Exciting New Discoveries at Jamestown

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The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, North Carolina.

George Edwin Butler, 1868-1941

The Croatan Indians of Sampson County, North Carolina. Their Origin and Racial Status. A Plea for Separate Schools.

Durham, N.C.: Seeman Printery, 1916.

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NEW BETHEL INDIAN SCHOOL
Herrings Township, Sampson Co., N. C.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/butler/ill1.html

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Remains of the earliest European fort in the present day US interior discovered

The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior of what is now the United States have been discovered by a team of archaeologists, providing new insight into the start of the U.S. colonial era and the all-too-human reasons spoiling Spanish dreams of gold and glory.

Spanish Captain Juan Pardo and his men built Fort San Juan in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in 1567, nearly 20 years before Sir Walter Raleigh’s “lost colony” at Roanoke and 40 years before the Jamestown settlement established England’s presence in the region.

“Fort San Juan and six others that together stretched from coastal South Carolina into eastern Tennessee were occupied for less than 18 months before theNative Americans destroyed them, killing all but one of the Spanish soldiers who manned the garrisons,” said University of Michigan archaeologist Robin Beck.

Beck, an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Anthropology and assistant curator at the U-M Museum of Anthropology, is working with archaeologists Christopher Rodning of Tulane University and David Moore of Warren Wilson College to excavate the site near the city of Morganton in western North Carolina, nearly 300 miles from the Atlantic Coast.

The Berry site, named in honor of the stewardship of landowners James and the late Pat Berry, is located along a tributary of the Catawba River and was the location of the Native American town of Joara, part of the mound-building Mississippian culture that flourished in the southeastern U.S. between 800 and about 1500 CE.

www.heritagedaily.com/2013/07/oldest-european-fort-in-the-inland-us-discovered-in-appalachians/96621

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Jennifer Gabriel Powell

It is with great sadness and very heavy hearts that Anne Poole and Roberta Estes, directors of the Lost Colony Research Group, convey the heartbreaking message that we have lost our own Jennifer Gabriel Powell.  Jenn is the archaeologist for the Lost Colony Research Group, but she was so much more.  Jenn met Andy Powell, now Andy Gabriel Powell, retired mayor of Bideford, England, on our dig in 2012.  Three months later, she went to England to visit Andy, and suffice it to say she never came back, except to get her visa and her cat.  She and Andy married on January 19, 2013. 

Jenn was just 34, completed her BS in archaeology in 2012, was lovely, brilliant and joyful.  She had her whole life in front of her.  We all loved Jenn and remember her laughing in her signature tie dye t-shirts that she made herself.  Jenn and Andy are both members of our Lost Colony family.

Yesterday, Jenn suffered a brain hemorrhage and today, after her mother arrived from the US, life support was discontinued and Jenn slipped away.  Our hearts grieve for two of our own, Jenn’s passing and Andy’s terrible loss.  Please light a candle and say a prayer for Jenn, Andy, Jenn’s parents and family.  We will have a memorial article for Jenn in the upcoming Lost Colony Research Group newsletter.



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Jamestown Mysteries Solved By Archeological Finds

Published on Jan 28, 2014 The Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists over the years have come across several instances of disarticulated human skeletal remains in trash pits. This short film documents one such find. A skull fragment found in the fort's west bulwark ditch demonstrated clear evidence of an attempt at trephination (a surgical procedure performed in response to head injuries, whereby surgeons remove a plug of bone form the skull to prevent a buildup of fluid that could cause pressure on the brain). The research that is presented in this film was the result of a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Jamestown Rediscovery Project. Senior Staff Archaeologist, Jamie May of the Rediscovery Project narrates the film. This blog is © History Chasers
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Today's Nature Publication Refutes Possibility of a Solutrean Migration to the Americas

A very exciting and definite paper has just been published by Nature, today, titled “The genome of a Late Pleistocene human from a Clovis burial site in western Montana,” by Rasmussen et al. The authors conclude that the DNA of a Clovis child is ancestral to Native Americans.  Said another way, this Clovis child was a descendant, along with Native people today, of the original migrants from Asia who crossed the Bering Strait.

All four types of DNA were tested; Y chromosome, mtDNA, autosomal and X. Everything tested as having come through the Bering Strait from Asia. There was no European admixture.  

This information is very important to a number of academic disciplines. I am sure much more remains to be explored and explained, but we can rest assured in this fact: 

"The researchers concluded that the Clovis infant belonged to a meta-population from which many contemporary Native Americans are descended and is closely related to all indigenous American populations.  In essence, contemporary Native Americans are “effectively direct descendants of the people who made and used Clovis tools and buried this child,” covering it with red ochre.

Furthermore, the data refutes the possibility that Clovis originated via a European, Solutrean, migration to the Americas."

http://dna-explained.com/2014/02/13/clovis-people-are-native-americans-and-from-asia-not-europe/

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39153/title/First-Ancient-North-American-Genome-Sequenced/


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