Intact glass bottles found in brick space believed to be Jamestown wine cellar

The Associated Press
7/16/04 2:15 PM

JAMESTOWN, Va. (AP) -- Eight glass bottles have been unearthed in a
brick-walled space that may have been the wine cellar of a house dating
from the close of the 1600s in Jamestown.

The intact, gourd-shaped bottles, which were found without corks, were
likely empty when they were stored in the cellar, said Bill Kelso, director
of archaeology for the Jamestown Recovery Project. Archaeologists initially
believed they contained remnants of wine.

"We looked at them closer and it doesn't look like that's a possibility,"
Kelso said Friday.

An "FN" seal on one bottle is believed to signify Francis Nicholson, a
governor from 1698 into the early 1700s who moved the Virginia colony's
capital from Jamestown, inland to Williamsburg.

The bottle may indicate the house owner had received wine as a gift from
Nicholson, Kelso said.

The shape of the bottles dates from 1680 to 1700, Jamestown curator Bly
Straube said Thursday, announcing the find.

"What's really neat about this is finding so many of them intact -- and
still in their original context," Straube said.

Remnants of other bottles, pottery pieces and other artifacts were also
found in the space -- the brick cellar of a wooden house near James Fort's
western wall.

Archaeologists unearthed the bottles this week during excavation of James
Fort, founded in 1607 and the first permanent English settlement in the New
World.

The discovery of James Fort was announced in 1996 and exploded historians'
assumption that erosion on Jamestown Island had washed away all vestiges of
the settlement. By last year, archaeologists had found the outline of most
of the triangular fort.