Jamestown Excavation Uncovers Wine Bottles

An excavation at Jamestown has come across a wine cellar with 11 unbroken bottles of wine that could date back to the 1680s. Unfortunately, all the bottles were empty - the most archeologists will be able to get out is some residue. That's no small matter, but can you imagine what the actual wine might have been like?

Hampton Roads explains:

The first of the bottles, which are shaped like a globe with a straight spout, was uncovered Wednesday by the most unlikely archaeologist: Yarrington , a wide-eyed anthropology major at George Mason University in Fairfax. ... Three students and three Jamestown Rediscovery workers spent the day shaving away dirt with spatulas and gently unearthing the relics with paint brushes.

By 3 p.m., they had 8 inches down, 6 inches to go, but they figured they had exposed all the wine bottles. They’ve also found some German stoneware, tobacco pipes, and other items. “That’s exactly how they’ve been sitting for 320 years,” Deetz said with a smile. “It’s a moment in time that’s frozen because the collapse of the building has preserved things exactly as they were. It’s a little miniature Pompeii.” The cellar is surrounded by leftovers from the 1607 -1625 time period, but Deetz said he figures it was built between 1650 and 1690.

I’ve been to Jamestown and really enjoyed it — I recommend it highly for anyone with an interest in history and American culture. I’d love to see the wine bottles myself and perhaps I should start planning a vacation there for 2007, though with the celebrations for that anniversary I can imagine that it will be pretty crowded. I can also imagine that Yarrington must be awfully happy right now. He made a discovery that most seasoned archeologists would envy — this sort of thing just doesn’t happen every day!