to me was very accurate. and it gave me for the first time the feeling of -- empathetic feeling of how insecure it was when they were there. now, the events are scrambled, you know, it's not -- it didn't claim to be a documentary. so i think it -- i really enjoyed the movie. bly can talk to that too. >> we are speaking -- >> it was all filmed here in virginia. >> we are speaking live with bly straube and bill kelso from historic jamestown and taking your phone calls. the numbers are 202-737-0001 on the eastern and central time zones. 202-737-0002 for mountain and pacific. and we'll also read tweets if you use the handle @cspanhistory. elizabethtown, pennsylvania. this is patricia, go ahead. >> caller: hello. thank you for this program. i, too, have read your book, mr. kelso, and found it very interesting. i have two comments. one is relating to the previous caller.

my husband is descended from pocahontas and john rolf through pocahontas' grandson -- granddaughter, excuse me, jane rolf, who married a man called robert bowling. my mother-in-law's late mother-in-law was a bowling. a few moments ago the commentator said to you this was the church where pocahontas married john smith. and as you know more than i, it was john rolf she married. but i notice that a great many people make that mistake, thinking that pocahontas married john smith. it's a pity about that. i think john rolf kind of gets pushed to the background. thank you very much for this program. it's of great interest. >> thank you, patricia. >> thank you. >> let's go to ft. lauderdale.

david's on our line in ft. lauderdale. hi, david, go ahead. >> caller: hi, dr. kelso, i would like you to comment, if you can, about the trend of american high schools starting american history off at 1870 instead of where we should be the discovery or, rather, the colonization of america. they seem to be blowing off early colonization, the founding, and everything, all the rich history leading up to the reconstruction. we've been told by our chancellor that we have to start at 1870 starting two years from now and i'd like you to comment on that. >> wow. >> i think you should fight your chancellor. >> yes. >> get that -- there's so much that begins at jamestown. i just have to say, the representative assembly. what is a more important topic today than politics? and to go back and see, you know, that it just didn't all

suddenly happen, you know, in the last 20 years i think it gives everyone a much better perspective of what's going on and affecting them in the present. and the past is prologue, they say, and i think that's very true. and you need to -- people -- i think it's really, really awful that these history courses are being dropped. people don't understand what's going on, i don't think. >> it must be an important part of british history as well, bill kelso, because you're going to be recognized we understand in a couple of weeks or later this year as a commander of the order of the british empire. so certainly, the british have a keen interest in one of their early colonies. >> yeah. that's a comment. it's not really to me. it's to jamestown, jamestown is, if you think about it, it's the first permanent colony of the british empire. it's where it began. and from there the 13 colonies and finally it goes around the world and it's india and australia and it's huge.

and of course the colonial empire, there was a lot of violence. there was a lot of unfairness and things that went on, but the traditions are out there. and it starts at jamestown. its language, rule of law, representative government, goes -- and it's embedded in these countries now even though the british are gone. so it's -- i think that the honor points to that sort of thing than it does more to something just for me. >> we're showing our viewers some pictures of you and queen elizabeth visiting the site there. what year was that? >> yeah. 2007. the queen was here. and in two weeks i was given a notice that i was supposed to give her a one-on-one tour of the fort without crowds, you know, just very together. and she said, well, they said she wanted to have a reflective moment. and so, you know, i was kind of -- i was pretty petrified about that. what am i going to do?

so anyway, i did mention as we came to the center of the fort that this is where the british empire began and she kind of almost -- she didn't wink, but i could just tell that that's why she was there and that's i was standing there at that point and that's why she visited jamestown 50 years after she first visited jamestown as a matter of fact. >> here is burr ridge, illinois, and hello to anna. >> caller: hello? >> you're on the air, anna, go ahead. >> caller: oh, okay. hello to everyone. i wanted to know, have you found any remains of pocahontas and i wanted to know if you did, what age did she die of, young or older? >> pocahontas died in england and is buried in england, so we have not found any remains of pocahontas at jamestown. that's the straight answer. and she -- let's see, her age, what would her age be?

>> early 20s. >> yeah, early 20s. >> tell us about some of the remains -- >> but she was buried at gray's end in england. >> tell us about some of the remains you have found there at jamestown. >> well, we have excavated a number of burials. one of which i think the most important of which it was a burial of a captain. we know it was a captain because on the coffin what was left of the coffin there was what looked like a spear, but it turns out it's a leading staff which a captain would carry in front of his troops. and the remains are of a man that was age 36, and that's when the real mastermind according to john smith behind this whole operation here was a man by the name of captain bartholomew

gosnold. people don't hear about it, he died that first summer. was only at a jamestown a few months. but he had connections to the crown to get the charter, to form the colony. and he had the connections with money, merchants in london to finance the venture. so, a real unsung hero and i think that's probably of the one most important discoveries made. it's not absolutely positive it's him. we even did dna testing, but all of the evidence right now is circumstantial evidence, points to the fact that this captain was remains of gosnold. >> bly straube, outside of remains, what is the most significant find or group of finds that you've seen in your years there? >> oh, goodness. that's really a hard question. i'll tell you one of my favorites, though, it's a roman oil lamp from the first century a.d. and a real surprise. but an object that someone in england, in london, because it's a type of find you would find in roman london context, someone treasured it and brought it with

them to the new world. >> let's hear from gillette, wyoming, next up. eric, hi there. >> caller: hi. my question is outside of the marriage of pocahontas to john smith, is there any archaeological data regards to any other intermarriage or interbreeding with colonists with other native american women and subsequent offspring to that region? >> i think eric repeated my john smith/john rolf mistake. but go ahead. >> i know, i know. john rolf, not smith. no, we haven't. the burials that have been analyzed so far are european. by forensic studies, we could pin that down. there's really no -- we've never seen any native american burials

here at this point. >> we have a question on twitter, bill kelso and bly straube that asks what would you like to see happen at dig sites when you have finished your research? >> well, i can just speak to the site itself. we spent a lot of time trying to interpret the footprint that we find below ground of buildings and the shape of the fort and all without doing total reconstructions where we go to a point where we really don't some of the things the way the building looked. my first desire when i first came to this area 50 years ago was to come and walk on the grounds, walk the site of this first fort in 1607 fort, and i was told it was washed away in the river. but now people can do that. we'd have to do some three-dimensional markings for it to be interpreted. so i'm just hoping that in the future people can come here and

they'll be able to understand it, understand this really hallowed place automatically by the way -- what we've put on the landscape. i don't know, bly might have more to say on that. >> we are going to spend the next half hour with bly straube and bill kelso, live from jamestown. we're taking your tweets. @cspanhistory is our handle. and our numbers are 202-737-2001 eastern. and mountain and pacific, 202-737-2002. we are taking your questions. here's warrenson, virginia, charlie, go ahead. >> caller: thanks so much for taking my call. i'm a public high school history teacher in northern virginia. i want to thank bill and bly for digging for the truth for our rich virginia history. a couple questions. one is artifacts, when you dig for them, what's the average depth in the ground? with the exception of the confederate earthworks.

i understand that. is it by gravity? is it by the environment? what's the average depth and why are they in the ground certain places deeper than others? the red brick structure in the background, is that a rebuilt church or is part of it original? and can you speak to the settlement that was in maine that was i don't know if it was abandoned by cold weather perhaps. thank you so much. >> okay. that's a lot of questions there. as far as depth. it depends where the object was dropped or thrown. if it goes down a well, it can be 15 feet deep. if it's in a layer that's just been laid on the ground and, say, when a confederate earthwork was built here, some ground's removed, it would be right on the surface, so it just all depends how the land was used where the artifact's found.

let's see. go ahead. >> the church. >> oh, the church. the church you see behind us. yes, it's a 1907 reconstruction behind an original church tower from the 17th century. >> are both of you surprised that you found as much material as you have? that's a spot right there on the river. you get very strong weather and high tides and yet there's 1.5 million artifacts in your archaeology lab. >> well, i've got a couple theories for that. one, they were under siege most of the time. i think the colonists, the first three years or so spent so much time inside. they're not going out. going to leave anything outside very much. they didn't spend much time out there. the other thing is so many people died immediately and their possessions, you know, are just tossed away.

>> i think that's a good reason that they are sort of ownerless objects sort of kicking around. >> let's go back to calls. martinsville, virginia, gene, hi. >> caller: calling from western virginia, and mr. kelso, i have your book. i enjoyed reading it. i have two questions. i'd like comments. when the jamestown settlement took place, it was a period of drought. i think the little ice age was going on, and the indian people had very little corn. and how did this drought affect the jamestown settlement? and number two, i want to comment on the indian people. you're close to two indian communities at jamestown and charles city/county, the

chickahominy, over 1,000 people, and the settlement of jamestown and their ancestors. have the indian descendants been involved? do you get feedback, participation, from the indian people there in the community? thank you so much. >> well, i can speak to the second question first. and that, yeah, there's much interaction with our project and the current united tribes. in fact, today there are some members of the tribes on the site demonstrating, and some in the original dress of the virginia indians. so they're as interested in what we are finding here and we find a lot of artifacts that were traditionally inside the fort. so, we know that it wasn't one of those cases where the indians were on one side of the palisade and the settlers were on the inside. there was interaction going on, no question about that. and the first question, again -- >> he was talking about a period of drought.

he talked about drought. >> oh, drought. you want to take that? >> well, yes, he's referring to the scientific evidence, boring of cypress trees that has shown that there was drought between the years of 1606 and 1612, the worst drought in almost one thousand years. we feel that it kind of explains some things. that maybe it explains why things fell apart so quickly, that there was stress in the environment, stress on the indian community, stress on the animals. there weren't so many animals running around on the island. so it was something the english did not understand not having been here. and it kind of explains a lot of the friction that evolved. >> and add to that is that they had a problem with the water as well. the drier it is, then the higher

the salt content goes up. the saltwater goes further inland and jamestown is where the salt and the fresh come together. it's called brackish water. but in a drought time it would be very salty and that was poisoning them we think, too. >> was there ever any other settlement after the original settlement ended there? >> didn't end. >> this is the first permanent english settlement in america. so there's still -- you know, it's still occupied. >> it was a colonial capital for almost 100 years. >> that spot in particular, did they come back to the spot on the tip of the island there? >> we have remains of buildings that were built after the middle of the 17th century right in the fort. they're in the fort but they're not part of the fort. we do find artifacts that date later, in later use. but most of it became the churchyard.

so, that's where -- what we have there are burials. >> it devolved into agriculture, so it was all planted in corn. thank goodness, because john smith has proclaimed this is a very fine place to erect a great city. but if it had been, we would not have the archaeological resources to find. >> we'll go to san diego next for gene. go ahead -- howard, in san diego. i'm sorry. >> caller: yes, hi. thank you for taking my call. i had a question about any linkage of george washington or the washington family to jamestown and the area. i know his grandfather came over in the early or 1720s or 1730s, john augustine washington, and i see small towns named washington. of course, it was a common name in virginia and northern north carolina. i've also read something somewhere and i'm not sure here but that perhaps some washington family relatives came over

earlier. do you have any information on that? >> not that i know of. not at all. at jamestown we don't. they settled northern -- the northern part of virginia, on the rappahannock and the potomac, in the 18th century, where there was vacant land. >> we have another caller in california. this is ronnie, go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. dr. kelso, when did cremation start in the united states and should it be banned? >> your question was about cremation, sir? >> i don't know when -- i don't know. >> should it be banned? >> well, as an archaeologist i think people get cheated in

the future by not being able to study skeletal remains. i do. i don't know about banning, but maybe making sure that some people get buried traditionally would be a good thing. >> with lots of rapiers, right? >> yes. with lots of rapiers. >> we were fortunate to have a tour with you and a tour group as you led our cameras through the settlement there, bill kelso and bly straube, and we got to go into the lab there. how often do you both personally get to take students or groups through the site? >> it seems continually. every day that's some kind of a tour that crops up if i'm out here. but we also have a scheduled tour the first and third tuesday of every month through november, which is called "in the trenches." this is by -- make an appointment and there's a fee and i personally take people around the site on those days. and we have another tour for the

collections. don't we? >> we have new philadelphia, ohio, is next and jason, you're on the air. >> caller: [ inaudible ] >> jason, speak up. i can't hear your question. go ahead. >> caller: what happened to the [ inaudible ] tribe? do they still exist? >> it was a question about what happened to the tribe. >> the pallatan? >> yes. >> right. there are groups called the united tribes of virginia. there are i believe eight. and they are descendants on reservations, one of the oldest reservations in the country. so, they're still here as they say. >> we had a caller earlier ask about the lost colony in north carolina, some recent news that they may have discovered a map or indication of a fort on a map

in the british museum in looking at it. bly straube, has anybody done any excavations in that area? >> we have done some preliminary survey of the area and found some interesting hints of early artifacts, 16th century. possibly. and so we have plans to revisit the area very, very soon. >> how much are both of you involved or in contact with your british colleagues on early colonial or precolonial history? >> well, we both have, you know. >> we're both fellows of the society of antiquaries. you have to be elected to join, an honorary english society, british society. it's very old. 200 years old -- 400 years old.

i have colleagues -- >> much of the records, are much of the records kept in the uk? are there good records about jamestown, for example? >> well, yeah. most of them are known and have been looked at. and we have transcriptions of them. but, you know, there's always a surprise discovery like we were talking about, the lost colony map. we actually have studied another map in the british museum. it shows -- really shows that the fort -- the actual fort where we found it was already -- that location had been put on a map by a mapmaker in 1608 and no one had recognized that that was really, you know, pinpointing the site. >> hear from our callers again. oxford, mississippi, joanne, hello. >> caller: good afternoon. i'm enjoying this enormously. i saw the exhibition at the

smithsonian called "written in bone," and it was one of the most fascinating things i've ever seen. i noticed you showed the captain gosnold reproduction. the one that really captured my imagination, you had a video of a woman and there was an interpretive reconstruction of a woman who would walk away from you in the video. you would see how you started with her skeleton and then the forensic reproduction. she walked with a limp. it was stunning. it was stunning. and i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about who you think she was and the other reproduction was of the head of a woman who was believed to be a slave and you determined that based on the shape of her back which would have been bent in such a way over years and years of literally back-breaking labor. if you could tell us about those people, i'd really love to hear it.

>> those individuals actually aren't from our site. they're from other 17th century sites in virginia. so, we don't really know particulars about them. but it is a fascinating exhibit. just to learn -- to see what you can learn from skeletal material. and we understand it's been extremely popular. >> that caller mentioned being fascinated by the video. over the 20 years that you've been working at jamestown, what's been the biggest technological leap that has helped your work there? for both of you? >> well, technological. it's just the geographic information system. the fact that we can record in three dimensions where we find something, you know, at the depth and the location in the fort. and all that information we can put in photographs and catalog material from the artifact finds.

it can be so accessible at one computer. to me it's just a marvel. i started out with pencil and paper and that was our high technology 50 years ago in archaeology. but this is just astounding. and without it we would be really hard put to keep track of all the thousands of pieces of data that come out. >> next caller is bill in lakewood, colorado. bill? >> caller: yeah, dr. kelso, this is bill hughes and i wanted to thank you for what you did. i was stationed at ft. houston back in 1966. and i spent many weekends trying to find jamestown. and i was totally amazed that it wasn't -- couldn't find it. that's one. two, i did find in the church in williamsburg, i did find george washington's grandmother. i was doing some rubbings on the

old -- so, i don't know if it's true or not, but i was always, you know, i have a picture of that gravestone. i was really enthusiastic. but i want to thank you. you really filled a big void in my life. >> well, i'm glad we could find jamestown finally, that's good. >> bill kelso's book "jamestown the buried truth" if you want some further details -- if you can't get to the site or you've been there and you want more information, the book "jamestown, the buried truth." next up is bridgeport, ohio. hello, lou, go ahead. lou, make sure you mute the television, turn down your set there, and go ahead with your question for bill kelso or bly straube. i'm going to put you on hold, lou. bill kelso, we just showed your book, "the buried truth." how long did that one take you to write?

>> well, it came out in '06. so, it's always -- it's always in production, really, and a revision, too. i'm working on a revision of that because we found so much since '06. but that basically tells the story the way i saw it. and, i mean, it was -- since we started the project in 1994, i guess you could say it took 12 years. >> the caller a few minutes ago calling and saying he was in 1966 trying to find jamestown. do you find a lot of amateur archaeologists telling you much of the same thing? >> no. i've kind of thought what he was saying it's so confusing here because there's other types of jamestowns around here. and the signs are just everywhere, and it's confusing for a visitor to come in. that may be what he was up against. >> let's try lou in bridgeport, ohio. go ahead. >> caller: yes.

i thank you for taking my call. i was wondering, it's -- all this talk about the colonists and settlers in jamestown, but i was wondering how it affected the indians, natural inhabitants of the area, when the settlers came to jamestown. thank you. >> i didn't get that question. >> i didn't either. >> that caller was on the impact of the indian culture, the native american culture, you touched on that a little bit on the artifacts you found there. but more broadly what was the impact of the english settlement there? >> well, ultimately, the population was minimize to have had virginia indians. they were given reservations ultimately. but immediately in the first contact, there was evidence of friendship and there was evidence of violence.

so it's hard to just make one generalization about the impact of the two cultures on each other immediately. my view was that the indians were although they far outnumbered the colonists, 15,000 to 104 to begin with, they still saw iron coming in, they saw guns, they saw boats, sailing boats, that that technology would be useful to them. so i think they let jamestown survive. they could have wiped it out, but they let it survive because of the fact that this could -- technologically enhance their own world, you know, the empire really and help them against their enemies. >> here's deerfield, massachusetts. todd, your question or comment? >> caller: yes. first off, thank you for taking my call. dr. kelso, this is a question for you. the martins 100 site that was discer