Located thirty-five miles from the mouth of the James River in Virginia, Jamestown Island is renowned as the site of the first permanent English settlement in the New World. Sponsored by the Virginia Company of London as a commercial venture, one hundred and four men and boys arrived on the low-lying island on May 14, 1607, to found the Virginia colony for the English crown. Although the settlement was strategically located for protection against Spanish invasion, it was in Paspehegh Indian territory. More significantly, they settled in Powhatan Confederacy territory, Tsenacommach, which consisted of thirty tributary groups and up to 21,000 people under the rule of Chief Powhatan. The colonists were assaulted within a couple of weeks of their arrival, and tensions between them and the Paspeheghs were ongoing.[1]
Although the island foothold later became Virginia’s capital until 1699, its success was tenuous in the beginning. During the first three years, colonists died in high numbers from disease, bad water, food shortages, and Indian attacks. The colony narrowly escaped abandonment after the “Starving Time” winter of 1609–1610.[2]
Six days after arriving at Jamestown in 1607, George Percy traversed the mainland due north of the island. Colonial expansion on the mainland, however, did not commence until May 1611, when Sir Thomas Dale ordered “a blockhouse to be raised on the north side of our back river to prevent the Indians from killing our cattle.”[3] The demand for tobacco in England and the successful cultivation of tobacco by John Rolfe in 1612 prompted land development outside of Jamestown, and in 1617 Captain Samuel Argall established Argall Town, the first settlement on the mainland.[4]
In 1618 the Virginia Company instructed Sir George Yeardley to set aside three thousand acres on the “Main,” or mainland, “conquered or purchased from the Paspehegh Indians.” Thereafter known as Governor’s Land, the area included Argall Town and acreage for fifty tenants who came with Governor Yeardley. Tenants could keep half of their profits from cultivating the land; the other half would support the governor’s office and the Virginia Company.[5]
When the Virginia Company of London was dissolved in June 1624, Virginia became a Royal Colony and the tenant system on Governor’s Land was cancelled. The acreage was then leased by Virginia’s governors to the colony’s elite throughout the seventeenth century.[6]
A 1683 map shows the locations of eighteen plantations on Governor’s Land, one of which belonged to William Drummond. His plantation was located about halfway between Jamestown and Green Spring, Governor Berkeley’s plantation. Drummond was the first governor of the Province of Carolina, and he also served as sheriff of James City County and sergeant-at-arms of the Virginia General Assembly. In the 1676 rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor Berkeley, Drummond supported Bacon and set fire to the governor’s house on Jamestown Island. Excavations of the Jamestown house revealed it was nearly empty,[7] while those on Governor’s Land indicated his plantation had been extensively occupied since circa 1650. Berkeley executed Drummond in 1677 and confiscated his estate. Drummond’s widow, Sarah, successfully fought to recover her material possessions, [8] and she and her family continued living on the plantation until well into the eighteenth century.
The year 2018 marks the quasquicentennial of the first historical archaeology excavations in James City County, Virginia. In 1893 the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now Preservation Virginia), the nation’s oldest statewide preservation organization, acquired 22.5 acres around the island’s only seventeenth-century structure, a brick church tower (fig. 1). That year members of the association began excavating evidence of the overlapping colonial church foundations before constructing the Memorial Church to commemorate the tercentennial of Jamestown’s founding.[9]
Excavations on Preservation Virginia property occurred at various times throughout the twentieth century, and have been continuous since 1994. Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation archaeologists have uncovered the original 1607–1624 James Fort and related structures, and more than 2.5 million artifacts; more than 2,000 are showcased in the Archaearium, an onsite museum. The remaining 1,500 acres of Jamestown Island were acquired by the National Park Service in 1934. Excavations by Park Service archaeologists have occurred episodically in an area known as New Town since the 1930s, and many of their 1 million artifacts are displayed in Historic Jamestowne’s Visitor Center on Jamestown Island.[10]
Nearby, on the mainland north of and adjacent to Jamestown, a state-supported archaeological survey of Governor’s Land conducted in 1972 led to several excavations in the 1970s and 1980s by the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology (fig. 2).[11] Excavations included a circa 1618–1625 home lot called “The Maine,” and the circa 1648–1820 Drummond/Harris plantation. Collections from these sites are curated by the Jamestown/Yorktown Foundation, and several artifacts are on display in Jamestown Settlement’s Galleries at Jamestown.
Early-Seventeenth-Century Clay Tobacco Pipes at Jamestown and Beyond
Robert Cotton was the first Englishman to successfully work with clay in the New World (fig. 3). Listed in the ship’s manifest as a “Tobacco-pipe maker,” he arrived at James Fort in 1608, and because his name disappears from the documentary record he may have died during the Starving Time.[12] Cotton undoubtedly learned to make pipes of white ball clay in molds in London. However, unlike the English mold-made pipes with heels and small bulbous bowls, Cotton’s Jamestown pipes are handmade, and the bowls are large and tubular. They clearly resemble pipes made by Virginia Indians at that time.
Cotton’s pipes are numerous in Jamestown contexts dating to the Starving Time and before. They are made of iron-rich, light-brown firing clay and are identified by their form. Many are decorated on the stem in various patterns with impressed fleurs-de-lis. Four different metal stamps were used to mark the stems. One, a copper-alloy bookbinder’s stamp, was recovered from a 1610 context. Many stems are partially or completely octagonal-faceted and highly burnished. Nine stems are stamped with printer’s type with the names of prominent English investors in the Virginia Company—as, for example, one stamped “WILLIAM FALDOO” (William Faldo).[13] Cotton’s pipes were most likely made as a commodity to be sent to England, although, with one exception, they have not been identified outside of Jamestown.[14]
Believed to be Dutch, a white ball clay pipe with three bowls was discovered during excavations of “The Maine,” the 1617–1625 tenement dwelling on Governor’s Land (fig. 4). The small bulbous bowls with milled rims were mold-made and joined to a single stem, and the joint was reinforced with a collar before firing. The unrecorded and unidentified maker’s mark “EO” within a beaded circle appears thirteen times on the pipe (fig. 5).[15]
When it was discovered in 1976, this pipe was unique in the Virginia material culture record of early-seventeenth-century Virginia. Less intact multi-bowl pipes have since been identified at other rural domestic sites of the second quarter of the seventeenth century in the James River Basin, including Flowerdew Hundred, Martin’s Hundred, and Kingsmill.[16]
Exceptional among the early-seventeenth-century clay tobacco pipes from Jamestown Island is a fragment of a chibouk, or Ottoman tobacco pipe (fig. 6). The fragment is decorated in relief with a section of an Arabic inscription that translates: “. . . every.”[17] It was recently recovered on the home lot of Captain William Peirce in New Town by Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists.[18]
Arriving in Virginia in May 1610 after being shipwrecked in Bermuda for almost ten months, Peirce served at various times as lieutenant governor, captain of the guard, commander of Jamestown, and councilor before his death in 1647. His house, described as the “fairest” in New Town, was home to “Angelo,” the first named African at Jamestown in the 1620s, and in 1623 to the widely traveled George Sandys, treasurer of the Virginia Company.[19] This pipe fragment is one of the most significant artifacts to represent the cultural interaction and multinational exchange of people and commodities in early-seventeenth-century Virginia.
Chinese Porcelain Wine Cups
The recovery in 1976 of exotic Ming porcelain at The Maine on Governor’s Land was unexpected (fig. 7). This was, after all, the site of the governor’s tenant farmers living in a crudely constructed post-in-ground building on the frontier. Fragments from at least five of these fragile wine cups were discovered at the site.
Made in the latter part of Emperor Wan Li’s reign, the delicate, eggshell-thin cups are decorated in underglaze blue with a flame-and-scroll frieze. Their presence at The Maine suggests the site’s inhabitants were quickly accumulating wealth from raising tobacco during a boom period in Virginia.[20]
When the cups were recovered in 1976, Chinese porcelain scholars initially believed they dated to the 1640s. Shortly thereafter, a search for parallels in Dutch and Flemish paintings led to the discovery in the Philadelphia Museum of Art of a still-life painting by Christoffel van den Berghe that bore the date 1617 and included two flame-decorated wine cups (fig. 8). When museum curators were contacted for more information, the curator of Far Eastern Art thought the cups dated more comfortably from the middle of the seventeenth century, and that the 1617 date presented a conflict.[21]
Fortuitously, shortly thereafter Sotheby’s published a sales catalog of Chinese porcelain recovered from the Dutch shipwreck Witte Leeuw, an East Indiaman that sank in 1613 off the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.[22] Wine cups paralleling The Maine examples were included, proving their early date.
Jamestown Cup
Thomas Ward is the first named English potter in the New World, and both documentary and archaeological evidence prove that he was working at the Martin’s Hundred settlement downriver from Jamestown in the 1620s.[23] Ward arrived in Virginia as an indentured servant in 1619, and was first seated on Governor’s Land. In 1620 he moved to Martin’s Hundred, where he made a wide range of lead-glazed coarse earthenware utilitarian vessels for the ever-increasing Virginia population.[24]
Ward may have been an itinerant potter, or possibly he trained a potter who worked at Jamestown Island circa 1619–1635. Similar or identical vessel forms were made at both locations and are identified by differences in their fabrics and glazes. Fine, well-blended alluvial clays distinguish the Jamestown pottery, as well as pinpricks in the lead glazes. While pottery made at Martin’s Hundred has been recovered locally from sites in James City County, the pottery made at Jamestown has been found on archaeological sites throughout Virginia’s tidewater region from as far away as the Northern Neck to the lower South side of the James River.[25] This globular drinking vessel is similar to cups made by potters working in the Surrey-Hampshire Border Ware tradition (fig. 9), however some of Ward’s other forms show influences from London-made vessels.[26]
Delft Figures
Known by many names, including faience, majolica, maiolica, and delftware, tin-glazed earthenware is among the most common found at sites in colonial Virginia. It is easily recognized because of its soft, chalky fabric, and by its thick and sometimes poorly adhering tin glaze. Forms are generally well recognized and consist primarily of fine table and drinking vessels.
An exception to the typical forms is an unusual press-molded cat jug that was discovered on the William Drummond site. It was recovered in numerous small fragments; one large section clearly shows the cat’s front feet (fig. 10). To represent fur, the exterior is hand painted with reddish-orange dashes separated by cobalt-blue stripes. A wash of copper-tinged green suggests that the cat is sitting in grass.
Seven intact and dated cat jugs ranging in date from 1657 to 1676 survive in museum and private collections (fig. 11).[27] The dates, and sometimes initials as well, appear within panels on the cat’s chest. All of the forms are hollow and, with a single exception, are open at the top so they could be used as containers.
Since the Drummond cat jug was discovered in the late 1970s, sherds of only two other delftware examples have been excavated on Virginia archaeological sites. One small fragment was found in a seventeenth-century context in Yorktown on a site known as Chiskiack Watch (fig. 12). Decorated in blue and yellow, it includes dots and fur and a small part of the panel that may have included initials or a date.[28] The other example, recovered from a fill layer at Jamestown dating to the mid-seventeenth century, shows only the cat’s face (fig. 13).
Equally exceptional as the delftware cat jugs are fragments of a press-molded London delft figural salt excavated by Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists. Only two fragments—the head and part of a leg (not shown)—were recovered (fig. 14), and both are from disturbed contexts. Facial features are painted in cobalt blue, and manganese purple defines the hair or headdress. Tied with a ribbon outlined in cobalt blue and infilled with antimony yellow, the stockinged leg belongs to a male figure. Based on dated examples among the only five known intact English figural salts (fig. 15), this rare object was probably made in London between 1655 and 1680.[29]
Portuguese Faience Punch Bowl
Manufactured in Portugal as early as the mid-sixteenth century, tin-glazed earthenware, known as faience, appears frequently in the archaeological ceramic record in the Chesapeake region beginning in the second quarter of the seventeenth century.[30] Some might have arrived with colonists from England and some might relate to the Dutch, who were well established as traders in Virginia and Maryland into the third quarter of the seventeenth century.[31]
Faience vessels on Virginia sites dating circa 1625–1650 are typically hand painted in cobalt blue with chinoiserie motifs, armorial devices, or stylized curvilinear and geometric designs.[32] The most common forms are mugs, plates, and bowls. The recovery of a significant number of faience plates from the Thomas Pettus Plantation in James City County four miles downriver from Jamestown suggests that a set of tableware was in use by the high-status Pettus family after about 1640.[33]
Forms found in Virginia contexts from the third quarter of the seventeenth century include mugs, bowls, plates, fluted plates, and deep dishes. They are often distinguished by cobalt-blue chinoiserie motifs outlined in manganese, the so-called desenhos miúdos decorative technique that first appeared around 1640.[34] Dating as early as the mid-seventeenth century, lace patterns are common on faience of this period.[35] A large deep dish with lace decoration on the interior walls was found on a Governor’s Land site (fig. 16), and a similar one was recovered in the 1930s by the National Park Service from a site on Jamestown Island.[36]
At Jamestown in the 1930s, workers recovered what may be the earliest punch bowl yet from an Anglo-American colonial site (fig. 17). Manufactured of Portuguese faience, it is decorated on the exterior with two horizontal rows of cobalt-blue lace. Punch was first recorded in 1658 in an English dictionary, which described it as “A kind of Indian drink.”[37] The first mention of a punch bowl in Virginia is in an inventory dated 1682.[38] Since the consumption of punch by the English was in its infancy when this vessel made its way to Jamestown, it demonstrates that the island’s residents were up-to-date with the latest trends in alcohol consumption.
Slipware Mugs
Among the rarest wares found in Virginia and England are two cylindrical slipware cans (also “canns”) from the Drummond site (fig. 18). Sherds of only eight vessels like these have ever been reported, and all but one are cans that were found in or nearby Jamestown, Virginia’s major port in the seventeenth century. The only other reported object of this ware is a capuchine, which was found during excavations in London (fig. 19).[39]
Made of a fine, red earthenware, the vessels were wheel thrown, lathe trimmed, and fired twice. The mugs were spattered with oxides of manganese and tin. While the Drummond cans were also splashed with copper oxide, the Jamestown examples were splashed with cobalt oxide. The London capuchine bears a combination of tin- and cobalt-oxide splashes.[40]
Although their manufacture site is unknown, the slip-decorated earthenware vessels resemble stoneware forms made after 1685 at John Dwight’s Fulham factory. Dwight is recognized for experimentation with ceramics; however, archaeological excavations of his factory site uncovered no evidence of red earthenware production.[41] The slipped cans from the Drummond site were found in contexts that include a wide range of English tableware and Virginia-made utilitarian vessels, including a sizable assemblage of Dwight’s brown salt-glazed stoneware cans and gorges—the earliest documented Dwight assemblage in the New World.[42]
Many questions remain about these slip-decorated vessels that demonstrate a strong link to John Dwight.[43] Were they made at his factory, or were they made by an unidentified English competitor? Was Dwight’s lathe-turning technique stolen, or did these objects originate outside of England and serve as prototypes for Dwight’s cans and capuchines?
John Dwight Brown Stoneware in Virginia
Perhaps the largest assemblage of John Dwight’s brown salt-glazed stoneware in Virginia comes from the William Drummond site on Governor’s Land. The first Englishman to successfully produce stoneware in England, Dwight secured a patent for salt-glazed stoneware in 1672. From the 1670s until his death in 1703 he operated in Fulham, where he experimented with porcelain manufacture; copied Chinese dry-bodied stoneware, Frechen Bartmann jugs, and Westerwald-type blue and gray stoneware; and made both white and marbled stoneware.[44] The aforementioned slipware cans might also have been produced at Dwight’s factory.
Typical Dwight forms recovered from the Drummond site, as from other Virginia sites, are gorges (fig. 20), bottles, and tankards. Sarah Drummond might have ordered the vessels while in London, where she traveled to petition the king for the return of her possessions, which were confiscated by Governor Berkeley during Bacon’s Rebellion.[45] Dwight’s imitation German jugs were not found at Drummond, but a fragment of a jug medallion was found nearby at Barrett’s Ferry on the Chickahominy River. Associated with a tavern on the site, the find is highly significant because it represents the only Bartmann-type Dwight product in the New World. The cockerel on the medallion is a common motif used by Dwight on jugs and bottles for taverns in the 1675–1676 period (fig. 21).[46]
Delftware William and Mary Plate
Pottery became a medium for political statements in seventeenth-century England, and delftware was a favorite for depicting royal portraits and writing slogans. Elizabeth I was the first English monarch commemorated on a delftware dish. Dated 1602, it bears the inscription: “ROSE IS RED THE LEAVES ARE GRENE GOD SAVE ELIZABETH OUR QUEENE.” Charles I’s initials were painted on delftware items made during his reign, and his portrait appeared on delft even after his death. Thereafter, caricatures of every monarch appeared, mostly on tableware, until the end of delftware production in England.[47]
King William and Queen Mary ascended to the British throne in 1689, after the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688. They jointly ruled until Mary’s death in 1694, which provides an end date of manufacture for a plate recovered from the Drummond site on Governor’s Land (fig. 22), and figured prominently locally: The College of William and Mary, the nation’s second oldest college, was named after the monarchs when it was founded in 1693. Also, Williamsburg was named for King William in 1699 when the capital was relocated there from Jamestown.
A large quantity of delftware made in this period was recovered during excavations of the Drummond site. The forms are wide-ranging and include plates, bowls, basins, teabowls, posset pots, and chamber pots. Their quantity and quality attest to the economic and social prominence of the family even after William Drummond was hanged in 1677 for participating in Bacon’s Rebellion. The William and Mary plate may have been obtained by his survivors to demonstrate their loyalty to English rule of law and to dispel notions of any future antigovernment activities by the family.
Nottingham Brown Salt-Glazed Stoneware Teabowl
Framents of a unique brown salt-glazed stoneware teabowl are also among the extensive collection of circa 1680–1710 English and locally made ceramics recovered from the Drummond site (fig. 23). The vessel is double-walled, and the outer wall was perforated with angular motifs when the clay was leather-hard before firing. Pierced, double-wall vessels are illustrated on a circa 1700 James Morely trade card, and the lustrous brown glaze is characteristic of Nottingham brown stoneware (fig. 24).[48]
It was not until the mid-seventeenth century that tea drinking was introduced to the English, appearing first as an expensive health drink in London coffeehouses.[49] As England’s first tea-drinking queen, Catherine of Braganza (1638–1705) is credited with making tea consumption de rigueur among the wealthy after she arrived in 1662. The recovery of this object at a time when tea was an expensive luxury item indicates that the ritual had arrived at the wealthy Drummond household long before it became affordable in most English and American households.[50]
Chinese Porcelain Teapot
The Drummonds continued living in their seventeenth-century vernacular earthfast home well into the eighteenth century, with the only improvements being the addition of rooms. However, the remarkable amount of fashionable ceramic tableware and teaware from the site indicates that they were wealthy and their tastes were up-to-date.
Linked with women, mass consumerism, and leisure time,[51] the tea ritual with its matching teabowls, tea saucers, and teapots, is well represented in the Drummond archaeological assemblage. The family’s ceramic choice for consuming the beverage was the most expensive and desirable of the period—Chinese porcelain.
This teapot (fig. 25) is one of several items of a set found on the site, which included sherds of teabowls, saucers, and a sugar bowl. The thinly turned teapot and matching vessels are well painted with underglaze cobalt-blue floral motifs under a finely crackled glaze (fig. 26). Although it was identified in the early 1980s as Chinese soft-paste porcelain, Rose Kerr notes of the ware that the: “fine body has been termed ‘softpaste’ porcelain: it is in fact a standard hardpaste porcelain with an application of kaolin-rich slip on top to render the surface suitable for very fine brush painting.”[52]
