OK, here we are at the site
of the first substantial church
on Jamestown Island,
at James Fort.
We're doing a little
experimental archaeology,
so the archaeology crew is building,
or reconstructing, a portion of the church
so that visitors can understand
what the actual foundations
and somewhat fabric of the building
would have looked like.
So our intention here is not to
recreate the entire church,
but give some notion of the space
so when people are standing inside the church
they can understand what the walls
would look like, what the fabric of the building.
The walls would have been mud and stud,
and we have a description by John Smith,
who says the first church was
"homely like a barn, set upon cratchets."
And so that's sort of our understanding
from the historic documents.
The archaeology showed
a post-in-ground building,
so it had rather large posts
that would have supported the framing above,
which would have been a sedge or thatch roof,
which would have been very heavy,
actually, in the end.
So the first thing we do
is to put the studs in the ground
in a narrow trench that we excavate.
And we've decided to line it with boards
just to have a form to pour concrete.
So we pour concrete in the bottom
to keep the studs intact.
And the reason is because people
are probably going to be coming up,
kids, they're going to be
pulling on these things,
and we don't want them to move very much.
Once we pour the concrete,
then we take the clay,
and the way we've decided to mix the clay,
first with the sample by hand,
but then later in large amounts back behind--
out of the view of the public
so nobody's in danger,
we mix it with a rototiller.
So we get a big rubber mat they use
for horse stalls, throw the clay on there.
We add our bonding agent,
and then mix it with that,
create blocks of clay probably similar
to what the colonists did,
bring it out, put it on the wall, shape it,
finish it, and go on to the next section.
So the bonding agent that we add
to the clay is Quikrete surface bond.
And the reason we do that
is because it's white.
It also contains fiberglass,
which helps bond the clay.
It's kind of cheating,
but the colonists would have added--
as we know from the archaeology,
they would have added black rush,
which grows in the marshes around here.
It's similar to a grass,
but grows in sort of marshy areas.
And we found that in the clay wall samples
from our earliest structures.
So the work we've done here
is a continuation of our experimental archaeology
or our commitment
to experimental archaeology,
and it's something that's very light
on the landscape.
In other words, nothing we've done
has impacted the archaeology below.
It's all done in fill so that we can,
or someone in the future,
can very easily remove it,
or if need be build something else here.
So within a few weeks, visitors will be able
to come inside this and enjoy this space
and understand the full sort of gravity
or breadth of what the 24-by-60-foot building
that the colonists described
would have looked like.
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