Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 7, 1991 TAG: 9103070080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The construction site of the James I. Moyer Sports Complex in Salem was deemed years ago as a significant archaeological site.
But since construction of the $1 million complex began last year, workers have unearthed artifacts that shed new light on the earliest written account of European-American contact with Native Americans in Southwest Virginia.
Once the significance of the artifacts - which include a trigger from an old British musket - was discovered, Salem temporarily halted construction and asked an archaeologist with the Roanoke Regional Preservation Office to evaluate the site and monitor further excavation.
The city also contributed $2,500 toward preservation of the site. Wednesday, several public and private organizations publicly matched Salem's contribution.
The matching funds were a $1,000 donation from the Graham-White Manufacturing Co.; $500 from the Archaeological Society of Virginia, Roanoke Chapter; $500 from the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation; $200 from the Salem Historical Society; and $300 from an anonymous source.
The money will be used for further excavation to be performed by a crew of four expert archaeologists, John R. Kern, director of the Roanoke Regional Preservation Office, said at a news conference Wednesday in Salem.
"We'll be excavating what's going to be disturbed," Kern said. "What hasn't been disturbed will be left alone. That's the best preservation."
Officials acknowledged Wednesday that portions of the 25-acre site - donated to Salem by Graham-White in 1988 - already have been destroyed by construction.
Items found at the site in South Salem are known as trade goods - material received by Indians in trading with Europeans, archaeologists say. The items include glass beads and pieces of brass and iron.
For years, local historians have speculated that the first recorded visit by European explorers was made more than 300 years ago by Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam at the site of the Roanoke Industrial Center beside the Roanoke River, formerly the site of the American Viscose Plant at the foot of Mill Mountain.
But discovery of the items at the sports complex site may upset that longstanding theory. New evidence may persuade historians that the visit actually occured in South Salem.
"This kind of project gives us a sense of connectedness to people who live here now and people who lived here before," said Catherine Slusser, state archaeologist. "Two very different cultures came together here - one lost forever."
The site was spotted by volunteers of the Roanoke chapter of the Archaeological Society of Virginia years ago, but digging was not planned until the bulldozers rolled in to prepare the site for the sports complex.
Several professional archaeologists from the state Department of Historic Resources began the work under the state's threatened-sites program.
by CNB