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Remnants of fires turn up in a Jamestown cellar

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Mia Knight
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« on: September 19, 2007, 02:22:17 am »

Scanning the flames
Remnants of fires, maybe even a big blaze, turn up in a Jamestown cellar.



Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists pushed their investigation of an unusually early cellar several steps forward last week, uncovering significant new evidence that could not only provide the structure with a firm date but also shed light on function. Among the clues unearthed was a thick, artifact-rich deposit of char and ash that could date to the catastrophic fire of January 1608, plus compelling signs that the building might have housed a large, brick-lined hearth in addition to a previously discovered but still-growing fire pit.

Artifact of the week

Jamestown Rediscovery conservators recently finished work on the base of a heavy iron mortar unearthed inside the cellar earlier this summer. Though the thinner walls of the vessel have been largely lost, the thick, wide and weighty bottom remains, demonstrating the kind of rugged, especially stable container needed to grind or pound various substances — including raw mineral ores — into powder. "This is the type of thing that would have been used for heavy-duty alchemy," says curator Bly Straube, referring to the Virginia Company's early hopes of discovering deposits of gold or other precious metals. "You also might have seen an apothecary use it to make various kinds of medicines."


Archaeological feature of the week

Probing for the floor in the south chamber of the cellar, the Jamestown Rediscovery field crew made a potentially significant discovery this past week, exposing a large deposit of char and ash that could be the result of the catastrophic January 1608 fire that nearly destroyed James Fort. "We've never found a good layer from that fire until now — it's something we've been looking for for 14 years," Jamestown Rediscovery director William Kelso says. "The burn layer here is a big one and a serious one — and everything sealed below it dates to before the fire. That should give us a real time capsule of what was going on in this structure."

In the lab

Conservator Michael Lavin turned to his pneumatic air-abrasion tool this week when he needed to make his preliminary assessment of a newly recovered but rust-encrusted woodworking tool slated for electrolysis treatment. Aiming a pressurized stream of minute aluminum oxides particles at the surface of the steel-tipped iron gouge, he carefully removed the crumbly outer layer of red iron oxide, then scanned the underlying layer of black magnetite for any signs of damage as well as a potentially informative maker's mark. "Everything looks pretty good so far," he said, undercutting a large clump of concretion in order to speed up the painstaking process. "The whole thing is going to take me about six hours."


Pinning down the past

Among the artifacts recovered from the cellar this past week is a pewter Maltese cross that might have been worn by someone linked to the Catholic Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitallars, also known since 1530 as the Knights of Malta. The small metal badge joins three previously discovered Spanish crucifixes in an unexpected yet growing body of evidence pointing to a mysterious Catholic presence in a colony founded as a Protestant English stronghold. "It appears to be a livery badge and — because it's made of a base metal — probably belonged to a servant who worked in the household of someone related to the order," Straube says. "We know a number of our colonists came from Catholic families. But who would have thought that we'd find something like this at Jamestown? It's something that would have to have been hidden back then. So we'll have to do a little investigating to see if we can find out who it might have been."


Putting the puzzle together

Troweling through the layers of soil along the south and east walls of the cellar, the archaeologists have uncovered not only a potentially significant layer of char and ash but also intriguing evidence of an increasingly large, well-used fire pit. They also are revisiting a mysterious masonry wall in the cellar's north chamber, where they have found new signs that might identify the feature as some sort of large fireplace. "It's just a theory right now," Kelso says. "But this could be what the colonists called the "common kettle" — the place where they had their first common kitchen area."

http://www.dailypress.com/features/dp-life_secrets_0918sep18,0,7061912.story
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