at seeks to pursue detente with the larger party. in this case detente with the soviet -- we can see detente advocates in the american government in every single decade from world war -- from 1940 to today. in ev single decade there would be elements and attempts to reach a deal with the russians. press that reset button. somebody has to learn from history. that's why we're trying to promote these conferences so that we can get a better understanding of what it's all been about. thank you very much. [applause] >> you're watching american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history.

>> in 2011 american history tv visited james town island, virginia, to learn about the james town rediscovery archeology project, which in 1994 discovered and subsequently excavated remains of the original 1608 english fort where captain john smith and poke hospital as walked the ground. -- john smith and pocohontas walked the ground. recently four skeletons buried 400 years ago in an honored place inside the fort's church were identified. they also discovered a tiny silver box near one of the skeletons containing seven bones that may have been considered holy relics by the community. while the bodies were being excavated in 2013, the smithsonian used laser scanning technology to create this 3d model of the entire burial ite.

this time lapse video recorded the 12-day excavation process with over 25,000 digital images. now from 2011 a three part american artifacts recorded shortly after jamestown rediscovery located the four graves. these programs included a tour of the archeology trenches and a visit to the lab where the artifacts are studied. the original 1607 english settlement at jamestown, virginia had long been considered lost under the james river until 1994 when archeologists and historian bill kelso found evidence of the site. since then, the jamestown rediscovery project has unearthed more than a million artifacts, including many complete skeletons of the settlers. american history tv visited jamestown for an in the trenches archeology tour with mr. kelso.

>> what i'm going to do is to give you a little sort of lecture at different places about the property and talk about, a little bit about the history of james town, a little about geography, and a little about the history of the project. and then we'll go to each of the sites that are open right now, the trenches. you were promised in the trenches so we'll get in at least one of them. and, well, you are on one of the few islands you can be on along the james river. that is one of the reasons why it was chose pleasen as the first colony. we're about 35 miles from hampton roads or the opening to the ocean. the river goes forever into the mountains of virginia and gets different names and different branches but at richmond there are waterfalls and it's not navigable beyond from here to there.

that was important because the colonnists found that out and didn't quite know at the beginning. all right. that gives us a setting. jamestown, the whole idea was put together by a man by, you probably never heard of, captain bartholomew gosno. d he had, was a -- had captured spanish ships in the late 16th century and therefore gave all these riches to the queen. so he was a favored guy. so he had the idea of establishing a colony after he knew something about the fact that there had been one already tried at roanoke island off of north carolina, which became famously known as the lost colony. it is still lost by the way. no one is able to find it. find the people. that was in 1508. so this is 20 years later.

he felt that there should be a permanent colony. and one attempt that he made in 1602 you may have heard of if you're from massachusetts or the new england area that he set up, tried to put in a colony on what we think now is elizabeth isle. there is a town named gosnold up there. it's next to martha's vineyard. lasted about six weeks. the indian trading didn't work out the way he thought it would. so he went back. nobody died. but he had the experience of how to navigate over to the new world. he then went back -- he had connections and that is the way it works. till works that way. some of his relatives were in the court so he could get the charter that sir walter raleigh already had for the new world so he had the legal means to do it. he had another relative who was one of the richest merchants in

england so he had a way of funding an expedition to virginia so he put the scheme ogether in a little place in ottilie hall near ipswich in england and had another connection to another man who brought in captain john smith. they all got together and decided they'd try and do this colony. they formed the virginia company, a joint stock venture, one of the earliest if not the earliest modern corporation was put together. and in late 1606 they decide to ing three ships, 105 colonnists, all men, well, men -- three boys, and left in late december of 1606. well, if you may know, may 13 is where they land on jamestown island. that's a long time. that was a problem. they came in here with a food deficit right away because it took too long to get here.

they were instructed to go a hundred miles from the coast so that they would be protected from any raids from the spanish and that was the real fear although they had a treaty in 1604 where they were not supposed to be worried about them. but as i was saying, there is a falls of the river at richmond. can't go a hundred miles. so the fall back was to settle on some island that was strong by nature is what, is the quote. strong by nature means it's surrounded by water so it could be protected. they also decided, and this is important, they said they chose the island, too, because the channel was so close to the shore they could tie the ships. now, the channel, with that ferry boat out there is in the channel. so the conventional wisdom was that they'd tie the ships there. that's where they'll have the fort. where the fort was built. then it washed away. that's the story i got. when i came out here the first time in 1963.

the 104 command, they have a rough summer. rough is an under statement. more than half died in the first summer. and they began to realize what a difficult operation this was going to be and how -- how really under funded they were, under staffed, under funded. that sounds like most nonprofits like ours. but anyway, jamestown has never changed i guess. they got through that. smith finally leaves. when he leaves in 69 there is another period that was known as the starving time. 1609 and 1610 and the name sort of tells you what happened. there were probably only 6 people left alive out of 215 that, in 1610. so they pack up. they leave. and so this would not be the first permanent english settlement.

had not at that very moment a new supply group come in and the real resident governor lord delaware came in with over a hundred troops and they jump-started the operation and from that point the colony is going to make it. okay. that thumb nail history, the earliest years. the reason i'm sticking with the earliest years is because most of what we've found dates to that period and that event has been a really important thing for our understanding of what we found beneath the ground. so if you'll follow me down here i'll show you where we started and why. a lot of people wonder, where o you start digging? i first came to jamestown, i was so excited because i had just read in a footnote in one of my history books up in ohio, that there was a jamestown.

mostly modern american history the part that is the european offshoot of american history egins at plymouth. that is the whole story and we have thanksgiving and everything and it is reinforced every year that is where this begins. there was a place in 1607, not 1620, a successful attempt to plant a colony, and that's jamestown. but it failed. that is the impression you get when you read any standard history and hopefully that's changing. so when i came out i said i want to walk the ground where john smith and pocohontas walked. i was a park ranger. he said you'll get wet and it is in the river and gone. you can't do that. but i was an archeologist and i looked around and i saw a cut rough the soil in the bank not far from here and it showed

three different layers of soil. there was a pile of clay you could tell had been put in and a bridge of clay. under that was a dark black . yer of rich dirt the top layer said civil war. the dark layer said colonial. it had pottery sticking out. under that was indian and there were stone tools. i said, well what is this black layer? that's pretty interesting. and he -- we were on at that time the piece of it is not really part of the national park. you're on private party owned by preservation virginia then known as the association for he preservation of virginia. he just gave me that look like hey, maybe something is here. so put that in the back of my mind. became an archeologist. started working in virginia,

georgia, some in the caribbean and other places, but i always thought, no one has really roved that fort had washed away. i thought wouldn't it be a great thing to do to actually find what's being commemorated? 1607, 2007? so i talked to the land owners preservation virginia for 10 years actually and tried to see, here is a plan. i said i'm sure it's there. you know? i wrote that out. we're going to find this. and so they agreed in 1993, began digging right where you're standing right here. now, why, why here? well, my theory was because that church tower we were standing next to is a 17th century architectural feature, i thought, well, one of the documents said that the church

was in the midst of the fort. if that's the church then if i dig about here between here and that sea wall i'll come up with a different color soil where upright logs, a palisade, it was clear it was a palisade of a triangle shape fort would begin to appear. i couldn't hold back. the first day i was digging right under the grass and i came up with a piece of pottery and i was roped in. the woman was here with her son watching this guy. pretty skeptical. and she finally said to me, what are you doing? like those two people know you're out here digging in this sacred property. and i had the pottery and

looked around. i was pretty manic at the time. i knew this was old enough to be james fort. i said i'm finding james fort. she was sort of backing away with her son. bobby, let's not upset the nice man. i hope she came back with him. but that was 1994. and here, what i had done, what we had done luckily enough was to dig in, at this place, which turned out to be a filled in celler of a building that we've replicated above, that we found, you know, pieces of by finding where it, i posted it in the ground and let the dark circle -- a post put into the ground makes a dark stain and we found a celler, we found intact armor that came out of this pit that is in the exhibit before you go please see that. and the dates of coins. all of this stuff was coming out of here. it was military enough, old enough. wow. you know, this is james fort.

but it took many years to connect all of the dots and be able to tell where and how the fort laid out from that point. i wasn't sure if we were on the west side, east side, inside, outside, you know, for a long time. but we went ahead and announced in 1996 that the fort, some parts of the fort is here. it turned out almost 90% had escaped erosion. so many people came over here and so many died their possessions were just scattered and buried in things like a celler, ditches, wells. it just all -- wherever there is a hole in the ground it got filled with some pretty amazing artifacts. so right now the collection goes over a hundred, over a million and a half objects have been found here over 18 years. the way it's done is you open up an area. usually on a 10-foot square, find a streak that goes through

, the palisade line and just follow these things a square at a time. and open up a big area to understand it all. we'll see a big area when we go at the next stop. all right. let's head to the trenches. if you all would just go up on down -- and now go this is probably the largest trench we've ever opened up at one time. what you're looking at is the .ite of the 1608 church if you're saying to yourself what church, these orange flags mark the giant post holes that were dug down as much as six feet or maybe eight. 12 foot between each one of these posts.

so if you begin to imagine a post coming out of these holes, you can see the pattern where the orange flags are located. so i knew from a description written by a man by the name of william strachie who was really the chronicler of the whole operation, in 1610 wrote the church is 24 feet wide and 60 feet long. so the minute we began to find these enormous post holes and 12 foot centers it began mathematically to add up. so we -- what we do as i said, we'll open an area, that is take it down to the grade that has not been disturbed. this is it right here. and at that point, look for outlines of soil that has been dug into before and every place that that, someone dug beneath

this sub soil level, this clay, is detectable. if you have one of these and you scrape down really carefully, it's hard to show because it's dry but this is mixed soil right here. there's little yellow spots and lighter and darker stuff but on the sides it's very uniform. that's never been dug into before. but this has. now, the purple flags mark, what do you think? graves. exactly right. there are four graves here that line up in the extreme eastern end of the post hole pattern and that really tells, is the telling evidence that said this is the church. so the important people are buried in the chancellory. we know also from records and there is a continuation, continual interplay of what we

find in the ground with what's in the records and what's in the records where can you find it in the ground, back and forth. we know from the time period the church stood which was from 1608 to 1616, according to records, there were four people buried. four people that would have had status to be buried here that we know of. there is the original cleric reverend hunt. could be here. he died very close to the time when the church was put up in 1608. could be. and he could -- i would assume that he would be this guy right here. there was a knight and two captains that died in that time. we have a plan to actually uncover the remains and see if we can identify these people beginning next spring. i think they should be marked. i mean, the whole church was -- the location was lost. map there was a spanish

that had an x. x might mark the spot. it does. the church is a little off center. midst of the force but not exactly the center. i had this ambition to walk where john smith and pocohontas walked. i got to pocohontas. there is a post hole there, one right here. this makes a rectangle space that would be the chancel. pocohontas marries john rolph in this church in 1614. so i guarantee you i'm standing exactly a little deeper than she was but this is where pocohontas stood when she got married. had to. they stand in front, right in the center. you've been to weddings and you know. that's pretty amazing. kind of wow. you can actually do that with archeology. now i want to get you to come down and we'll get in the trench down there. e'll gather into here.

we have danny smith digging away here and you can tell them what you're doing there, danny. >> okay. if my voice can hold up. what we're doing is digging into a well and this well happens to be in the southwest corner of the church. that's not just a coincidence. we wanted to be sure we were in the church, we know this church is here until 1617 and then shifts to another location right over there. and so we -- what we've been finding are artifacts later than that date. looks like a coincidence. i think it's going to date probably to the mid 17th century so still a 350-year-old ell.

we're actually widening the hole. it was a wooden barrel line or lined well about 2 1/2, 3 feet in diameter. we're widening the whole five feet -- hole five feet in diameter so we can put in steel casing to protect us as we go down. we have what, about six more feet to go. >> six to eight. >> though it doesn't relate to james fort in all likelihood we're going to go ahead and investigate because we're almost to the bottom anyway. >> okay. thanks. wells are interesting to archeologists because we'll probably hit water in another couple feet. the well went four feet below that. but anything that's been continuously wet, will survive. organics. would probably find a barrel down there. one of the barrels and in any ganic things, leather, wood, even metal is in better shape beneath the water because it keeps the oxygen away.

we also found seed in wells. it is a treasure no matter what and we just can't resist. >> amazing still nonetheless that all of this is still here to be -- >> it is. and you can't, nothing substitutes for being here, standing on the soil. do you agree? to s what gets us going come to jamestown and experience this. this is 18 years of digging. there are places inside this fort we haven't even looked at this one acre. archeology can go on a long time and fortunately we have young people on the staff who will be interested and available hopefully. it was pointed out that john smith was located, pretty interesting place. ladies in st the 1907 decided to fut there. he is right at the main

entrance of where the fort would have been. kind of eerie there would be that decision to put that there not knowing anything about the fort, not even -- all pretty much convinced the fort wasn't even here. if you want to just sort of come under the rope and go around the edges where you can see down in, mariana staff on, diop warmke, archeologists working this site. i mentioned the church was in the midst of the fort. most of the public building were in the midst of the fort. there was a store house. there was a place where the armor would be kept, we think this is the site of that, where the soldiers that would go on duty would suit up. sort of a locker room for the guys. right next to it in a blacksmith shop site marked by the posts, we found more than

two dozen sword hills found just as one of our most interesting visitors showed up shall the queen of england in may of 2007. she walked down the stairs ght behind you there and looked at that site. we were finding these arms and armor. i was supposed to take her around one-on-one and make sure she had a reflective moment about the history of jamestown. i thought, well, i got to come up with something. i was pretty nervous. o i said, we're looking at the swords and marietta was actually working on them at the time and said this is the first time this english equipment has seen the light of day in 400 years. i thought, what if she says i would like to have them back, thank you. they still belong to us. not really though. what we're doing right now, maybe you can tell us what

you're up to. >> okay. what you're looking at is the foot print for what is posting ground structures you were looking at on the other part of the site. we're taking down each of these trenches and post holes looking for any sign of artifacts that will help us give a good, firm date for this building and hopefully what it was used for. >> this is a good example of when it's wet you can see the color changes. >> what tight he means have you found in here? >> let's see. we just pulled out what looks like maybe a little black petry dish from a post hole. this is the most complete vessel we've ever found here at jamestown. it's nice to find something still intact when you're digging with little pieces. that was found in this post hole right here, just kind of dropped in after they pulled the post from the building. so we're doing some research on that to see what it was used for. a lot of little pieces of

pottery. a piece of bone for instance sticking out of the wall right here. here's a piece of lead shot from the floor. there's stuff that was just trampled in. you're welcome to pass that around. >> perfectly round. okay. >> i'll show you a couple other post sites down here. in 1610 when delaware came in he said he cleanse the town, filled wells. i haven't even mentioned these other wells. just incredible collections of artifacts. hey built two long row houses. we're marking them 20 inches above the original evidence. they were built with cobble foundations. the wood doesn't go in the ground. these are buildings that were built to last. and more like what was being

built in england. half timber. they were said to be two stories and this one had six rooms because we found three fire places. all of these crosses marked graves that we found in here. this dates to we think 1607. this is a 1610 building. and there's a record of who died in august, a little in september of 1607. a whole rash of these gentlemen, soldiers. there was an older man and a younger man buried together in the same shaft. there is a record of an older and younger man dying in that -- i think we'll be able to put some labels on all of these burials. then there was a burial of a boy who died at age 14. you can tell by the forensic development of the bone. and he had many health problems one of which was an arrow in his leg. the arrow point is still there.

e also had, his entire jaw had abscess and it was almost gone, and a broken collar bone. he is -- those remains actually are in an exhibit at the smithsonian. have any of you heard of the bone exhibit at the national museum? you have? good. okay. well, you ought to see that. because it's about what forensic anthropologists can learn from skeletal material from modern, murder cases on back to the boy and one other person we'll talk about right over here. as we were looking for the west wall of the fort in 2003, we discovered a well. we went way out here because mathematically it seemed like the fort was bigger than we thought. we started trenching into this area, interesting well. the artifacts of which are on exhibit and that is the museum down to the bottom of the front

glass wall you see over there. burial out overed a here in a strange way. it was parallel to what turned out to be the west wall. we we dug down two feet and we found what looked like a spear laying parallel to a rope nails -- row of nails. it was a decorative spear point that we were able to identify as a captain's leading staff. there is a ribbon on it, he is in front of the troops, they are marching. here is a cap appeared pretty interesting. -- a captain. pretty interesting. -- here isaugust 22 a captain