Post by blackcrowheart on Jan 16, 2007 0:23:59 GMT -5
Jamestown seeds examined
Seeds four centuries old, found in a well at Jamestown and analyzed in
William and Mary’s Surface Characterization Lab, are sprouting new clues
about the early days of the Jamestown Colony.
The seeds recovered from the well at Historic Jamestowne were mainly
from food plants native to the area such as berries, cherries,
persimmons and grapes. Most intriguing to archaeobotanist Steve Archer
are the implications of three tobacco seeds, including one undamaged
specimen dating to 1611, preserved by the wet, anaerobic conditions in
the well.
Archer, an adjunct instructor in William and Mary’s anthropology
department, is employed by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He said
undamaged tobacco seeds are a comparatively rare find in archaeological
digs and a determination of the species of the lone tobacco seed might
reveal evidence of the first known American cultivation of what became
Virginia’s first profitable crop.
The wild native tobacco growing in Virginia, Archer said, is Nicotiana
rustica, a variety with a much higher nicotine content than the
Nicotiana tabacum strain, brought to the James River region from the
West Indies by John Rolfe, the colonist who later married Pocahontas.
The native rustica tobacco was valuable to the indigenous population,
but was too strong and coarse to satisfy the growing cravings of the
expanding European market. Rolfe’s imported tabacum variety became not
only the basis of his personal fortune, but also the basis of the
viability of the Jamestown Colony as well as Virginia’s first important
cash crop.
“The question,” Archer said, “is how well developed is the commercial
production of the tabacum species in 1611—or are they still playing
around with the rustica that grew freely and locally?”
Archer took the tobacco seeds to William and Mary’s Surface
Characterization Lab at the Applied Research Center in Newport News
where lab manager Amy Wilkerson and her team put the 1611 seed under
their HIROX microscope to compare it with a known tabacum seed from the
early 20th Century.
“The samples had been preserved in 400-year-old well water they found
them in, and we couldn't let them dry out,” Wilkerson said, which she
said created a bit of a challenge in creating sharp, high quality
magnified images of the seeds, which are about half a millimeter in
diameter. Surface characterization comparison proved inconclusive and
Archer said that DNA testing may be next for the 1611 seed.
National Geographic magazine is funding the Jamestown archaeobotany
study. William Kelso, director of archaeology at Historic Jamestowne for
APVA Preservation Virginia, said in a press release issued by National
Geographic that the 6-foot-square, 15-foot-deep well, located inside the
north corner of the fort, is a virtual time capsule of environmental and
cultural data, according to Kelso. When it was no longer used as a water
source, the colonists filled it 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 the fall of 2005.
Results of the microscopic analysis will be included in presentations at
the Society of Historical Archaeology conference in Williamsburg Jan.
10-14.
Seeds four centuries old, found in a well at Jamestown and analyzed in
William and Mary’s Surface Characterization Lab, are sprouting new clues
about the early days of the Jamestown Colony.
The seeds recovered from the well at Historic Jamestowne were mainly
from food plants native to the area such as berries, cherries,
persimmons and grapes. Most intriguing to archaeobotanist Steve Archer
are the implications of three tobacco seeds, including one undamaged
specimen dating to 1611, preserved by the wet, anaerobic conditions in
the well.
Archer, an adjunct instructor in William and Mary’s anthropology
department, is employed by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He said
undamaged tobacco seeds are a comparatively rare find in archaeological
digs and a determination of the species of the lone tobacco seed might
reveal evidence of the first known American cultivation of what became
Virginia’s first profitable crop.
The wild native tobacco growing in Virginia, Archer said, is Nicotiana
rustica, a variety with a much higher nicotine content than the
Nicotiana tabacum strain, brought to the James River region from the
West Indies by John Rolfe, the colonist who later married Pocahontas.
The native rustica tobacco was valuable to the indigenous population,
but was too strong and coarse to satisfy the growing cravings of the
expanding European market. Rolfe’s imported tabacum variety became not
only the basis of his personal fortune, but also the basis of the
viability of the Jamestown Colony as well as Virginia’s first important
cash crop.
“The question,” Archer said, “is how well developed is the commercial
production of the tabacum species in 1611—or are they still playing
around with the rustica that grew freely and locally?”
Archer took the tobacco seeds to William and Mary’s Surface
Characterization Lab at the Applied Research Center in Newport News
where lab manager Amy Wilkerson and her team put the 1611 seed under
their HIROX microscope to compare it with a known tabacum seed from the
early 20th Century.
“The samples had been preserved in 400-year-old well water they found
them in, and we couldn't let them dry out,” Wilkerson said, which she
said created a bit of a challenge in creating sharp, high quality
magnified images of the seeds, which are about half a millimeter in
diameter. Surface characterization comparison proved inconclusive and
Archer said that DNA testing may be next for the 1611 seed.
National Geographic magazine is funding the Jamestown archaeobotany
study. William Kelso, director of archaeology at Historic Jamestowne for
APVA Preservation Virginia, said in a press release issued by National
Geographic that the 6-foot-square, 15-foot-deep well, located inside the
north corner of the fort, is a virtual time capsule of environmental and
cultural data, according to Kelso. When it was no longer used as a water
source, the colonists filled it 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 the fall of 2005.
Results of the microscopic analysis will be included in presentations at
the Society of Historical Archaeology conference in Williamsburg Jan.
10-14.