Secrets of the Dead II: Death at Jamestown

Abstract

Secrets of the Dead II: Death at Jamestown explores why so many settlers died in the first three years of settlement at Jamestown. The video highlights recent archaeological discoveries of the fort site and of a settler's skeleton, and it summarizes the conflicts among Jamestown residents, relations with the Indians, and the starving time. The format is familiar —interviews with the anthropologist who led the excavations, short statements by Ivor Noel Hume (the dean of early Virginia archaeologists) and staff from the national park at Jamestown, on-site footage, dramatizations, and seventeenth-century maps and drawings. To add drama, the script exaggerates historical neglect of Jamestown in favor of New England. Colonial historiography once had a New England bias, but there is also a long tradition of work on Virginia's founding, and both a state and a national park interpret the Jamestown experience. Similarly, the video treats the gunshot death of the person whose remains were found as a mystery. Nonetheless, if the documentary had ended after the first half hour, it would be a useful and colorful introduction to Jamestown.