Amazing artifacts from a Jamestown well

CSI: Jamestown. A Link.

http://frontierpartisans.com/1537/csi-jamestown/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FrontierPartisans+%28Frontier+Partisans%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

A Letter From Dan at Jamestown.

plane2lisbon said...

Hello,

Thanks for posting our video. I'm Dan Smith, the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologist you see digging in the well in this one. We're not sure why we find so many metal tools in the bottoms of wells. One theory is that they were used as bucket weights—they would be tied to the handle of a bucket to get it to tip over and fill with water after hitting the water's surface. Our head curator, Bly Straube, isn't convinced that's the reason, though.

In answer to Le Loup's questions, we find almost everything that was used on a daily basis in the wells. Once wells went bad—maybe from an animal falling in and spoiling the water, but more often here at Jamestown because the brackish James River water and nearby swamp water eventually seeped into the reservoir and made the water undrinkable—they were turned into trash pits. Like Gorges Smythe wrote, that turns the well into a treasure trove for us because of all the information waiting to be rediscovered. We've found a number of wells here, but never a privy. The wells alone have yielded about a million of the two-million-plus artifacts we've found here at Historic Jamestowne since 1994, so we're not complaining.

Thanks, again, for posting the video. Three more well videos, the first and second wells the colonists dug, and a third, brick-lined well can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/JamestownRediscovery#p/u/24/owYBccAs8UU

http://www.youtube.com/user/JamestownRediscovery#p/u/17/ONQQMmUxz-4

http://www.youtube.com/user/JamestownRediscovery#p/u/13/l1rZR

My thanks to Dan for this information, very much appreciated Dan.

Keith.

Amazing discovery!!! from the bottom of a well at Jamestown

17th Century Jamestown. New Findings. Equipment.

All images curtesy of Gutenberg Project.

17th Century Colonial Clothing.

Clothing and Footwear.

The Jamestown settlers of the middle class were usually dressed in hard wearing, rough clothes made of homespun material, with a slightly better costume for Sunday and holiday wear. In 1622 each Englishman who planned to emigrate to Jamestown was advised to supply himself with the following wearing apparel:
• “One Monmouth cap
• Three falling bands [a neckband or collar of a shirt which turned down over the shoulders].
• Three shirts.
• One waste-coate.
• One suite of Canvase [a suit made of coarse cloth, such as cotton, hemp, tow, or jute].
• One suite of Frize [a woolen fabric with a nap].
• One suite of Cloth.
• Three paire of Irish stockins.
• Foure paire of shooes.
• One paire of garters.
• One doozen of points [a point was a tie or string ending with an anglet and used to join parts of a costume as doublet and hose].”
The women wore plain frocks and petticoats, although a few of the wealthy ladies owned silk, satin, and velvet dresses. Bodices, as a rule, were long pointed, and skirts were full and long.