Bøger af William M. Kelso

Consisting of five articles by some of the leading lights of historical archaeology, this volume examines the cultural expressions of colonial settlement on both sides of the Atlantic. Compared against the framework of the English at Jamestown, as told by William Kelso, Audrey Horning examines the British colonization of Ireland, Kathleen Deagan looks at the Spanish in the Caribbean and South America, Marcel Moussette and William Moss analyze the French in Quebec, and Carmel Schrire describes the Dutch at Cape Town, South Africa. This engaging volume provides new insights on how different cultures perceived of colonization and interacted with Native populations, as well as how historical archaeology can reveal and interpret early settlement.

What was life really like for the band of adventurers who first set foot on the banks of the James River in 1607? Important as the accomplishments of these men and women were, the written records pertaining to them are scarce, ambiguous, and often conflicting, and those curious about the birthplace of the United States have had little to turn to except dramatic and often highly fictionalized reports. In Jamestown, the Truth Revealed, William Kelso takes us literally to the soil where the Jamestown colony began, unearthing footprints of a series of structures, beginning with the James Fort, to reveal fascinating evidence of the lives and deaths of the first settlers, of their endeavors and struggles, and new insight into their relationships with the Virginia Indians. He offers up a lively but fact-based account, framed around a narrative of the archaeological team's exciting discoveries. Unpersuaded by the common assumption that James Fort had long ago been washed away by the James River, William Kelso and his collaborators estimated the likely site for the fort and began to discover its extensive remains, including palisade walls, bulwarks, interior buildings, a well, a warehouse, and several pits. More than 2,000,000 objects were cataloged, more than half dating to the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James. In the time since that major find, roughly coinciding with Jamestown's quadricentennial, Kelso and his team have made several critical discoveries.He describes the recent excavations of numerous additional buildings, including the settlement's first church, which served as the burial place of four Jamestown leaders, the governor's row house during the term of Samuel Argall, and substantial dump sites, which are troves for archaeologists. He also recounts how researchers confirmed the practice of survival cannibalism in the colony following the recovery from an abandoned cellar bakery of the cleaver-scarred remains of a young English girl. CT scanning and computer graphics have even allowed researchers to put a face on this victim of the brutal winter of 1609-10, a period that has come to be known as the "e;starving time."e; Refuting the now decades-old stereotype that attributed the high mortality rate of the Jamestown settlers to their laziness and ineptitude, Jamestown, the Truth Revealed produces a vivid picture of the settlement that is far more complex, incorporating the most recent archaeology and using twenty-first-century technology to give Jamestown its rightful place in history and thus contributing to a broader understanding of the transatlantic world.

In 1971 William Kelso happened almost by chance on an archaeological find that would open a new door on the rural history of colonial Tidewater Virginia. Erosion had revealed a brick well shaft in a cliff on the James River; above this was an earthen fort and, a bit farther downriver, the remains of a plantation manor. These would be the first of many intriguing discoveries to be made in the area known as Kingsmill. Though the land's owners agreed to cooperate with, and even fund, an archaeological study of the area, the excavation schedule would have to keep one step ahead of the work on a major residential development. For centuries, time had stood still in Kingsmill; now the clock was suddenly ticking. Kingsmill Plantations, Kelso's first-hand account of a great feat of rescue archaeology, covers a three-year period and the excavation of fifteen separate sites. The various properties dated as far back as 1619-placing them among the earliest of American settlements--and continued up through the eighteenth century. Because the division of labor on the Kingsmill Plantations was typical of the era, the settlement could provide an invaluable microcosmic view of colonial Virginia. Meticulous study of the structures and their surroundings--including faunal analyses and inventories of entire house-holds--allowed Kelso and his colleagues to construct a remarkably detailed picture of life in Kingsmill over the course of nearly two hundred years. At once scholarly and highly readable, Kingsmill Plantations speaks to both expert and amateur. An extensive collection of illustrations--including maps, diagrams, and contemporary and archival photographs--makes the narrative especially vivid.