PART ONE

Exploration: The Ground Yields Many Things

By JOHN L. COTTER
Supervising Archeologist, Colonial National Historical Park

"As in the arts and sciences the first invention is of more consequence
than all the improvements afterward, so in kingdoms, the first
foundation, or plantation, is of more noble dignity and merit than all
that followeth."

--LORD BACON


In the Summer of 1934 a group of archeologists set to work to explore
the site of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown Island,
Va. For the next 22 years the National Park Service strove--with time
out for wars and intervals between financial allotments--to wrest from
the soil of Jamestown the physical evidence of 17th-century life. The
job is not yet complete. Only 24 out of 60 acres estimated to comprise
"James Citty" have been explored; yet a significant amount of
information has been revealed by trowel and whiskbroom and careful
recording.

By 1956 a total of 140 structures--brick houses, frame houses with brick