Description: In 1994 the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities began the historic Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project to find buried evidence of 1607 Jamestown, the first enduring English settlement in America. In only the first nine months of digging, archaeologists made a series of spectacular finds. In addition to unearthing 30,000 artifacts dating to before 1650, excavations also uncovered the soil-stain footprint of an upright log barrier, undoubtedly an indication of a palisaded fort dating to the early seventeenth century.

The discovery of the fort ranks as one of the most significant archaeological finds in American history. The six paperback volumes of the Jamestown Rediscovery series, now available in an attractively priced single set, tell the exciting story of this attempt to uncover the first Jamestown fortification. As William M. Kelso records, by the fall of 1996, over 150,000 artifacts had been found, all of a military nature and old enough to be from the relevant period.

The rediscovery of James Fort is not without its archaeological puzzles, however. Excavation of a backfilled pit in 1998 revealed an orientation seemingly at odds with the site plan suggested by the earlier discoveries, a twist that sent Kelso and his team back to a number of historical documents that serve as interpretive tools for the project. As these volumes demonstrate, historical archaeology is a form of detective work, involving both the painstaking task of digging artifacts out of the ground and the research that corroborates or contradicts the archaeologist's findings. In Jamestown Rediscovery, we gradually uncover the lives of native Powhatan and immigrant Englishman beforeVirginia became a royal colony, as we follow the contemporary archaeological story of recovering their world.

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