JAMESTOWN: THE BURIED TRUTH
William M. Kelso

238 pages, University of Virginia Press, $29.95

For students of Colonial Virginia, no recent event has been so exciting as the discovery of the original 1607 fort at Jamestown. The archaeological excavations there during the past decade have added significantly to the body of evidence available to scholars seeking to understand the colony’s founding.

In many instances, the new archaeological evidence has led to a re-evaluation of the familiar documentary record. As a consequence, the entire episode is being reassessed - and with some important new insights for the history of Virginia.

William M. Kelso has been the chief archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery project from the beginning. His “Jamestown: The Buried Truth” is a lucid and enthralling history of the excavations and of the reinterpretation of the events of the first few years of the Virginia colony. So clear and informative is the text that the volume is one of the best books ever on how students of the past, whether archaeologists or other kinds of historians, do their work.

Each new inquiry and each new discovery is influenced by the information and interpretation available at the beginning, and each aspect of the old interpretation has to be entirely re-evaluated in the light of each new discovery.

The early relationship of the settlers with the Indians was not what it once seemed. The settlers were probably more fearful of Spanish raiders than of Powhatan Indians. The settlement was more a military outpost than an enterprise in colonialism, and the settlers anticipated living off the land and acquiring food from its original inhabitants rather than by doing their own farming. These new insights undermine the old view that the colony was constantly on the verge of failure because of incompetent leadership and the unwillingness of gentlemen colonists to work.

In fact, many old ways of telling the story of Jamestown are now being discarded. The archaeological work at Jamestown has changed the way we see the past.

The excellent maps and drawings and the beautifully reproduced images of the artifacts and the excavation site, together with Kelso’s fine writing, make this excellent contribution to Virginia’s history even more rewarding for the reader. This is precisely the right book at the right time for both specialists and curious readers who want to know how Virginia began.

Brent Tarter is an editor of the “Dictionary of Virginia Biography” at the Library of Virginia.book