Jamestown Turns 400

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the discovery of the location of the original fort at Jamestown. archaeologist William Kelso managed to locate the fort that many others had tried to find in the past century.

JAMESTOWN, Va. — Once again, the three brave ships will sail the mighty James and moor by Virginia's fair shore.

But this weekend, it will be to the noise of a party — the 400th anniversary celebration of the first permanent English settlement here in 1607. There will be feasts, music, reenactments and a visit by President Bush on Sunday.

Yet lost, perhaps, amid the celebration of the famed landings, is an achievement of another kind — one not of adventure, but of science.

Much that is new and exciting in the story of Jamestown is the result of discoveries made in the past 13 years by a white-haired 66-year-old archeologist named William M. Kelso, who found something here no other archaeologist had been able to find in a century of looking:

The long-lost site of Jamestown's fort.

Kelso's findings, unfolding quietly over more than a decade, take Jamestown's story back to its beginning, experts say, and rank among the greatest in North American archeology in the past 50 years.

It is quite an interesting story. Kelso deduced that others had been looking in the wrong spot.

Among other things, Kelso said, he reread the account of the deep-water landing and thought: "They didn't say they put the fort there; they said they landed there."

In addition, the approximate size of the fort — 1.75 acres — could be deduced from a surviving description penned about two years after the landing.

There was also an ancient Jamestown map, apparently drawn in 1608 by Spain's ambassador to Britain, which included a crude rendering of a triangular fort.

And there were remains of an old church about 50 yards from the river, which Kelso figured might be on the site of an earlier church that was said to have been in the middle of the fort.

"The whole key to digging here was the church," he said. Churches might be rebuilt over time, he reasoned, but they are seldom moved far from their original site.

Longtime readers know I'm a bit partial to history and archeology, so this kind of thing gets my attention. There is also a very nice slideshow of pictures from Jamestown, including a number from the site of the fort.