In September, October and December 2021 the First Colony Foundation, working with the National Park Service, excavated at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. The dig focused on ground west of the Fort Raleigh earthwork, where earlier excavations had found traces of the metallurgical workshop and science centre of the German metallurgist Joachim Gans and the English scientist Thomas Harriot.
A hard site to read
The 2021 work extended earlier digs into structures put up in 1585–86 by an English military expedition. Four hundred years of farming, utility trenches and other disturbance make the site difficult, and past interpretations of it differ. This season combined old and new finds to build a fuller picture of what the English built there.
What the finds say
Artifacts from the same soil depth tell a story. Crucibles, antimony, fired brick and a ceramic scorifier point to Gans's search for metals. Ointment jars, seeds, plant material, olive jars and Native pottery show Harriot's use of the workshop. Among the pieces found were a fragment of a Spanish olive jar, a sherd of Native Roanoke pottery and part of a scorifier used in metalworking.
Artifacts are only part of it. The colour and texture of the soil reveal features too; in earlier seasons they let archaeologists identify one of the workshop's structures and the protective earthworks around it.
A watchtower and a workshop
In 2021 the pieces finally came together. The team uncovered an eight-foot-square watchtower from which the English could watch for approaching ships, joined by a light wooden wall to the large rectangular workshop where Gans and Harriot worked.
Archaeologists could even trace small phases in the building's construction. In one, a doorway was moved, and a drainage ditch was dug after the workshop was built. The ditch and the shifting doorway suggest that flooding disrupted work there.
Three firepits
Careful study of the pits in the watchtower's floor showed that three circular firepits were put in after the 1585–86 expedition had left the island. One possibility is that the 1587 colonists, or the native men left behind by Manteo, built them to heat the tower. There is no way to know — but three firepits invite the thought that someone kept the tower warm through three winters, watching for Governor John White to return.
What comes next
This is one of many digs at Fort Raleigh that help tell the site's history. With the science workshop and the ground around the restored earthen fort now better understood, the archaeology will move beyond this area to look for places tied to the 1587 "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island.
Sources
- National Park Service, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, "Findings from Archaeological Dig at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site – 2021." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/2021-archaeological-dig-at-fort-raleigh.htm
- Photos: National Park Service. The article's photo of the three artifacts, credited to Eric Deetz of the First Colony Foundation, is left out.
- Rewritten in hubnx's own words.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
1
0
0
0
Comments
