The Search for Jamestown’s 1617 Church: How Digital Technologies are Providing New Insights into an Old Site

Summary

Digital technologies are changing fundamental approaches to archaeological excavation and analysis. The Jamestown Rediscovery project to examine James Fort, the first successful English settlement in North America, has been ongoing for more than 20 years. Recently the team has been working on re-excavating the site of three of Jamestown’s 17th-century churches, the earliest of which is significant for having been the site of the first representative assembly meeting in English America in 1619. The church remains were first examined over a century ago by preservationists from the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. Today the site is incredibly complicated because the fragmentary remains of the three buildings have been "cut" into small pieces by the numerous grave shafts dug into the church floors over time as well as the 20th-century archaeological test units. Digital technologies, from drone imaging to 3D modeling, are changing how the site is being recorded, assessed, and visualized, in ways simply not possible a century ago. The one thing that cannot be replaced by technology, however, is the examination of the features and subtle stratigraphic relationships by the archaeologists as they work to define and tease apart the three structures.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20482