A series of early 17th-century ditches, apparently reexcavated from time to time as they silted up, once ran north and south through the site. Original digging and redigging and the “water” moving through these ditches eroded part of the pit/well fill and a section of palisade lines. The bottom layer of the earliest ditch contained armor fragments, lead shot, sprue from the making of shot, and a number of spade nosings and waste iron. One of the more recent ditches contained a 1602 English silver sixpence. Apparently this “drainage system” lasted into the 1630s, as the fill also contained wares of the “Jamestown” potter. The same pottery found elsewhere on the townsite leads researchers to conclude that the potter operated after 1630, probably the very latest occupation date of the stratified deposits on the current excavation. The ditches were probably drainage ditches from inside the fortified settlement to the river.

A sixteenth century candlestick recovered from the ditch