REVIEW BY DENNIS B BLANTON
This new book from William Kelso is in the tradition of popularised portrayals of archaeological discoveries linked to the ‘Virginia adventure’. Beginning in the 1960s, Ivor Noël Hume published several evocative, book-length accounts of studies of the ‘Tidewater’ region – that is, the north Atlantic Plain. Just as Hume’s stories did, this new work will captivate readers seeking to understand the story of Jamestown’s founding, its legacy, and how knowledge of it has improved with the advent of new research since the 1990s. In essence, it is a thoughtfully conceived series of short stories from the archaeologist who spearheaded the ‘rediscovery’ of James Fort and oversaw most of its two-decade period of renewed study.
The book unfolds through eight chapters organised largely as a historical chronicle. Essential context is set in the first of them. Biographies of the principal figures who influenced the path of the colony’s early decades are detailed. The chapter also recounts the backdrop of the Virginia Company’s ambitions and plans, and the trials and tribulations of the settlement’s initial years.
Chapters 2 to 5 describe new perspectives on the creation of the fortified settlement, an improved sense of Native American engagements with the colony – including the fate of Pocahontas, the growth of the initial settlement into a fledgling port community, and the implications of a period of colonial rebellion in the 1670s.
