Archaearium displays. Lighter areas on the floor show outline of Statehouse foundation walls beneath the museum.
Photos courtesy of Jamestown Rediscovery.
Step inside the Natalie P. and Alan M. Vorhees Archaearium and a reverent hush is palpable. The museum’s interior designer, Bill Haley of Haley Sharpe Design, calls it “power of place”; an almost magical feeling that one has stepped back in time to a place of beginnings whose story is still ongoing.
Perhaps it’s the large glass viewing portals in the floor that remind visitors they are standing atop the remains of the third and fourth Statehouse, Virginia’s colonial capitol from1665-1699, a reminder that this museum does not sit on virgin soil. Beyond the expansive windows that look out over the river, sits the original site of James Fort, where 220,000 annual visitors can witness events as dynamic today as they were more than 400 years ago. In his book Mayflower, award-winning author Nathaniel Philbrick couldn’t have been more wrong when he wrote, “Jamestown, founded in 1607, could hardly be counted a success.” Instead, he is just one more voice that has contributed to the competing myths regarding the origins of our country. To many, it was the Pilgrims who founded America at Plymouth years later.
Ask a cross-sample of folks when the colonization of Jamestown began and the date 1607 immediately comes to mind. Ask when it ended and they hesitate. Didn’t they all die in 1609? Wasn’t the fort deserted in 1610? Weren’t they slaughtered by Indians in 1622? These false perceptions have muddied the story of Jamestown for generations.
When 104 male settlers boarded three ships near London in December 1606, they were unaware of the cultural, social, and political impacts upon which they were about to engage. The tangible goods they brought with them would eventually lie buried, in well shafts, basements, and graves; surfacing piecemeal from time to time, until excavations by the APVA (now Preservation Virginia) began in earnest in 1994 under the direction of Dr. William Kelso, Director of Archeology.
Reproduction of brick lined well discovered just outside the original palisade walls. Over time, it became a useful place to discard trash and serves as a time capsule of everyday life.
With two million artifacts recovered since, the dedicated staff of Jamestown Rediscovery continues to write the story of Jamestown, dispelling myths and validating theories. Uncovered from the sand and clay have risen fascinating stories of the founding years; a narrative rich with hope, loss, privation, desperation, fortitude, enterprise, societal challenges, and the political nexus for the formation of a democratic society in America.
Jamestown has been rated as one of the top ten archeological discoveries in the world three times over the past seventeen years by the Archeological Institute of America. In 2010 for the discovery of the remains of the earliest Protestant church in North America; in 2013 for uncovering evidence of cannibalism during the ‘starving time’; and in 2015 for the analyses of remains found in four previously excavated graves found in the chancel of the original 1608 church that identified four prominent members of Jamestown’s early leadership. No other archaeological site in America can make this claim.
The Archaearium, a word meaning “a place of beginnings,” symbolizes Jamestown’s role in the English settling of North America. Built in 2006, the museum was designed by the Williamsburg architectural firm Carlton Abbott & Partners. It bears the names of philanthropists Natalie P. and Alan M. Vorhees, whose generous donation helped make the museum possible.
The museum’s distinctive modern style is a departure from the architecture so familiar to visitors of the Historic Triangle. The building is clad in copper, a sustainable alternative, and a purposeful nod to the metal that was so important to trade between early colonists and the native Powhatan peoples. The structure incorporates green technology — geothermal heating and cooling, lower water consumption, and interior use of natural light. Two of the building’s riverfront sections are composed almost entirely of glass, providing expansive views of the James River and a visual connection to the fort site itself.
Constructed on special load-bearing micro-piles and structural cantilevers, architects were able to design a 7500 sq. foot structure on an approximately 5000 square foot “clean” site, meaning archeological investigations had been conducted but not necessarily removed. That becomes evident when viewing sections of the Statehouse’s brick footings through the portals. Contrasting floor finishes trace the foundation’s twists, turns, and stairwells, reminding visitors of what lies beneath.
Entering the museum’s lobby, Jamie May, Senior Staff Archeologist, and Michael Lavin, Senior Staff Conservator, guide us clockwise through a series of galleries that eventually culminates at the gift shop. Each gallery tells a story of those early years, using display items recovered from the fort site, careful reconstructions and reproductions, subtle art panels, and informational placards. Visitors are not distracted by music or heavy narration, inviting quiet contemplation.
An artist rendering of James Fort over present day Jamestown Island. Long thought to have washed away into the river, most of the fort remains are on dry land.
Beginning with the first colonists’ arrival in May 1607, the galleries proceed chronologically through the major stages of the Jamestown story—Jamestown Venture, James Fort, Life and Death, Influence and Industry, World of Pocahontas, Daily Life, Survival, Holy Ground, Foods and First Houses, An Early Well, and End of an Era.
The artifacts on display do much to dispel the image of indolent noblemen who were strangers to physical exertion, and whose only interest was finding gold and personal wealth. Mostly English, they came from diverse backgrounds, from aristocracy to unskilled laborers. Artifacts show the presence of skilled and highly trained individuals -- physicians and surgeons, professional soldiers, coopers, blacksmiths, coppersmiths, tailors, bricklayers, glassmakers, metallurgists, carpenters, masons, and even a jeweler. Indian artifacts provide evidence of cohabitation within the fort.
The Virginia Company’s instructions were clear: find a strong, highly defensible, fertile location with a town site on navigable water near a river channel that would enable ships easy access to shore. A fort was to be constructed, crops planted, expeditions mounted to seek out precious metals, homes built, ships secured to prevent anyone from leaving the colony, letters censored to delete discouraging text, and God to be served and feared.
It was a daunting list, but the Virginia Company’s shareholders expected immediate returns on their investments. The buried records show that despite seemingly overwhelming obstacles and setbacks, the Jamestown settlers did their best to follow those instructions, even when they led to regrettable consequences.
Partial skull and reconstructed face of a young teenaged girl named "Jane," provide the first evidence to support cannibalism during the "Starving Time."
The most poignant gallery, “Life and Death” is marked by a placard, informing visitors that human remains are on display. Forensic anthropology, human osteoarcheology, DNA, and facial reconstructions have put faces and sometimes names to the deceased. For the first time, archeologists found clear evidence of cannibalism that took place during those first desperate years.
The winter of 1609-1610 was a harrowing test of the colony’s will to survive. Three hundred settlers crowded within the fort with insufficient provisions. Threatened hostilities with the Indians and fractured leadership prevented the colonists from leaving the fort to hunt or forage. They ate anything they could—horses, dogs, cats, rats, and snakes. They ate shoe leather and, in final desperation, ate one another.
In 2012, archeologists discovered human teeth, a fragmented skull, and portion of a leg bone in an L-shaped cellar that contained 47,000 artifacts dating to 1610. It wasn’t odd to find human remains during a dig, but chop marks found on the forehead and back of the cranium indicate the skull had been chopped in two and forcefully removed from the body. Many fine cuts on the jaw revealed a sharp knife had removed flesh and soft tissue. “Jane,” as she is called, became the face of famine.
Fires, droughts, disease, famine, and native hostility threatened to end the venture more than once. Despite it all Jamestown survived, grew, extended beyond its triangular palisades, and thrived. Marriages were performed, children were born, riches bore fruit in the form of natural resources rather than the hoped for precious metals, and in 1624 Virginia became a royal colony; all of it now richly displayed in nearly 1000 representative artifacts throughout the Archaearium.
The newest exhibit, “Holy Ground” contains a secret. In the seventeenth century Catholics were barred from Jamestown, but artifacts such as crucifixes, rosaries, and pilgrim badges suggest a strong Catholic presence and underscore the identification of four men buried in the chancel of the 1608 church. All four were prominent members of the colony, and on top of Captain Gabriel Archer’s coffin archeologists found part of a captain’s leading staff and a small silver reliquary that contains bone fragments and a tiny lead ampulla. Reliquaries were containers that held holy remains and were highly venerated. Because opening it would cause irreparable damage, X-ray fluorescence was used to determine its contents.
Before going on public display, Jamestown Rediscovery’s Curator of Collections, Merry Outlaw, catalogs each and every piece, from the smallest bead and pottery shard to full suits of armor. Behind the scenes at Yeardley House, conservators, curators, and trained volunteers identify, clean, mend, restore, and store each artifact. The most fragile are carefully conserved inside a vault, while others are reproduced with the latest 3D printing technology.
Merry tracks the location of each piece, whether it be the Archaearium, Jamestown Visitors Center, or on loan to world class museums and historical societies. She also offers special ninety-minute tours twice a week to small groups six months out of the year. The Curator’s Tour offers access to the Archaearium, the archeological site, the conservation lab, and vault.
The story of Jamestown as told by the Archaearium does not enter into the debate of Jamestown versus New England’s claim to the establishment of the first successful colony. Dr. James Horn, President and Chief Officer of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, who has written and spoken on the subject over the years, feels strongly that had Jamestown failed, the course of North American history would have been very different. The English may have abandoned colonization here altogether and Plymouth might never have been settled.
“This is a world-class archeological site. We have a wonderful museum and, best of all, a dedicated research and educational team. Rediscovery is who we are and what we do. Bringing visitors to that moment of discovery about Jamestown is truly something to see. When you have a group gathered around an excavation where work is on-going, and archeologists bring something up out of the ground that hasn’t been seen for over 400 years, that’s the true discovery.”
The staff of Jamestown Rediscovery is now busy preparing for the 400th anniversary of the first representative assembly of Virginia’s House of Burgesses, which took place in the Jamestown church July 30, 1619.
“It’s not a well understood story, so that puts more emphasis on us to try and help people understand that story of survival,” Horn says. “The capitol was here for ninety-two years, longer than Williamsburg. A huge amount went on during that time and this really is the birthplace of modern America.
It was also the year the first enslaved Africans arrived from Angola. So we have these two aspects that are also part of our story. We have this democratic experience and also cultural diversity, and the issues that arise later leading to aspects of the way people think of one another, react with and to one another are still on-going today. In this regard, the Jamestown story hasn’t ended.”
Special thanks to Dr. James Horn, Dr. William Kelso, Jamie May, Michael Lavin, and Merry Outlaw and the staff of Jamestown Rediscovery.