Post by UKarchaeology on Jan 25, 2016 0:19:01 GMT
Archaeologists who have surveyed and dug for decades on Roanoke Island and other locations in North Carolina have accumulated important, albeit comparatively scant, evidence that have raised new questions about the whereabouts of America’s first main English settlement location and the mystery of the ‘lost colony’ of 1587.
Busy at work at a site known as Salmon Creek (otherwise known as ‘Site X’), which has yielded evidence of a long-gone Native American village settlement not far from the waterline on land bordering the Western Albemarle Sound of North Carolina, archaeologists have recently recovered some tantalizing fragments. Among scores of artifacts that tell of the 16th-17th century presence of Native Americans at the location, the archaeologists have uncovered artifacts that are clearly European in origin.
The finds included 27 sherds representing perhaps 4 vessels of 16th century Surrey-Hampshire Border ware; 3 sherds of a North Devon plain baluster jar—a ceramic ware commonly used during the 16th and 17th centuries as provisioning jars on sea voyages—a tenter hook, of a type similar to that used at the early Jamestown settlement and possibly used to stretch canvas to create temporary shelters or to stretch and dry animal skins; a priming pan from an early (possibly 16th century) flintlock gun as well as another possibly from a 16th century snaphaunce gun; an aglet of the type that would have secured Elizabethan clothing; a fragment from an iron buckle typical of the style worn in the 16th and 17th centuries; and a lead cloth seal that may possibly be 16th or 17th century.
The site investigators say that the finds are significant in that the earliest recorded presence of English settlement in the western Albemarle Sound area did not occur earlier than about 1655.
The recent findings have made news headlines at a variety of venues in 2015. But is it unequivocal evidence for the long-sought whereabouts of the famous ‘lost colony’ of 1587?
Yes and no, say the archaeologists of the First Colony Foundation, the organization under which recent excavations have been conducted at the site.
Full story: popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2015-2016/article/new-insights-emerging-on-americas-first-english-colony
Full story: popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2015-2016/article/new-insights-emerging-on-americas-first-english-colony