maximus otter
Recovering policeman
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2001
- Messages
- 13,949
Newfound survivor camp may explain fate of the famed Lost Colony of Roanoke
Pieces of broken crockery recently unearthed in a North Carolina field belonged to survivors of the ill-fated Lost Colony, the first English settlement in the Americas. That dramatic claim has stoked a long-simmering debate over what happened to the 115 men, women, and children abandoned on North Carolina’s Roanoke Island in 1587.
Working on a bluff overlooking Albemarle Sound, 50 miles west of Roanoke Island, a team from the First Colony Foundation uncovered a trove of English, German, French, and Spanish pottery pieces.
“The number and variety of artifacts recovered provide compelling evidence that the site was inhabited by several settlers from Sir Walter Raleigh’s vanished 1587 colony,” said archaeologist Nick Luccketti, the team’s leader.
The announcement came just months after another archaeologist claimed to have found objects related to the lost settlers on Hatteras Island, located about 50 miles south of Roanoke Island. If both discoveries hold up, they support the theory that the colonists split up into two or more widely separated survivor camps, almost certainly aided by Native Americans with whom they likely assimilated.
The case went cold until 2012, when researchers noticed a patch on a watercolor map of eastern North Carolina painted by White [ the colony’s governor]. Beneath the patch they found the image of a fort at the head of Albemarle Sound. Its location is 50 miles to the west of Roanoke Island, matching the governor’s account. On top of the patch was another faint outline of a fort, this one drawn in what analysts said was invisible ink.
Scholars speculated that White wanted to hide the existence of the fort from the Spanish, who viewed the Roanoke venture as a threat to their domination of North America and the critical shipping lanes off North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The Spanish sent an expedition to wipe out the rogue colony, but they, too, failed to find the settlers.
In 2015 Luccketti’s team excavated the area marked on the map, close to a Native American village called Mettaquem. Just outside its wall, at a place they called Site X, Luccketti’s team found no fort, but they did uncover two dozen pieces of English pottery that they maintained likely belonged to Lost Colony survivors.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...urvivor-camp-may-explain-lost-colony-roanoke/
maximus otter
Pieces of broken crockery recently unearthed in a North Carolina field belonged to survivors of the ill-fated Lost Colony, the first English settlement in the Americas. That dramatic claim has stoked a long-simmering debate over what happened to the 115 men, women, and children abandoned on North Carolina’s Roanoke Island in 1587.
Working on a bluff overlooking Albemarle Sound, 50 miles west of Roanoke Island, a team from the First Colony Foundation uncovered a trove of English, German, French, and Spanish pottery pieces.
“The number and variety of artifacts recovered provide compelling evidence that the site was inhabited by several settlers from Sir Walter Raleigh’s vanished 1587 colony,” said archaeologist Nick Luccketti, the team’s leader.
The announcement came just months after another archaeologist claimed to have found objects related to the lost settlers on Hatteras Island, located about 50 miles south of Roanoke Island. If both discoveries hold up, they support the theory that the colonists split up into two or more widely separated survivor camps, almost certainly aided by Native Americans with whom they likely assimilated.
The case went cold until 2012, when researchers noticed a patch on a watercolor map of eastern North Carolina painted by White [ the colony’s governor]. Beneath the patch they found the image of a fort at the head of Albemarle Sound. Its location is 50 miles to the west of Roanoke Island, matching the governor’s account. On top of the patch was another faint outline of a fort, this one drawn in what analysts said was invisible ink.
Scholars speculated that White wanted to hide the existence of the fort from the Spanish, who viewed the Roanoke venture as a threat to their domination of North America and the critical shipping lanes off North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The Spanish sent an expedition to wipe out the rogue colony, but they, too, failed to find the settlers.
In 2015 Luccketti’s team excavated the area marked on the map, close to a Native American village called Mettaquem. Just outside its wall, at a place they called Site X, Luccketti’s team found no fort, but they did uncover two dozen pieces of English pottery that they maintained likely belonged to Lost Colony survivors.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...urvivor-camp-may-explain-lost-colony-roanoke/
maximus otter
