DATE: Sunday, July 27, 1997                 TAG: 9707270054

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY MARK PRICE, THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER 

DATELINE: BUXTON                            LENGTH:   91 lines

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DIG FOR ANSWERS TO LOST COLONY MYSTERY

The single black coin that archaeologist David Phelps squeezes so reverently between two fingers was found under 300-odd years of sand, on the floor of what had been a home.

It's unreadable, slick as glass on one side and encrusted with sand on the other. But this is the kind of artifact Phelps hoped to find, when he began excavating a site on the Outer Banks that figures prominently in the state's oldest mystery: the fate of the Lost Colony.

Those settlers made up England's second colony in the New World in 1587. Their leader, John White, returned with supplies four years later and found the colony deserted and the word ``Croatoan'' carved on a tree.

That message, says Phelps, was intended to direct White to this wind-beaten ridge on Hatteras Island, site of the Croatan Indian capital.

``The whole colony could not have moved here,'' says Phelps, a retired archaeologist working for East Carolina University.

``What likely happened was, a small group may have come here, in hopes of directing White to where the colony had moved. . . . But the English ship wouldn't bring him here to see if anyone was left.''

So far, excavations have produced a wealth of European artifacts - smoking pipes, bits of wine bottle, flints and musket balls - from the period after 1650.

More scarce are artifacts of the late 1500s, which can be directly linked to the Lost Colony. That's where something like a coin comes in handy. Phelps is hoping a lab will reveal a date on the nickel-sized coin found recently.

``We're excited,'' Phelps says. ``It can give us a direct tie into a group.''

Easily seen in the coin are two holes, apparently drilled by a Croatan who used it as a neck ornament. A similar drilled English coin from 1563 was found by archaeologists about 50 miles away on Roanoke Island, site of the Lost Colony.

No matter what Phelps finds, historians won't be any closer to locating the Lost Colony's original settlement on the north end of Roanoke Island. And they won't learn where the colonists went, though many presume they were slaughtered while heading to the Chesapeake Bay.

``If anything, what we will know is what kind of lifestyle the group who stayed behind (at Croatan village) had to adopt in order to survive,'' Phelps says.

Artifacts from the Croatan village are 15 feet down in some places, stretched along the underside of what is today western Buxton. Part of the village is covered by dozens of houses, something that protected it, Phelps says. The rest is under a maritime forest.

Hurricanes have done more damage than anything else, washing away sections closest to Cape Creek. The discovery of one such spot by a Buxton couple after Hurricane Emily in 1993 is what prompted East Carolina University to send members of its Coastal Archaeology Office to the site.

``This site has been on the archaeological record since 1956. Residents have been reporting things in their yards - pottery and shells. Food remains have shown up in gardens and in the foundations for homes,'' Phelps says.

Zander Brody, a Buxton Fishing guide, remembers finding artifacts in the area back in 1969, when he was a 16-year-old newcomer to Hatteras Island.

``I was hunting pheasant and stumbled onto some pottery and shells, after a northwest wind washed the edge of a hill out,'' says Brody, who is helping with the excavation. ``Stuff was just rolling out onto the ground. I had no idea what I'd stumbled on.''

Brody kept the artifacts, which were recently analyzed by East Carolina specialists. One shard of pottery is 2,000 years old, he says.

Based on such occasional discoveries, historians long thought only pockets of the village remained. They have since found a half-mile section hidden under a sand ridge. Years will be needed to claim all the artifacts, Phelps says.

Most of what has been found is from the 1650-1729 period, a time when colonization spurred a slow shift in technology.

No arrowheads have been found, for example, indicating that the musket was used. No bone tools were found, suggesting that they had been replaced by iron tools.

Among the surprising finds is the pit from a peach, Phelps says. It suggests that the Croatans were trading with other Southeastern tribes or with the Spaniards, who introduced peaches to the Americas and were growing them on Florida plantations in the 1600s. One historian has suggested that the Spaniards had a trading post on the Roanoke River.

The town's midden - where trash was thrown - is producing buckets of shells, bones and pottery shards.

Some of the artifacts will eventually be put on display.

``The search for the Lost Colony is probably the most prevalent obsession with North Carolina's past,'' says Phelps. ``This island has a lot to tell and we're looking for the whole story. The colonists are part of that picture.'' ILLUSTRATION: STAFF/File photo

This coin and clay pipe bowl, along with other artifacts, may offer

clues for the East Carolina University researchers who are working

at the site in Buxton, where residents have long reported finding

artifacts.

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