The following is a story from the Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia) about
a disaster on Jamestown Island, Colonial National Park, from Hurricane Isabel.
The Jamestown site is considered as one of the birthplaces of historical
archaeology in the United States, with excavations by Harrington in the 1930's,
and Potter in the 1950's for the NPS (Those records and artifacts are at serious
risk), and the later discovery of the original James Fort By William Kelso of
the APVA in 1996.
Dave
David Harvey
Artifacts
2930 South Birch Street
Denver, CO 80222
303-300-5257
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___________________________________________
Jamestowne center floods during storm
600,000 artifacts fixable, officials say
By April Taylor
Daily Press
September 24, 2003
The James Fort archaeological dig was spared, but up to 600,000 artifacts
were flooded in the basement of the visitor center at Historic Jamestowne during
Hurricane Isabel, officials said.
After a basement window broke, the basement filled with as much as 5 feet of
water from the James River, damaging mostly paper documents in the park's
collection, officials said.
It's nothing that can't be fixed, eventually, they said.
"Papers and photographs have the highest priority," said Jane Sundberg,
specialist for the Colonial National Historical Park. "The first 48 hours are
really the most critical because you start getting mold growing."
Archaeologists from the Association for the Preservation of Virginia
Antiquities are helping out.
APVA's artifacts, located in the Yardley House at the site, suffered no
damage from the storm.
Eric Deetz, an APVA archaeologist, said he'd feared that the beating Isabel
gave the James River waterfront might have damaged the fort site.
Documents such as field notes and historic letters have to be washed to get
salts out from river water, then dried. Experts are dry freezing many of them,
to take moisture out of the documents.
Crews of archaeological and disaster experts are working 12-hour days to
salvage the artifacts, which include pottery, tools and ceramics from the 17th
century, said Sundberg.
Officials say they haven't estimated how much damage from Isabel at the park
service sites will cost. "It will be an enormous amount," said National Park
Service spokesman Mike Litterst.
Extensive damage was done to the Yorktown Battlefield, also run by the
national Park Service, mostly consisting of hundreds of downed trees.
None of Yorktown's historic buildings was damaged.
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