2008 Jamestown Lecture Series:
Preservation & Exploration in the Shadow of John Smith
Kimball Theatre, Merchants Square, Williamsburg
October 7, 14, and 21, 2008
All lectures begin at 7:00 p.m

For more information, call 757-229-0412 or e-mail tpatton@apva.org

October 7
The Buried Truth

Dr. William Kelso
Director of Archaeology
APVA Preservation Virginia

Archaeology continues to be a powerful way to re-visit Jamestown, the first permanent colony of the English outside the British Isles and the birthplace of modern America. For over two centuries the heart of the original town, 1607-1624 James Fort, was thought lost to river erosion. Digging over the past 15 years has proven the erosion story unfounded, as almost the entire Fort site has been uncovered on dry land. This lecture examines the history, the process and the major finds of a rediscovered Jamestown and new insights into the events and people who struggled to establish what have become many of the basic traditions that undergird American society. Recent insights into Jamestown's role as a place for laboratory and industrial experimentation, as an evolving governmental base for a plantation society and as a place of inspiration for exploration in the space age will also be considered.
** Sponsored in part by The Wingfield Family Society Honoring Edward Maria Wingfield: Soldier, Investor and First President of Jamestown. **

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October 14
Oyster Shells from the Jamestown Well: Environmental Data Recorders for the Early Years of the Colony

Dr. Juliana M. Harding
Senior Marine Scientist
Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Oysters (Crassostrea virginica) and the reefs that they created were central to the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay prior to the early 20th century. When the colonists arrived in 1607, they would have had to navigate their way through massive three dimensional oyster reef communities in the James River that were exposed at low tide and created "living" rocks which posed serious hazards to wooden ships. As of the early 21st century, oysters are still present in the Chesapeake Bay but the complex three-dimensional communities that previously dominated the estuarine landscape have been drastically reduced on spatial and ecological scales. Dr. Harding will discuss information contained within 400-year-old oyster shells recovered by archaeologists from a James Fort well describing ecological and environmental conditions in the James River estuary during the early years of Jamestown.

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October 21
Fort St. George: Archaeological Investigation of the 1607-1608 Popham Colony

Dr. Jeffrey P. Brain
Senior Research Associate
Peabody Essex Museum

The Popham Colony was the first organized attempt to establish an English colony on the shores of what we now know as New England. It was planted at the mouth of the Kennebec River in the summer of 1607 and lasted for little over a year until it was abandoned in the fall of 1608. Popham was the first claim of possession of what was then called Northern Virginia by the English, and later known as "New" England at the time the Pilgrims established the first permanent settlement in Massachusetts Bay thirteen years later. Despite its precedence, the failure of the Popham Colony to endure has rendered it a nearly forgotten historical footnote. Its failure, however, was an important step in the ongoing experience of English colonization and the lessons learned contributed directly to the ultimate success of the Pilgrims. Archaeological investigations have relocated the remains of Fort St. George, the principal installation of the Popham Colony, and restored it to its significant place in history.

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