Quest for James Fort's church continues BY MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON 247-4783 The Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project shifted gears this week following the departure of 19 students from its summer field school. Working along the leading edges of the greatly enl July 27, 2004 Archaeologists have nearly completed excavating the fort's west bulwark moat, which contained one of the richest deposits of artifacts from Jamestown's earliest period. Also preserved in the soil is a telltale line of post molds from the palisade wall, which appears to have required rebuilding not long after it was constructed because of erosion damage from the nearby James River, archaeologist David Givens says. Artifacts of the week Archaeologists continued sifting through the fill in a late-1600s wine cellar, recovering a concreted mass of iron artifacts from Jamestown's last years as Virginia's capital. Among the objects identified by curator Bly Straube and conservator Michael Lavin are two stirrups, a pothook, a pot handle, a felling ax, a pulley housing, a gun barrel and several barrel bands. Also found was a long spit used to roast meat over a fire. "They'll clean up real well when we get to them," Lavin says. In the lab Conservator Michael Lavin has carefully unfolded about 2 feet of crumpled lead window glazing found in the late 1600s wine cellar, revealing two sets of maker's marks and the date 1693. "That corresponds nicely with the wine bottles, which we're dating between 1680 and 1700," curator Bly Straube says. "And we know that Francis Nicholson, whose initials show up on one of the bottles, was here in the 1690s. So we're really zeroing in on the last decade of the century." Outside the dig Curator Bly Straube has identified the mysterious figure on a mid-17th-century Dutch earthenware tile discovered in a rubble-filled boundary ditch. The tin-glazed tile was probably part of a baseboard or a fireplace surround - and almost certainly came from a high-status dwelling whose foundation has not yet been found. It depicts a fruit vendor with a cart full of long-stemmed apples. "We've found tiles depicting craftsmen, soldiers - even children playing," Straube says. "They were very popular." Putting the puzzle together Despite defining the west end of the rowhouse-style dwelling that parallels the fort's north wall, archaeologists have yet to turn up any evidence of the historic church believed to have stood in the middle of the triangular stronghold. "We've made it through the Civil War earthwork now - and we've found a few postholes that look promising," senior staff archaeologist Eric Deetz says. "But even though we're at the 1607 level - and they've got the right orientation - a few postholes don't make a building