapted to an unfamiliar new world and in so doing changed the course of American history.

Angela: Jamestown and the First Africans seeks to recover their untold story, a vital part of the shared history of early Jamestown that brought together Virginia Indians, Europeans, and Africans on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.
In collaboration with the National Park Service, the Jamestown Rediscovery team set out to learn more about Angela by excavating the site where she lived and labored. Archaeology finds the actual remains of people’s lives, and for marginalized or ignored individuals like the First Africans, it is often the only way to unearth and understand their important stories. Funded by a federal Civil Rights Initiative grant, Rediscovery archaeologists found the places and spaces that formed the landscape of Angela’s everyday life, just in time for the 400th anniversary of the First Africans’ forced arrival in Virginia.

This book is the culmination of that collaborative project. Angela: Jamestown and the First Africans presents the archaeological discoveries that uncovered Angela’s home, the technologies that revealed hidden landscapes, and the archival research that illuminated the lives of the First Africans in both Angola and Virginia. “Our books are portable exhibits that weave history, science, and archaeology to discover our shared American past,” said primary author and Director of Archaeology at Jamestown Rediscovery David M. Givens. “The story of Angela and the First Africans is a key part of our collective history that has been hidden for far too long. This new book shines a light on the lives of the First Africans, and explores Angela’s experiences through the physical traces she left behind at Jamestown.”

Title: Angela: Jamestown and the First Africans
Primary Authors: David Givens, Mark Summers, Sean Romo, Mary Anna Hartley, Dr. James Horn
Published: August 2022
Pages: 68

Dimensions: 9.5 x 0.25 x 8 inches

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 979-8-9866610-0-1

In the mid-sixteenth century, Spanish explorers in the Chesapeake Bay kidnapped an Indian child and took him back to Spain and subsequently to Mexico. The boy converted to Catholicism and after nearly a decade was able to return to his land with a group of Jesuits to establish a mission. Shortly after arriving, he organized a war party that killed the Spaniards.

In the years that followed, Opechancanough (as the English called him), helped establish the most powerful chiefdom in the mid-Atlantic region. When English settlers founded Virginia in 1607, he fought tirelessly to drive them away, leading to a series of wars that spanned the next forty years—the first Anglo-Indian wars in America— and came close to destroying the colony. But the English settlers proved more resilient than the Spanish missionaries had been forty years earlier. Additional soldiers, weapons, and provisions arrived from England, forcing Opechancanough to continue his offensive for decades. He survived to be nearly a hundred years old and died as he lived, fighting the invaders.

Deeply researched and brilliantly told, A Brave and Cunning Prince is the first book to chronicle the life of this remarkable chief, exploring his early experiences of European society and his long struggle to save his people from conquest.

This set includes the first four of the Rediscovering Jamestown series in paperback format:

1. The Archaearium: Rediscovering Jamestown 1607-1699

   
   The Archaearium: Rediscovering Jamestown 1607-1699  takes readers through one of the world’s few museums dedicated to archaeology. See some of the most spectacular finds among the millions of artifacts that archaeologists have unearthed in 20 years of exploring the original site of James Fort.

2. Jane: Starvation, Cannibalism, and Endurance at Jamestown

   
   Jane: Starvation, Cannibalism, and Endurance at Jamestown allows readers to follow archaeologists and forensic scientists as they work to unravel the story of a young English woman, whose remains were found in late July of 2012 during excavations of James Fort.

3. Holy Ground: Archaeology, Religion, and the First Founders of Jamestown

   
   Holy Ground: Archaeology, Religion, and the First Founders of Jamestown tells the story of the 2013 excavations of the graves belonging to four prominent men buried in the chancel of the 1608 church. Follow the trail as archaeological evidence, forensic analysis, historical research, and cutting-edge technologies help to unravel the mystery.

4. 1619-2019: Democracy, Diversity, Discovery

   
   1619-2019: Democracy, Diversity, Discovery discusses the events leading up to the 1619 General Assembly in Jamestown and the various commercial, economical, and social arrangements that were thought to be important to the success of the colony at the time.

Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly — the first gathering of a representative governing body in America — came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America.

In 1619, historian James Horn sheds new light on the year that gave birth to the great paradox of our nation: slavery in the midst of freedom. This portentous year marked both the origin of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy, and the emergence of what would in time become one of the nation’s greatest challenges: the corrosive legacy of racial inequality that has afflicted America since its beginning.

Unpersuaded by the common assumption that James Fort had long ago been washed away by the James River, William Kelso and his collaborators estimated the likely site for the fort and began to unearth its extensive remains, including palisade walls, bulwarks, interior buildings, a well, a warehouse, and several pits. By Jamestown’s quadricentennial over 2 million objects were cataloged, more than half dating to the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James.

Kelso’s work has continued with recent excavations of numerous additional buildings, including the settlement’s first church, which served as the burial place of four Jamestown leaders, the governor’s rowhouse during the term of Samuel Argall, and substantial dump sites, which are troves for archaeologists. He also recounts how researchers confirmed the practice of survival cannibalism in the colony following the recovery from an abandoned cellar bakery of the cleaver-scarred remains of a young English girl. CT scanning and computer graphics have even allowed researchers to put a face on this victim of the brutal winter of 1609–10, a period that has come to be known as the “starving time.”

Refuting the now decades-old stereotype that attributed the high mortality rate of the Jamestown settlers to their laziness and ineptitude, Jamestown, the Truth Revealed produces a vivid picture of the settlement that is far more complex, incorporating the most recent archaeology and using twenty-first-century technology to give Jamestown its rightful place in history, thereby contributing to a broader understanding of the transatlantic world.