Jamestown , Virginia , was an ocean away from England ’s monarchy , but America ’s first lasting English colonial village still had its own ruling class . Members includedJohn Rolfe , the English baccy planter who married Pocahontas;George Yeardley , an former regulator of the colony of Virginia ; andThomas West , the English nobleman who was also known as Lord De La Warr . ( He service as the first regulator of Virginia , and his Americanized title , " Delaware , " became the name of the mid - Atlantic state , river , and bay . ) Now , The Washington Postreportsthat archaeologists are examining human remains forget at Jamestown to see if any belong to elites like these figures .
Since 1994 , a team of archaeologists fromPreservation Virginia , a nonprofit historical conservation group , have been search Jamestown ’s end for clues about its past tense . Theylaunchedthe Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project to locate the purportedly eroded site of the settler ' original fortress . Called the James Fort , it was build up in 1607 by Captain John Smith and other settler . It ended up containing four graves , including that of De La Warr ’s nephew .
Over the decades , the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeology Project has site important edifice and happen upon more than 1.5 million artifacts . But in recent years , the undertaking ’s archeologist have team up up with anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution to dig Jamestown ’s tiny Christian church , where gamy - condition person were once interred .
The task is a challenging one : Historical records do n’t express where these bodies are located , and they were sometimes dig up and reburied . Experts think that there may even be several bed of burials beneath a church ’s storey .
Further refine matters , this is n’t the first time Jamestown ’s adoration site have been grok up . Archaeologists from the late 1800s and early 1900s perform their own searches , and even get out what is likely a tiny time abridgment in the foundation of a seventeenth - century Christian church . ( date back to 1901 , it was recently find in tardy October , concord totheWilliamsburg Yorktown Daily . It contained a letter , which had disintegrated and was thus unreadable . ) But they also left slew of damage in their backwash , ranging from shovel cut to osseous tissue to carelessly reburied stiff .
Of particular interestingness to the squad ’s archaeologists are the bones of West . He die in 1618 while at sea , and his corpse were belike preserved in a barrel of wine-coloured or sprightliness and enrapture to Virginia . He ’s believe to have been the very first person to be forget in one of the settlement ’s early churches .
If one recently discovered skeleton — which appear to have belonged to a man of gamy position — doesn’t belong to West , his bone might be located at the very bottom of the church grave bed . This hunting might go kin to calculate for acerate leaf in a rick , but experts say that the nobleman might have been lay to rest in a especially shaped casket that was hold for important mass . Signifiers like these could make their quest easier .
To ID the stiff of important Jamestown settler , scientists will finally equate DNA from dig up skeletons with the bones of known congenator . But only time , scientific analytic thinking , and fate of thrifty digging will uncover the final resting shoes of West , Rolfe , and other historical figures .
[ h / tThe Washington Post ]
