ITHACA, NEW YORK—Two artifacts recovered from the graves of high-status people buried in the chancel of Virginia’s James Fort church were scanned by Mark Riccio, director of the Cornell Biotechnology Resource Center’s computed tomography scanning facilities. Jamestown Rediscovery senior conservator Michael Lavin and senior staff archaeologist David Givens took a small, sealed silver box and a block of earth containing silver threads to Riccio, who developed protocols to scan the objects. Together, the scientists were able to establish that the block of earth contained silver and silk threads and silver spangles that came from a captain’s sash, leading to the identification of Captain William West. “If you had given me the object, I could interpret the X-ray dataset but I wouldn’t have known enough about the object. But sitting with archaeologists, they could ask specific questions, and working together, we could answer those questions,” Riccio said in a press release. The silver box was examined and sent on to General Electric for even higher energy CT scans, which revealed small bones and a lead ampulla traditionally used for holding blood in a Roman Catholic reliquary. This item is thought to have belonged to Captain Gabriel Archer, whose Catholic parents had refused to join the Anglican Church. Finer scans may reveal an insignia on the ampulla. “But it’s still not clear that it was a Catholic artifact,” Lavin said. For more, go to "Burials of High-Status Leaders Indentified at Jamestown."
