A conservator digitally isolated inscriptions (right) on the 17th-century Jamestown tablet (left).
Detail of inscriptions
Posted on 01/17/2010 6:07:31 PM PST by JoeProBono
Slate may show early colonist efforts to communicate with Indians.
With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.
Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate—the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site.
With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.
Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate—the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site.
The enhancements have helped researchers identify a 16th-century writing style used on the slate and discern new symbols, researchers announced last week. The characters may be from an obscure Algonquian Indian alphabet created by an English scientist to help explorers pronounce the language spoken by the Virginia Indians.
"Just like finding the Rosetta Stone led to a better understanding of the Egyptians, this tablet is beginning to add significantly to our understanding of the earliest years at Jamestown," Kelso said. It conveys messages about literacy, art, symbols and signs personally communicated by the colonists who used it, he explained.
"What other single artifact has been found that has so much to tell?"
Both sides of the scratched and worn 5-by-8 inch (13-by-20 centimeter) tablet are covered with words, symbols, numbers, and drawings of people, plants, and birds that its owner or other users likely encountered in the New World.
There are differences in the style of handwriting, which may mean that more than one person used the tablet as a sketch pad and possibly for writing rough drafts of documents, Kelso noted.
Enhanced Images
To help researchers decipher the inscriptions, curators at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Conservation Institute recently produced enhanced images of the slate through a process known as reflectance transformation imaging.
Hundreds of high-resolution digital images were taken of the tablet using multiple angled lights to exaggerate the appearance of grooves in the slate's surface—like watching the sun rise and set on an object.
The images on the slate are difficult to see with the naked eye, because they are the same dark gray color as the slate and they overlap.
Colonists would have written on it with a pencil made of slate that left white marks. The marks could be wiped off, but fortunately for archaeologists today, the pencil had a sharp point that also left scratches on the tablet that couldn't be erased completely. As a result, there are layers upon layers of inscriptions.
Elizabethan Script Analysis
Based on an initial examination of images, Heather Wolfe, curator of manuscripts and an expert in Elizabethan script at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., thinks that much of the cursive writing on the slate appears to be written in secretary hand, the main form of cursive handwriting taught in England during the early 16th and 17th centuries.
"Many of the letter forms are different from the forms used today. You need special training to understand them," Wolfe said.
So far, the words "Abraham" and "book" appear to be visible, and she has been able to identify some individual letters. She hopes to be able to decipher more of the text using the images taken by the Smithsonian that provide finer details. Unfortunately only a portion of the text survived; parts of letters and some words are missing.
Wolfe explained that the practice of using erasable slates for drafting music and teaching the alphabet and spelling goes back to the 16th and 17th centuries, but they were so fragile, they usually broke.
Finding a largely intact slate like this one is "very rare," Wolfe said. "The slate provides a unique window into a practice that we've known about, but that we haven't seen before."
Algonquian Pronunciation Symbols
Historic Jamestowne's Kelso said the enhanced images also revealed two symbols that are similar to characters in a phonetic Algonquian alphabet invented in 1585 by Thomas Hariot.
The English scientist participated in the expedition to establish an ill-fated colony on Roanoke Island—in what is now North Carolina—for his patron, Sir Walter Raleigh, that same year. (Related: "Search for America's 'Lost Colony' Gets New Boost.")
It wasn't until after archaeologists had discovered the slate that Kelso was made aware of the 36-character alphabet by a researcher attending one of Kelso's lectures. The alphabet survives as a manuscript in the library of the Westminster School in London.....
A conservator digitally isolated inscriptions (right) on the 17th-century Jamestown tablet (left).
Detail of inscriptions
interesting
They also are very respectful to any human remains that they find.
I was very impressed with Jamestown, especially since they keep all the reenacting and replications a half mile away down the road from the actual site.
Thank you for sharing this new find!
I have ancestors who may have written on this tablet, or read the inscriptions. At the very least, they knew someone who wrote or read these inscriptions. I’m very interested in what comes of this.
Thanks!
The importance of Jamestown was that it was a LARGE PERMANENT settlement. It wasn't just the first.
Maryland (the other side of the Potomac) as it came to be known had about 20,000 settlers of unknown provence but they showed up in an early population estimate/census of the territory. There's a slightly older Huguenot settlement across from St. Mary's but it was abandoned so early no one knows if it had anything to do with Jamestown. BTW, Jamestown itself was abandoned, and then Williamsburg, the successor town, was abandoned. Europeans took about a century to figure out that it was much better to live UPHILL INLAND due to hurricanes hitting the region.
A much more sensitive archaeological site in the Chesapeake Bay region may be found in Fairfax County on/near Fort Belvoir. The researchers like to keep it secret (more or less) so it can be difficult to get someone to take you there. This one is the site of an enormous Indian village/town that had 15 to 20,000 population in the early 1600s period. We know when Eur/African settlement had been made because the Indians at this site changed the way they made pottery and went into the business of manufacturing and selling their cheap Indian knockoffs up and down the East Coast. There are probably some old crocs from that site in European collections.
For anyone interested in early Black settlement in Virginia, Beacon HIll, just East of Fort Belvoir, is the site of the oldest permanent black village. Today it's a shopping center so little remains of what might have been there originally. Still, we know what they did for a living ~ they brewed stuff. Being quite a ways uphill from the Indian village they were fairly safe from attack by their customers.
Bill Clinton, America's first black President, had his first campaign headquarters in an unfinished office building right at the Western slope of Beacon Hill.
Thanks for that info.
When we visited St Augustine this summer, there were also some newer sites that “discouraged” visitors (LOL).
Ft. Matanzas also has an interesting history.
There are at least 3 words from the Algonquian Indian language which were adopted as loan words in English--mocassin, tomahawk, and opossum.
These guys all had deep water ports and were part of world commerce the day they tried to drop anchor!
Recently I became aware that I could track our surname BACK to Great Brittain from France (where it arrived circa 8th century as people fled the Saxon "invasions").
The Saxon's had been authorized (by presumably King Arthur according to the Annals) to take over some previously farmed countryside but they continued to call the territory by the name of the Celtic family/clan who'd lived there earlier ~ except they wrote it down in their RUNIC ALPHABET. The name later floated on into modern English with the Rune letters untouched.
Makes a lot of difference Fur Shur.
I hope those who discovered this document can improve our understanding of the early settlement period in America.
The “Colonial Triangle” is a great area, both for Motorcycling and exploring. I go as often as I can.
School? Teaching their own, and teaching the Powhatan to read and write?
Relations with the Powhatan were rocky, up and down, but not entirely unfriendly. One of my lines that go back to James Cittie legendarily descends from Chief Powhatan’s half brother Opechancanough, who was purportedly half Spanish. He spent a great deal of time at the Spanish fort up the river, and was even sent to Spain, had an audience with the royal court there, where he was known as Don Luis. He was educated by Jesuits.
Of course, Opechancanough more or less singlehandedly ignited the second Anglo-Powhatan War in 1622, too. As I said, it was rocky, up and down.
Going back that far with genealogy, through occasionally frequent intermarriage with the native population, can be a huge challenge, but there are copious records online, for those who wish to try:
http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/genealogical-research-for-a-jamestown-ancestor.htm
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Fascinating!
It is a very interesting story
His name means “He whose soul is white.”
St Augustine was preceded by Fort Caroline a French settlement just north at Mayport, Jacksonville Beach..... the River of May. The history is detailed by René Goulaine de Laudonnière who wrote his book in 1586 describing his three voyages. It is perhaps the best account of early settlements existent
The Catholic Spanish landed near St Augustine, then raided and massacred the French protestants at Ft Caroline. The returned and founded the settlement.
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