Hi. I'm Sean Romo,
senior staff archaeologist
for the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation,
and welcome to another episode
of "Dig Deeper."
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I joined the Jamestown Rediscovery team
back in April, and for most of the last year,
my job has been to help manage the archaeological
excavations at Historic Jamestowne.
You guys have probably seen me in the field
digging alongside the rest
of the archaeology team
and helping to explain to the public
what we've been finding.
Excavation is only one part
of what the archaeology team
normally does at Historic Jamestowne.
As we dig, we're of course recording every
soil layer and feature that we uncover
and collecting all the artifacts
that are in a particular excavation area.
Those artifacts get washed in the lab
and then analyzed.
And then, once everything's done,
we bring all of our information together,
everything we found in the field,
all the artifacts from the lab,
and the history of Jamestown
and we try to figure out
precisely what we've found
and to write that up
into a technical report.
And that's what I'm working on right now.
Our technical reports are very important,
because they present the most recent
and updated analysis
of the archaeological findings
at Historic Jamestowne.
Now, we've been putting out technical reports
since the beginning of the project in 1994.
Some of these reports cover
multiple field seasons,
some just one, but all of them
present the most accurate
and most recent analysis of our findings.
Now, the reports are important in another
way.
They actually form the basis
for a lot of other media that we produce.
So books about the excavations,
the signage that you see on site,
interpretations to visitors,
all of these things
source their data from our
technical reports, ultimately.
Even our scholarly articles are going
to draw on the technical reports
for knowledge about what we found
and where we found it.
Putting together our technical reports
is a major undertaking.
And it's a good rule of thumb in archaeology
that however long it takes you to dig a site,
it's going to take you at least
three times that amount
to write the technical report.
I'm actually just one
of several researchers
who's working on
our recent technical reports.
In fact, most of the
archaeology department is,
directly or indirectly,
working on our reports.
Now, one of the first steps
to putting these reports together,
and a step that I'm working on right now
is reviewing the archaeology
that came before us.
What was done in a particular location
in years past?
Now, that means looking over earlier technical
reports
for Jamestown Rediscovery,
but also reports produced
about the work done
by the National Park Service
in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.
And there's one in particular
that I've been working with lately.
That's John Cotter's 1958
"Archaeological Excavations at Jamestown."
That summarizes several decades'
worth of excavations
on Preservation Virginia property,
Historic Jamestowne,
and on the National Park Service
side of the island.
I've been looking specifically
at the Historic Jamestowne part.
Now, you can see here a map
produced for the 1958 Cotter report
that shows a portion of the Great Road,
which was a historic road
connecting Jamestown Island
to the mainland.
Cotter and his team uncovered
portions of this Great Road.
And in the past summer,
we found another segment of it,
and you can see that right here.
Now, when we're reviewing
earlier excavations like this,
our Geographic Information System, or GIS,
comes in really handy,
because we can very quickly figure out
where the features were uncovered
in past excavations and compare them
to our modern excavations.
So we can easily see, oh, here's where
the Great Road that John Cotter found is
and here's where we found it,
right next to each other.
So, we're still very early in the process
of putting together our technical reports.
But eventually, once they're finished,
they're all going to be made available
online on our website at
historicjamestowne.org.
And in fact, all the previous
technical reports are out there right now.
So if you're interested,
go to the website and download them,
and you can see what we had put together
for previous years' archaeology.
Our website also has our monthly Dig Updates,
which is a great place to see what
we're working on in the field each month.
Usually there are photos,
sometimes videos that go along with that.
We also have a YouTube channel,
and the YouTube channel
has videos like this and overviews
of what we're working on
in the field and in the lab,
a lot of times.
So definitely check those out.
Thank you very much for watching
"Dig Deeper."
Stay safe, and tune in again
for more updates from Historic Jamestowne.
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