THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 1996 TAG: 9607100352
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY JENNIFER MCMENAMIN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROANOKE ISLAND LENGTH: 123 lines
Vacuuming the bottom of the Roanoke Sound for artifacts, East Carolina University professors and students hope to discover where this island's shoreline sat more than 400 years ago.
Although they don't expect to find the ``Lost Colony,'' they may be able to map its boundaries and collect clues about where and how the first English colonists settled in the 1580s.
``The artifacts represent where people lived along the shoreline that no longer exists,'' archaeological professor David Phelps said Tuesday morning. ``The artifacts are the real key.''
Wading through murky water off the shore of the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, Phelps - director of ECU's Institute of Historic and Cultural Research - and geology professor Stan Riggs guided the students through a second day of the vacuuming process.
Using a gasoline-powered pump, scuba divers and snorklers suctioned the floor of the sound, funneling the watery sediment through a blue tube the size of a saucer to a raft of black inner tubes and a wood-framed screen filter.
As the pump started, water shot across the sound. Struggling to keep the flow under control, the students balanced themselves on the inner tubes and wooden frame. When the suction kicked in, shells, stones, sand, water and a few valuable specimens gushed into the filter.
``Oops. I sucked my shorts in,'' said Charles Heath, a 33-year-old graduate student.
Twenty-one-year-old Gretchen Hardee, 26-year-old Kim Zawacki, and 25-year-old Steve Brodie picked through the haul, collecting black grit under their fingernails and placing specimens in a clear, plastic ziplock bag labeled with the date and the charted square where they were found.
Labels will help the team locate areas they wish to revisit. ``They line up with the map, so if we find any artifacts - particularly 16th century artifacts we're looking for - we can come back to the same spot,'' Heath said, steadying the raft in water sometimes chest-deep. ``It's a way to specifically identify the area we're working on.''
The type and number of artifacts collected from the floor of the sound should help the researchers determine where the coastline used to be.
``One thing about shoreline erosion is that we don't have maps that go back very far,'' Riggs said. ``We have good shoreline erosion charts for now, so what we have done is project that back 400 years.
``If they'd gotten off the boat and did things on the shoreline - they were dependent on boats and that's where their food came from - it's logical that evidence of things they did will be out there,'' said Riggs, pointing to the water lapping against the rip rap. He estimated that one-quarter to one-half a mile has been lost from the original northern ridge of Roanoke Island.
Monday was the beginning of a six-day, ``sun-up to sunset'' joint project by the Coastal Archaeological Office - which is part of ECU's Institute of Historic and Cultural Research - and ECU's geology department.
Returning to the Fort Raleigh shore for the second summer in a row, Phelps said he and his team have redesigned the sample collection process and earned a second grant from the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at ECU. ``Last summer, we worked out the logistics,'' he explained. ``This summer is the real thing.''
The team has planned one-by-one-meter collection squares at 10-meter intervals along seven lines stretching from the shore.
``If it works out right, we should be able to put it all together . . . and tell where things were - not just for the Lost Colony, but things out in the shore for a full 10,000-year range,'' Phelps said. ``With all the controversy surrounding where the Lost Colony was, it's time to see what's out here.''
In 1983, Phelps and his team found ``some 1580 stuff'' - the bottom of a well and an axe. ``It came out of the Waterside Theatre site,'' he said, describing it as presumably from the Lost Colony era. ``This is just an expanded verson of that with much more sampling.''
Previously, Dough's Point - where Phelps began Tuesday morning - has yielded glass, pottery, metal and a cast-iron stove leg that was traced to 1930s or earlier.
By lunchtime Tuesday, the excavation crew had found glass, ceramics, metal artifacts, brick, bottles and stone material from Indian tools.
``That's hand-made,'' Phelps said, pointing to a chunk of brick glistening with a green glaze. ``That's the kind of glaze that was put on houses in the 1700s for house walls.''
But they were not all helpful finds.
Holding a green glass bottle covered in barnacles, Phelps chuckled at some of the items brought up by the snorklers. ``This is not old,'' he said. ``It's old enough to have barnacles on it but not old enough to help us any.''
Examining a second item - a brown glass bottle, Phelps explained that screw-on caps weren't even developed until after the 1860s.
``I was drinking on the job,'' said Stu Darrow, a 31-year-old graduate student wearing full scuba gear. ``You weren't supposed to find that!''
Phelps, who has headed other digs in the area, said the purpose of this project is different from previous expeditions.
``Buxton is completely different,'' he said of the site where diggers found the remains of rotten wood pilings, copper beads, a copper ornament and a large dark area, which was not explored enough to identify. ``That is an intact site where we can determine a description of behavior and how people lived.
``Here, we have erroded remnants. We can get where things sit. But in Buxton, we can tell what people were doing.''
Phelps and Riggs said both types of digs are important.
``You can't take care of a car if you don't know how the engine works,'' Riggs explained during the lunch break. ``If you understand it and take good care of it, it will run for 200,000 miles.''
He said life on the barrier islands works the same way.
``We have a big economic investment out there. We're putting in roads and houses where they shouldn't be. The more we understand the system, the better we can manage it with minimal conflicts.
``If you're going to manage it and live with it, you better understand the dynamics of such a system.'' ILLUSTRATION: Searching for an American Atlantis
DREW C. WILSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Stanley Riggs, top, examines a piece of 18th century pottery that he
mined from the sound off Dough's Point on the northern tip of
Roanoke Island. David Phelps, right, sets up new test sites for the
search for artifacts that the Lost Colonists might have used and for
the former land areas they might have walked. The search is being
conducted by the Coastal Archaeological Office - which is part of
ECU's Institute of Historic and Cultural Research - and ECU's
geology department.
DONATIONS
Those interested in helping finance the new Coastal Archaeological
Office - opened by ECU's dean of the college of arts and sciences to
manage projects from Currituck County through Ocracoke Island,
should contact Tom Hranika at Outer Beaches Realty in Avon at
995-4477. by CNB