at that point, bill kelso and another colleague got involved and looked at the field records to see if maybe something have been overlooked, some feature that looks like a palisade wall or a ditch. and sure enough, they kind of saw some things that looked like right angled features, that looked like they could be part of the palisade defense work. so, we approach preservation virginia with a plan. bill really worked up the whole master plan of how we were going to do this. it was supposed to be a 10-year project but here we are going on 18, i think. because we found the fort. the biggest discovery of our lifetime. we're so close to it that sometimes we forget how significant this is, and probably long after we are dead and gone, people are going to finally get excited about this, because, it is in our backyard, and it is not in the sands of egypt or something, but it is just as important and as the significant as egyptology, the work going on over there. this is maybe even more important, because the documents are so sketchy for us. we have lost a lot of the documents on the virginia c

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