Sourcing the Black "Marble" Knight’s Tombstone at Jamestown, Virginia, USA

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.

The goal of this project was to determine the source of Jamestown’s Knight’s tombstone. From 1627, it is the oldest such tombstone in the Chesapeake Bay, USA region. We chose a geoarchaeological approach using the fossils contained in the stone to determine its source. We sampled two archived fragments from the stone to make thin sections to identify its microfossils. Three species of foraminiferans (i.e., single celled amoeboid protists) Endothyra sp., Paraarchaediscus angulatus, and P. concavus were found in these samples. These fossils co-occurred in what is now Europe (including Belgium, England, and Ireland) about 340 million years ago during the Viséan Age of the Middle Mississippian Epoch of the Carboniferous Period. These species did not co-occur anywhere in North America. Therefore, the Knight’s tombstone had to be imported from Europe. Historical evidence of similar colonial tombstones around Chesapeake Bay suggests the source was Belgium.

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