A Whale of a Well: Zooarchaeological and Curatorial Approaches to Sorting 300,000 Faunal Remains from Jamestown's First Well

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Jamestown’s First Well was dug by colonists soon upon their arrival to Virginia to access fresh water, but it was filled with domestic refuse by survivors of the disastrous Starving Time winter of 1609-1610 upon orders for a “cleansing” of the fort by incoming leadership. The Starving Time saw colonists resort to taboo dietary practices including the consumption of rats, cats, dogs, and horses, as well as survival cannibalism. Excavations of the well yielded hundreds of thousands of faunal bones, identified as food debris from this period, with layers N and W having the largest concentration of animal remains. Layer N, estimated to have over 300,000 pieces of bone, has the greatest quantity of fauna and represents a unique challenge for Jamestown’s curatorial staff. In this paper, I identify the zooarchaeological methods used to sort the large quantities of bone into species and element in conjunction with curatorial challenges specific to Jamestown including limited space, a fixed grant budget, and incorrect identifications. Additionally, I discuss preliminary faunal identifications, taphonomic patterns, and their implications for our understanding of the Starving Time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53224