survived. we don't know if it's in there. and then there were travelers that came in here. it was a tremendous erosion on the west end of the island. and they said i can see remains of the fort being washed into the river. i read that about a week before i started. i went, oh, no. so then it became just the story agreed upon. and 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 here but very close. and so there was no clue in the landscape that this was anything but this civil war fort. on a site like this there are periods and eras and time changes. this is -- was built in the civil war fort as a bombproof or a bomb shelter for the

confederate troops. confederate forces built this fort as a good position on the river to set up their 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, if you look closely, there's some 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 bombproof. 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 a room. the reason we ex-cavated this i this is the 150th anniversary of the civil war.

so it also gives a perspective of the jamestown period. you know, it's just not one 1607 period here. it's all of these different components. and so we've learned something about the civil war for it. but we also learned about -- if you come around over to here, i'll try ton 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 in the first year down along the river. and it's just darker soil. i think you can see there's dark soil here, and there's even some darker circular impressions

where the upright logs had disintegrated. and we've 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. it only goes down to about here. and you see it's a little off. and we did that on purpose because we didn't want to disturb any of the remains that we have not dug. a lot of times we'll just uncover these what we call features and map them for the future and then cover back up. we don't even dig them. we don't have to. so we know that the line was here anyway. but it's good -- this gives you an example of this layer. then when the bombproof was -- when this room was put in, it cuts through. this is gone. from here till you get to the other side. then it picks up again. so fort on a fort, that's the archaeological process. you have to look at these different discolorations and evidence and then get a time

sequence by what layer cuts through or disturbs another layer. so you go back in time. the latest disturbance is the latest thing and on down. >> my name is don warmke. i'm one of the archaeologists on staff here. but i do do some conservation in the lab. basically, we're out there from around the beginning of april through the end of november. we usually are inside like from december through march. once the field season is done, you have all the artifacts that we found during the course of the year that have to be processed. you have the reports to write up. you have things to catalog. we can't always be digging. and then you also have to research the items that you found for any reports that you might have as far as new discoveries. so i spend like 3 1/2 days out in the field and about a day and a half in the lab.

>> what are some of the most exciting days or finds that you've had? >> i've been here a little over seven years. so there have been a number of things i've found. but just like last week i was digging -- you're familiar with a cortiguard? it's one of the post holes there. the post hole, when i was digging it out, i actually locate located a -- what you would call a petrie dish inside the post hole. it was a glass dish about this large and about an inch, inch and a half deep. and it was totally intact. it was one of the only -- i think we had five or six totally intact objects from the site. so it was kind of an exciting find. basically, i'd told a couple people who i thought i had found out there and everybody came out to the site and had kind of a large audience of visitors

there. so everybody was around the site as it was taken out, and naturally staff's telling me don't break it, don't break it. >> was 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. copper waist strip. it was only when i had dug this around the side of it it had a depth to it and i realized it was glass. so yeah, i had to be a little bit more careful than -- but it turned out it was a pretty cool piece. >> you heard about the find of this little glass tray. this is really, really exciting. for one thing it's complete. and it's glass. 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. but you can just see it a little

bit through there. 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 fort -- a 17th century rendition of a petri dish. so if you look right here you can see one. a little glass dish being used to collect something that's being pressed in an alchemal lab where they're doing chemical processing. and this is dating to the late 16th century. you know, 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 that 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, make samples into little dishes like this. we would call this a petri dish today. but julius petri is a 19th century german scientist. this is a little before his time. and on the tables here you can see a lot of native pottery. i am 2349 process of trying to mend those together. with native pottery it's a bit more difficult with them with other wares because the colors don't change too much. so this is the typical native pattern of our indians. it's called simple stamping. so it's a leather wrapped paddle that they're hitting the sides with. sometimes then they smooth that pattern out. so that's a base. a pot there.

you can see everything gets numbered. all the little pieces get numbered with the area of the fort 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. 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. i'm mary outlaw. welcome to the laboratory of the jamestown rediscovery archaeological project. the artifacts come in from the field and are stored out here in systematic order until we can process them in our wet laboratory. come on in. this is where we process artifacts. as they come in from the field.

we use just basic tools 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 in pipe stems. a typical artifact tray looks like this and includes material from one layer and one feature on the site. and these are some of the typical artifacts that we find ark yo logically. we find coal. a lot of clinkers from the blooming process, ironmaking process that occurred here at jamestown in the early 1600s.

lots of iron that comes in heavily corroded with iron outsides. 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 delft wares, earthen wares. this is from north devon, england. this little delft ware 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 our 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. this is the kind of little knife you would see on the side of a plate with a peeled piece of fru fruit. the artifacts are placed in these racks. this is a scoop from a sturgeon. a sturgeon is a fish that spawned in the james river.

and they were prolific in the 17th century. when they spawned, they were about nine to ten years old or older. and at that age, which was the adult age of a sturgeon, they provided about 600 pounds of meat. they're 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 arrived at the island it was used architectu l 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 smith 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 as the colonists left jamestown, had hoped to go back to england. but they were met by a longboat in the chesapeake bay. and ordered to turn around. the longboat belonged to lord

delaware and announced his arrival. so all the colonists came back and reoccupied james fort. these ceramics were made in the 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 his kiln site was found here in the 1950s by john kotter on the national park service property. and these are some of his products that i'm trying to do minimum object counts. i do shard counts. that is, i count all the fragments of p r 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 from looking at these the different vessels that are represented in this layer from the well. it's layer d. we've got milk pans represented and a jug here. with a nice little spread foot. turned up on the edge there. very well made. a little drinking cup here. very thin. his 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 and that's just 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 catalogued over a million and a half. we probably have about that many to go that need to be catalogued. >> if a scholar is working on this material, what do they do? what's their process? >> well, it is by case-by-case basis. it's not just open to anyone. and it's usually happening at the graduate or post-graduate level. but they would contact us or give us their research plan, what they intend to do. because 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. keeping them cataloged. 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. it's possible but it's not that frequent at this point because we're 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 collections because we didn't have a collections area before our archaeological project got started. and it looks like it's been through a fire. it's burned. i believe it's early 19th century. it's still -- the cock still has a flint in the jaws. it's really kind of interesting.

but i wish i knew where on the island and where on the preservation virginia property it was found. and it could have been turned in the early 20th century. the national park service maintains their own collections from jamestown, and for 2007 one of the 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 collections are kept separately, they are in one spot. so someone coming to see a particular material type, they're 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. i mean, we've organized the

materials and built the structures to be permanent archives. and i would hope that 400 years in the future there is a jamestown collection that's capable of being studied and examined by scholars of the future. i look back 400 years and think, well, how many collections have survived? and i do worry about that. but there are things like the ashmolian collections 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 could fit several down into a case together. so side by side these bottles would go into a case. and that's where their name comes from. and they are the type of drinking bottles used in early

17th century up until about 1650. but then when you get into the 19th century you're going to find a machine produced quite different from the handmade. if you have a bigger piece you can tell what the shape of the wine bottle was. and you can tie it down to a better 10 or 20-year time period. this is probably a case -- >> that piece is in there. a complete piece was extracted. >> this program is part of a multipart look at