heart-shaped tub. this is a different kind of general. this is a different kind of story. >> but several months later as a result of the article general mcchrystal has been fired, michael hastings continues the story and talks about his new book "the operators" sunday at 8:00 eastern on c-span's "q and a." on may 14th, 1606, 104 english settlers landed at jamestown island virginia to establish a colony for the virginia company. the location served as the capital of virginia until 1699. thought to be lost in history forever under the james river, the original fort was unearthed in 1994 by the jamestown rediscovery archaeological project. we visited jamestown to learn how the story of the 1607 settlers is being revealed every day through the study of artifacts. >> my name is blithe straub, i'm the senior curator for the jamestown rediscovery project. it's a project that started in

1994, it's a project of presservation virginia, the first statewide preservation organization in the united states. it is confusing that there are so many jamestowns and many people visit jamestown, and it turns out that they never went to the real place, you know, the place where all thes hadtry happened. so, there's a jamestown that's a living history museum, the jamestown settlement and they interpret jamestown and they have three wonderful ships and they've reconstructed a fort and and indian village and they have a huge museum over there. that is thea state-run organizan and they get state funds for that. the island itself, the original site of jamestown, is co-managed by the national park service and preservation virginia, so it's an unusual private/public partnership that goes on here. the park service owns the

majority of the island, 1,500 acres. preservation virginia has around 23, but their 23 acres incorporates the site of the original fort. the church, the church tower. and the last government building that was on the property. so, they've got a lot of history condensed in that 23 acres. and it's the -- it's preservation virginia, then, who are doing the archaeology that visitors will see on the site today. we call our project jamestown rediscovery, and so we're the jamestown rediscovery project of preservation, virginia, we do not get federal support and we do not get state support for our work, so we're highly reliant on donations, visitors coming, because we get half of the gate receipts. on visitors coming through. and grants and that's how we survive, it's hard in these

times. this site is incredibly rich. it's just amazing. and we've been walking over the material all these years, you know, it's been under our feet. when everyone was saying the fort was out in the river. so, i mean, it's just astounding that there's so much material. and i thought about why. for one thing there was so much death in the early years and sickness. i think a lot of things just got thrown away because they didn't belong to people anymore. they sort of were objects, possessions without a possessor, and they just -- and people just didn't have the willpower to do much of anything. we found a lot, like, lead thrown away that could have been reused and recycled and it wasn't, just tossed out. i think that's one reason. i think the fort itself, being a

protective barrier maintained a lot of trash within its perimeter. it didn't seem to be any orchestrated effort to wheelbarrow the trash out and toss it in the river or anything. it just seems to have collected inside the fort. and then there were periodic cleanup periods and rebuilding efforts when new governors came in, for instance. and then things would get dumped into old wells or old holes, filled them in. so, i think that also contributed to it. but, yeah, it's a wonderful, wonderful site. we have ceramics from all over the world, and this is really reflecting how cosmopolitan london is in the early 17th century and how connected it was to the rest of the world, to the merchants of the world, and it's not representing these different countries trading directly with jamestown.

some of the objections are personal possessions, and a lot of our gentlemen would have access to these exotic wares from other places. and even though they were coming to settle a very uninhabited and lonely place, you know, unconnected with any society really, they were bringing their best materials to eat from and to drink from. we've got lebanese glass and chinese porcelain. you can see some of that po porcelain here that they're bringing. so, it's really a different picture of jamestown than what w one would expect. it's rather wealthy in some regards. colorful. we've got professions like jewelers sitting in the fort and making jewelry. i mean, not all was death and dying and killing indians.

we're finding a lot of their leisure time activities, lots and lots of gaming dice. and chess pieces and backgammon pieces, musical instruments. so, it's from all the facets of their lives being reflected here. the people visiting jamestown have the opportunity to come in and look up close at the artifacts. they have to sign up. called a curator's tour, and we give them the whole orientation, what we do with artifacts behind closed doors, so it's a unique opportunity to get an up-chose loo up-close holook, they can touch 400-year-old artifacts, things john smith would have used. i think it's a really unique experience for visitors. we only bring ten people through at a time. keep the group really small, so

it's a better experience for everybody. the park itself, once you come through the gate, you can wander the entire grounds. you can see the archaeology going on. we have a museum on site. it's full of about 1,000 artifacts, all from the excavation. everything you will see in there from the excavations that we've been doing since 1994. it's a unique place. there aren't that many archaeological museums in existence, and so that's free as well. you can sign up for a special tour if you like with our director, dr. william kelso and that's called in the trenches tour. that's a little extra and he takes you under the ropes, so you get an up close-and-personal look from his perspective. >> how could this have been considered lost for hundreds of years? >> that's an interesting question. i think it wasn't lost for probably the first 100.

but nobody mentioned -- you know, didn't talk about it. at least any documents that survived. we don't know if it's in there. and then there were travelers that came in here and said -- and there was tremendous erosion on the west end of the island, and they said i can see remains of the fort being lost into the river. i read that about a week before i started, you know, oh, no. and so then it became just, you know, the story agreed upon. i think, then, there was also a confederate earthwork here, a large earthen mound was all over most of what we found, the fort site, not right in here, but very close. and -- well, there was no clue on the landscape of anything but this civil war fort. you know, on a site like this, there are periods and eras and time changes. this is -- was built in the

civil war fort as a bomb proof or a bomb shelter for the confederate troops, the confederate forces built this fort as a good position on the river, to set up the big guns to stop the union from coming up the river. and they built things where they could hunker down in case they were shelled. and what you're seeing here is if you look closely, there's wood even surviving. this was built as a below-ground wood room. and then on top they mounded and we've taken that off. but they've mounded at least six feet of clay, so that that would absorb the impact of shells coming, so it would be a bomb proof. this is only about a third of it. it goes all the way back. you can see there's a hilltop beyond that black plastic, and then there's a profile through another part of the room. the reason we've excavated this is that this is the 150th anniversary of the civil war.

and so it also gives a perspective of the jamestown period, you know, oit's just no one 1607 period here. it's all these different components. so, we've learned something about the civil war fort, but we also learned about -- if you come around over to here. try not to get in your way. wait. just stand right here just for a second. i'm going to be right back. so, this is a great example of a fort on a fort. this dark area is the palisade line from 1607 that we found everywhere, all the way around. we found it the first year down along the river and it's just dark soil. you can see there's dark soil here. and there's even some darker

circular impressions where the upright logs had disintegrated. and we traced that from the river all the way up to here. this is a reconstruction-ish that doesn't go deep enough to expose this layer. you can't see it in profile. but it only goes down about here. and you see it's a little off. we did that on purpose because we didn't want to disturb any of the remains that we haven't dug. a lot of times we'll uncover what we call features and map them to the future. and then cover them back up, you know, we don't dig them. we don't really have to. so, we know the line was here anyway. and this gives you an example of this layer. then when the bomb proof was -- when this room was put in, it cuts through. this is gone. from here, you get to the other side and it picks up again. so, the fort on the fort is the

archaeological process. you have to look at the discolorations and evidence and get a time sequence and what layer cuts through or disturbs another layer. the upper layer is the latest disturbance and on down. >> i'm one of the archaeologists on staff here, but i do some conservation at the lab. basically we're out this from around the beginning of april through the end of november. we usually are inside, like, from december through march. once this is done, you have all the artifacts that we found through the course of the year that have to be processed. we have reports to write up. we have things to catalog. we can't always do digging. and then you also have to research the items that you found for any reports that you want to have as far as new discoveries. so, i spent, like, 3 1/2 days out in the field and then about

a day and a half in the lab. >> some of the most exciting finds that we've had. >> i've been here a little over seven years, so there's been a number of things that i found just like last week i was digging -- you're familiar with the post holes there. a post hole when i was digging it out, i actually located a -- what you would call a petri dish inside the post hole. it was a glass dish about this large and about an inch, inch and a half deep. and totally intact. it was one of the only -- i think we had five or six totally intact objects from the find. it was an exciting find. i told a couple people what i

found out there, and everybody came out to the site and the had kind of a large audience of visitors there. so, everybody was around the site as i was taking it out. naturally staff is telling me don't break it, don't break it, don't break it. >> is that a real concern, breaking it? >> well, initially when i found it, like i said, it was sitting in the post hole, and i was uncovering it from the surface, so you could only see the rim. and i thought initially it was probably a piece of copper, you know, copper waist drift. only when i had drug around tdu the side that it had depth to it, i realized it was glass. yeah, i had to be a little bit more careful then. but it was pretty cool to see. >> you heard about the find of this little glass tray. this was really, really exciting. for one thing, it's complete and it's glass, you know, how amazing is that. that it survived 400 years.

it would have been clear. you can't see that now because of all the corrosion. you can just see a little bit there. and so this came back into the lab and i did a little research on it. and though i have not found any parallels from other archaeological excavations, i do believe what we have is a 17th century rendition of a petri dish. so, we look right here, you can see one, a little glass dish being used to collect something that's being pressed in a alchemal lab where they are doing processing. they were testing all kinds of materials to try to make a profit for the investors. so, this may have been involved with perhaps the medical group who were here looking for plants they could turn into medicines. and to do that, you're pounding

and mashing and distilling all kinds of leaves and nuts and anything you can get your hands on, roots, and you could easily, you know, mix samples into little dishes like this. we would call this a petri dish today, but julius petri is a 19th century german scientist, so it's a little before his time. and on the tables here you can see a lot of native pottery. and i am in the process of trying to mend those together. with native pottery it's a bit more difficult than with other wares because the colors don't change too much. so, this is a typical native pattern of our indians and it's called simple stamping. so, it's a leather-wrapped paddle that they are heating the sides with. sometimes they smooth the pattern out.

so, it's a base of a pot there. but you can see everything gets numbered. all the little pieces get numbered with the area of the fort that where they were found. and that's one of the processes we do in the lab. and we keep track of those numbers. because if one feature should mend to another across the site, that's a very important thing to note, you know, if things from the well mend with things from the ditch, then that means that both those features were open at the same time, so that's an important step. it's called cross mending. >> hi, welcome to the laboratory of the jamestown rediscovery archaeological project. the artifacts come in from the field and are sorted here in systematic order until we can process them. in our wet habits. in our wet laboratories.

come on in. this is where we process artifacts as they come in from the field. we use this basic tool from our local hardware store, colanders and washing tubs and a variety of brushes, including toothbrushes, fingernail brushes, and vegetable brushes. and we use dissecting needles for cleaning out the holes and pipe forms. a typical artifact tray looks like this. it includes material from one layer and one feature on the site, and these are some of the typical artifacts that we find archaeologically. we find coal. a lot of clinkers from the looming process, iron-making

process that occurred here at jamestown in the early 1600s. lots of iron that comes in fairly corroded with iron oxide. very difficult to identify. at this stage. all different kinds of ceramics, including clay pipes that were made in england, in europe, and also locally, a variety of ceramics from all over the world including earthen wares, this is from england. this little jug jar is probably from england or the netherlands. and we find bricks, architectural bricks. a little bit of copper. now, this copper was brought in for trade with the indians, and we find tons of scrap copper

from archaeological features out here, because they brought so much with them. and this is all scrap, all waste, from the early 1600s. and here we have a little bone knife handle that is from a little paring knife. if you think of the 17th century, this is the kind of little knife that you would see on the side of a plate with a peeled piece of fruit beside it. we also find a lot of bones. i don't have an example here. i don't know why. but we find lots of animal bones out here at jamestown as well. the artifacts are placed in these racks. this is a scootch from a sturgeon. a sturgeon is a fish that is

found in the james river, and they prolific in the 17th century. when they spawn, they were about 9 to 10 years old or older, and at that age, which was the adult age of a sturgeon, they provided about 600 pounds of meat, they were about nine or ten feet long. we also find quite a bit of limestone from bermuda that was used in the ships from bermuda as ballast. and when it arrives at the island, it was used architecturally. and oyster shell is another commonly found material at jamestown. of course, they ate these oysters. and subsequently used the

oysters to produce lime for mortar and plaster. let's go on into our processing laboratory, our dry processing laboratory. here i am sorting artifacts from the john snook well. and these few ceramic shards are from one of the upper layers of the well. john smith in 1608 ordered the colonists to dig a well. and in 1610 that well was filled in kcolonists left jamestown. had hoped to go back to england, but they were met by a long boat in the chesapeake bay and ordered to turn around. the long boat belonged to lord

delaware and announced his arrival. and so all the colonists came back and reoccupied james fort. these ceramics were made in those period from about 1619 until about 1625. they were made by thomas ward. he came to jamestown in 1619. we have historical documentation for that. and hiss kiln site was found in the 1950s by john cotter on the national park service property. and these are some of hiss products that -- i'm trying to do minimum object counts. i do shard counts, that is, i count all the fragments of this

pottery type, and i also do minimum object counts. and i do that by isolating rooms and bases that belong together. and i can tell if i'm looking at these, different vessels that are represented in this layer from the well, it's layer "d." we've got milk cans represented and a jug here with a nice little spread foot, a little turned up on the edge there. very well made. a little drinking cup here. very thin. the fabric is identifiable because it is chalky and buff colored. it's james river clay. you can see there's quite a bit of variety in the colors of the glazes. much is dependent upon the kiln

conditions. a typical day here at jamestown consists of sorting and identifying objects and entering them into our database, which is jamestown rediscovery. it was developed for us specifically here at jamestown. to date we've cataloged over 1.5 million artifacts. we probably have that many to go that needs to be cataloged. >> if a scholar is working on this material, what do they do? what's their process? >> well, it is a case-by-case basis. it's not just open to anyone. and it's usually happening at the graduate or postgraduate level, but they would contact us. and give us their research plan and, you know, what they intend to do. because, you know, we are in the middle of a full-scale

excavation. so, the main priority is caring for the artifacts as they come in, keeping track of them, getting them cataloged, you know, we can't do everything. we can't just open the doors and let everybody in because we're just in the middle of all this work. so, yeah, it's, you know, possible. but it's not that frequent at this point because we're still, you know, still processing the material. that's an interesting piece. a pistol that who knows where it's from. it's from somewhere on the preservation virginia property. it was kept in the national park service collection because we didn't have a collections area before our archaeological project got started. and it looks like it's been through a fire, burned. i believe it's early nan19th

century. the cock still has a flint in the jaws, it's interesting. but i wish i knew where on the island, where on preservation virginia property it was found. it could have been turned in early 20th century. the national park service maintains their own collections for jamestown and before 2007 one of the sort of legacies we decided to leave rather than another monument on the landscape was to join the collections to some extent. so, a new facility was built adjoining our building. we've made sort of a campus, and while the chectiollections are separately, they are in one spot, so someone coming to see a particular material type, doing research, it's more convenient and easier for them. they can go to both collections to do their work.

hopefully we will survive into the future. we've organized the materials and we built the structures to be permanent archives, and i would hope that 400 years in the future, you know, there is a jamestown collection that's capable of being studied and examined by scholars of the future. i look back 400 years and say, well, how many collections have survived and i do worry about that, but there are things that have. so, we just have to be -- hopefully we'll be really good stewards now and train up the next generation of stewards to take care of this stuff. >> they were made several down and encased together. side by side, these bottles will go into a case. and that's where the name comes from. and they are a type of drinking

bottle used in early 17th century, up until, like, 1650. but then when you get into the 19th century, you're going to find a machine produced that quite different from the handma handmade. if you have a better piece, you can tell what the shape of the wine bottle was, and you can pin it down to a 10- or 20-year time period. this is probably a [ inaudible ] >> this program is one of a multipart look at archaeology on jamestown island, virginia. check the "american history tv" website, cspan.org/history for schedule information.