Down and Dirty

A summer sifting through dirt leads Mason student to major discovery

By Andrea Uhde

Landon Yarrington is too young to drink, but he digs a fine wine. Yarrington, 19, led the way to one of the biggest finds in historic Jamestown in a decade: a wine cellar, complete with 10 unbroken glass wine bottles. The jugs—there are 11 in all—could date as far back as the 1680s.

“In 10 years of digging and over a half a million artifacts, we have only found two whole ceramic vessels to this point,” said Eric Deetz, a senior staff archaeologist for Jamestown Rediscovery. “This is a huge deal.”

The first of the bottles, which are shaped like a globe with a straight spout, was uncovered in July by the most unlikely archaeologist: Yarrington, a wide-eyed anthropology major at George Mason University. Yarrington, a sophomore, was the youngest of a group of 18 college students from across the nation who were in Jamestown for six weeks learning hands-on skills. The students signed up for the project through the archaeological field school coordinated by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) and the University of Virginia.

But, as the youngest, Yarrington struggled with getting people to believe him. The other students considered betting money that he was wrong.

“I thought there'd be a whole bottle, and no one believed me,” Yarrington said as he bent over a wheelbarrow and sifted through dirt.

Yarrington saw the mouth of a bottle earlier in the week. He poured water into it, and the water stayed put—a sign that it was still intact, he said. “It was really suspenseful. I kept wanting to take it out, but Eric told me I had to play by the rules.”

The brick layers of the cellar on Jamestown Island were uncovered last fall, but it wasn't explored much until July, when the students started digging, Deetz said. Thursday's [July 15] excavation uncovered a whole group of bottles nestled in one section of the 20- by 8-foot cellar. None of them have corks, but they may have residue of wine or some other substance, Deetz said.

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. Once the archaeologists get a better feel for the time period, they'll sift through records and see to whom the cellar belonged, Deetz said. The bottles will be on display in 2007 during a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown.

After the field school, Yarrington, who lives in nearby Yorktown, stayed on at the Jamestown site to complete an internship with APVA.

“Every day is like Christmas morning here,” he said.

This story originally appeared in the July 16, 2004, Virginian-Pilot. Reprinted with permission.