WASHINGTON: Archaeologists have uncovered human remains of some of the earliest leaders of the English colony that would become America, buried for more than 400 years near the altar of what was America’s first Protestant church in Jamestown, Va.
The burial sites were uncovered in the earthen floor of what was Jamestown’s historic Anglican church from 1608, a team of scientists and historians announced Tuesday. The site is the same church where Pocahontas famously married Englishman John Rolfe, leading to peace between the Powhatan Indians and colonists at the first permanent English settlement in America.
Beyond the human remains, archaeologists also found artifacts buried with the colonial leaders — including a mysterious Catholic container for holy relics found in the Protestant church.
The Jamestown Rediscovery archaeology team revealed its discovery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. The museum is helping to study and identify those buried in the church. The burials were first uncovered in November 2013, but the scientific team wanted to trace and identify its findings with some certainty before announcing the discovery.
Archaeologists have been studying the site since 1994 when the original James Fort — long thought to be lost and submerged in the James River — was rediscovered. The church site was mostly untouched and had not been excavated for more than a century until it was found in 2010.
