WILLIAMSBURG — A new scientific test has not ended disagreement between Jamestown archaeologists and the Church of England about the probable identities of two 400-year-old skeletons.

A team of archeologists and other scientists excavating the original James Fort site said yesterday that they still think a skeleton unearthed at Jamestown is probably a leader of the 1607 Jamestown expedition, Bartholomew Gosnold.

In a news release sent by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, the archaeologists said they remain convinced a skeleton unearthed last year in a Suffolk, England, church is not Gosnold’s sister, Elizabeth Tilney. The association owns the fort site and employs the archaeologists.

But the Church of England, which authorized the English church dig, said Monday that it remains convinced by scientific evidence that the English skeleton is probably Tilney. That would make it unlikely that the Jamestown skeleton is Gosnold, the church said in a news release.

The new information comes from a scientific test on samples of teeth from both skeletons. The tests, which show the makeup of water the skeleton’s owners drank when they were children, indicated two things.

The first was that the male and female skeletons did not drink water with the same composition, and so were probably not brother and sister. The second was that the female drank water that was present in the area where the Gosnold family owned land, and the male drank water from someplace else.

However, tests on the male skeleton’s teeth did indicate the possibility he grew up in a region very close to the Gosnold property. So both sides agreed the test did not rule out that the skeleton is Gosnold.

The major disagreement remains from earlier tests on the bones of the female skeleton. The Jamestown archaeologists say the bones came from a woman who died too young to be Gosnold’s sister. But the Church of England’s science consultants say the margin of error in such tests doesn’t rule out the bones being those of Tilney, who died in her 70s.

Both sides in the mild argument do agree the new tests increase the chances the Jamestown skeleton may belong not to Gosnold but to another early Jamestown leader such as Captain Gabriel Archer or Sir Ferdinando Wenman.

“Based on historical, archaeological and forensic evidence, Gosnold remains the leading candidate,“ said William Kelso, director of archaeology for the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. “But the tooth tests increase the possibility that we may have discovered the grave of” Archer or Wenman.

Gosnold was the principal organizer of the expedition that established Jamestown as the first permanent English settlement in America. Gosnold died at age 36 after a three-week illness about three months after stepping ashore at Jamestown. Written accounts say he was buried with great fanfare.

Archer, a lawyer and first secretary of Jamestown, died at age 35 during the winter of 1609-1610. Wenman, James Fort’s master of the ordnance, died at age 34 in 1610.

The Jamestown skeleton is believed to have been a high-ranking official because it had been buried in a coffin, with a captain’s “leading staff,“ just outside the fort.

Kelso, the chief Jamestown archaeologist, says the ceremonial staff remains the best evidence the skeleton is Gosnold’s.

Andrew Petkofsky is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.