Towards Food Independence: Faunal Remains from a Post-Starving Time Well at Jamestown

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Previous faunal analysis at Jamestown focused on the first years of settlement, the Starving Time, and the post 1620s. A gap existed during the period immediately following the Starving Time when martial law, conflicts with Virginia Indians, and the reintroduction of livestock affected the struggling colony and their foodways. With over 170,000 fragments of faunal material, Jamestown’s Second Well (ca. 1610-1617) shows how the colony regrouped during this time and worked toward building a successful plantation system. Element distribution patterns, kill-off data, and biomass results for livestock reveal the importance of swine over cattle, how herds were protected to promote growth, and the significance of imported provisions. Large quantities of wild mammals, fowl, and fish show how the colonists utilized their environment to supplement their diet. Faunal analysis of the Second Well elucidates Jamestown’s development from dependence on the Virginia Company and Virginia Indians for subsistence into a stabilized colony.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow