Jan. 10, 2007 — Seeds and plant remains preserved in a well at America's first permanent English settlement suggest the Jamestown colonists were not just gentlemen with few wilderness survival skills, as they are often portrayed, but tried to live off the land by gathering berries and nuts.
At least one tobacco seed, possibly representing the earliest known evidence of the cultivation at Jamestown of the cash crop that helped the settlement survive financially, was also discovered among samples from the 17th-century well.
Archaeobotanist Steve Archer will include results of his microscopic analysis of the plant matter in presentations at the Society of Historical Archaeology conference that begins Wednesday in Williamsburg.
"This little, tiny sample indicates there was some experimenting going on with New World plants," Archer, of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the College of William and Mary, said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
While more research needs to be done elsewhere at Jamestown, the lack of plant material from Europe in this well suggests the settlers adapted to the environment by using local food resources as they learned what was edible from their contact with Indians, Archer said.
"It's not a mega-breakthrough into the history" of Jamestown, William Kelso, director of archaeology at the Historic Jamestowne site, said Tuesday. "But I think it does show the old story that they were gentlemen here who didn't have a clue how to survive in the wilderness ... that's not the whole story. It was a mix."
Jamestown was founded as a business venture in May 1607, with settlers encountering harsh conditions including severe drought, famine and disease. An 18-month series of events commemorating the settlement's 400th anniversary is under way.
Colonists built the 6-foot-square (0.56 sq. meters), 15-foot-deep (4.5-meter) well after 1610 in a corner of Jamestown's triangular fort. When it no longer was used for water, settlers filled the well with trash and then built an addition to the governor's house over it in 1617, sealing everything inside until archaeologists began excavating it in 2005.
