Survival Cannibalism at Jamestown, Virginia: A Case Study in Interdisciplinary Historical Archaeology

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

In 2012, a mutilated human skull and severed leg bone were found in a trash deposit that partially filled an early 17th century cellar at Jamestown, Virginia. This session will examine in detail the three interdisciplinary sources of evidence that determined that this find uniquely proves that cannibalism was practiced at Jamestown during the Starving Time winter of 1609/1610.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

Documents

Archaeological Context of Jamestown’s Starving Time (2014)

Beyond Jane: A Tightly Dated Context of the Early Seventeenth Century (2014)

Cannibalism at James Fort, Jamestown, Virginia: The Bone Evidence (2014)

Contextualizing “Jane”: The Robert Cotton Tobacco Pipe (2014)

The Display of Human Skeletal Remains at Jamestown (2014)

In a Land of “Abundance”, Why did the Jamestown Colonists Starve During the Winter of 1609-1610? (2014)

Putting the Pieces Together: Forensic Facial Reconstruction of “Jane” (2014)

Scientific and Historical Analysis of Dis-articulated Human Skeletal Remains from James Fort, 1607 - (1615?) (2014)

A “Sharp Prick of Hunger”: Defining Famine Food (2014)

“A Worlde of Miseries”: The Starving Time and Cannibalism at Jamestown (2014)