DIGGING DEEPER
Archaeologists in Jamestown begin excavations inside well found last year
JAMESTOWN — Imagine a cake with layers of chocolate, vanilla and icing. That’s the analogy Dave Givens uses to describe his team’s excavation of a well at Historic Jamestowne, which entered a new phase last week.
“We cut out a section so we can understand the profile,” said Givens, Jamestown Rediscovery’s director of archaeology. “That gives us a three-dimensional perspective, and it also allows us to do some statistical analysis about how it was filled and where artifacts are.”
Visitors walking on the northside of James Fort can now spot the team’s excavation structure, known as cribbing, with wooden rings that go several feet deep into the ground around the well. This framing provides a way for the archaeologists to climb in and out, and also ensures the work proceeds safely.
Estimated to have been built in the early 17th century, what the team has dubbed the “Governor’s Well” was constructed by colonists through creating a big pit, placing bricks and then backfilling the soil as needed. Givens said his excavation team is essentially doing the same process, but in reverse.
“What we’ll do is remove the fill until we get to the water table or close, where it’s wet, and then we’ll dig out the center,” Givens said, guessing that it could be six weeks before they get to the bottom.
The area around the brick well is called the “builder’s trench,” which staff archaeologist Natalie Reid joked was like “OSHA” for the 17th century.
“Once we have this all down to a certain level that we’re happy with, then we’ll actually start getting into the meat of the excavation, the really cool stuff, which is the interior of the well,” Reid said.
What makes wells such exciting finds in the field of archaeology is their use as trash receptacles in colonial times once the water had gone bad.
Over time, the limited circulation of air makes these wells anaerobic environments, which preserves items that may have otherwise degraded, such as clothing or food.
While the team expects to locate most artifacts in the well’s interior, they are still screening the dirt as they dig to catch small objects.
They’ve already captured some treasures this way, like a fragment of a Delftware drug jar, a Dutch-made earthenware object.
The name of the well comes from the archaeology team’s suspicions that it may have been associated with Samuel Argall, who served as deputy governor from May 1617 to April 1619 and would have lived nearby. The team stumbled upon the well in the summer of 2022 while removing soil from a Confederate moat fashioned during the short-lived 1861 Fort Pocahontas.
“We’re both cursed and blessed because the Confederates took off the top 6 or so feet of it, leaving us the bottom half,” Givens said, but that’s where “some of the really important information is.”
Previous well excavations at Jamestown have produced thousands of historic pieces, including an armor breastplate, animal bones and more, some of which are now featured at the Archaearium Museum. The team hopes this well will yield a comparable haul.
“The public often thinks that we’re out here to find things, and you do in archeology,” Givens said. “But it’s about finding out about Jamestown in the past. With this well, our hopes are that we will find some environmental data because the 16-teens are pretty gray for us.”
In the last excavated well, the team found bits of corn, and Givens said he hopes they will find tobacco seeds in this well.
These agricultural items shed light on what the colonists were growing and by extension what the environmental conditions were at the time.
The team expects to work on the site for the rest of the year.
For those not able to physically visit to observe the excavation in process, the team has set up a livestream camera where the dig can be seen from anywhere. The livestream can be viewed at http://historicjamestowne.org/governorswell.
The excavation is being supported by funding from the Jamestowne Society, a group of descendants of early settlers who lived or held colonial government positions at Jamestown prior to 1700.