C-Span3 is now airing a three-part American Artifacts series on Jamestown Rediscovery’s archeological dig, profiling what Bill Kelso and his team have discovered there since they began some eighteen years ago (1994). Its video vignettes highlight what the colonists accomplished and left us as evidence of how they founded the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
This evidence helps
support the growing understanding of Jamestown’s earliest years and the lives
of its settlers. It also fosters the realization that they persisted to create
a colony that did not disappear, as propaganda created by Civil War-era New
England historians and legend weavers have led generations of Americans to
falsely believe.
The first of the series (January 8) relates how the Kelso team persevered for ten years to convince the
Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now Preservation Virginia,
or “PV”), the site’s owner since 1893, to allow them to search for and find
the original 1608 James Fort, and what they have learned about it and collected
from it. It includes a photo of Kelso’s first day of digging and discovery, and
an anecdote of a visitor’s observation. Over a million artifacts have since been
recovered, analyzed, preserved and cataloged and form the core of the exhibits
at the Voorhees Archaearium.
The first segment now available
at C-Span’s online video library at the link above.
The second segment (January 15) was a tour of JR’s archaeology lab by curator Bly Straube, and is also available at C-0S pan's online video library.
Look for the third and
final segment on January 22.
If you miss it or can’t
receive C-Span3, you can see all three of them on its video library after they
are broadcast.
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