ELIZABETH CITY, NORTH CAROLINA—Archaeologists have discovered a range of evidence suggesting that part of the sixteenth-century lost colony of Roanoke Island may have ended up at a location in present-day Bertie County, North Carolina. According to a report in The Virginian-Pilot, excavation of an 850-square-foot tract there has turned up artifacts including seals used to verify cloth quality, sixteenth-century nails, firing pans from guns of the time, tenterhooks used to stretch hides, fragments of pottery jars used for storing preserved fish, and bowl pieces similar to those found at Jamestown. Clay Swindell, an archaeologist at the Museum of the Albemarle, says the artifacts show that members of the lost colony could have lived there. The site of the excavation was marked with the symbol of a fort on a map that John White, the leader of the Roanoke colony, drew from 1585-86. White left the colony in 1587 to resupply, and when he returned three years later, he found the colony gone and the word “Croatoan” carved in a post and “CRO” carved into a tree. Later search efforts did not make it to the current excavation site, where the findings indicate the presence of early English settlers, but not a fort. “We have new clues,” Swindell said. “That’s all we can say, there are new clues.” For more on archaeology in this area, go to “Medicine on the High Seas.”
