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my tablet is not on it just is kind of a mirror

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say wild life was artifacts

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yes

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What class r u in? Im in Mrs. Mosquera's class.

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i like artifacts because it talks about ancient stuff.

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i like artifacts because it talks about ancient stuff.

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Nyema

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hi there

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I will see you tomorrow

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the mammoth song the mammoths are in the ice age and I don't know how they died

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the mammoth song the mammoths are in the ice age and I don't know how they died

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gdfhfdhghrtghti

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 this is madness I don't know how the disappeared?!

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 this is madness I don't know how the disappeared?!

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I think we can learn from them

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mammoths they are huge I don't know how the bones disappeared.......

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mammoths they are huge I don't know how the bones disappeared.......

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funny

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THATS FUNNY MRS TAYLOR IS FUNNY

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it was problabley not ther because  it was deep down under ground

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it was problabley not ther because  it was deep down under ground

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I think not all parts wert thire because 

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I think not all parts wert thire because 

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deeper and in difirent places

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hi lily and the anmals ate it

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LoL

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I think artifacts are old books. hi guys this is jacob

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I think artifacts are old books. hi guys this is jacob

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your wasting time alicia

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I guess they were not there because it use to be a ocean and went away

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fast is good

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regeye

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inara I think you should like artefects becoese you should think it is cool you should even try to do it

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inara I think you should like artefects becoese you should think it is cool you should even try to do it

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Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Derek

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jooio

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hi this is Shelby

hi Alicia and  inara

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Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

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sup.  Hey peoples!!

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Rylan   Because if you don't know what Artifacts are you might not know any thing but if you do that's really good you know any thing.

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Rylan   Because if you don't know what Artifacts are you might not know any thing but if you do that's really good you know any thing.

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is cooler

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What can artifacts tell us about the future? Read the article and watch the video. Double click on the Padlet and post your thoughts.

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Ghosts and mysteries abound at Jamestown.

Archaeologists working at the site of the original fort held a press conference at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington today to announce the discovery of more - including one they're calling the most important find since they unearthed the outlines of the fort itself.

It's a small silver box, found in one of four graves of the settlement's early leaders. The burials were inside the perimeter of the fort's first church.

Measuring just 2½ inches long and stubbornly sealed shut, the box launched a lengthy mission to learn what it contained.

The quest involved road trips, the good will of corporate America, and a hunt for ever-more powerful technology that could peer inside the box without damaging the artifact. Finally seen: Two blobs of lead, and seven small fragments of human bone.

By themselves, humble enough items. Found together, they're a sacred object, a relic of the Catholic faith.

Enough to rewrite history.

To understand the importance of this "reliquary" - as the silver box is now known to be - travel back to the early 1600s, the first English settlement in America, and the battle for territorial and religious dominance that was tearing Europe apart.

England had gone protestant, outlawing all symbols of the Catholic faith - a reformation that deeply offended Spain, a primary rival for New World lands.

That struggle played out in brutal ways at Jamestown, where English settlers hunkered down in 1607 to claim a foothold on the banks of the James River.

Tucked inside their three-sided wooden fort - stalked by starvation and death - they feared a Spanish attack as much as they worried about hostile natives.

Anyone suspected of being Catholic was viewed as a possible spy.

"These two great faiths were at each other's throats for 200 years," said Jim Horn, president of Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, which orchestrates the archeological operation. "One leader at Jamestown had already been shot for being a Catholic."

Against that backdrop, it seems reasonable to assume that the mere possession of a reliquary - a container for holy water, the bones of saints or other sacred objects - could surely lead to ruin at Jamestown.

"We knew something was inside there. We could feel it rolling around in there. But even after we cleaned it, we couldn't get it open." - archaeologist Michael Lavin

Compounding the enigma: This reliquary had been placed on top of the coffin of a prominent man, who was buried in a place of honor inside a protestant church, undoubtedly with ceremony and in full public view.

The deceased: Capt. Gabriel Archer, one of Jamestown's first arrivals and a key leader of the settlement. His grave, and the graves of three other influential men, were discovered in November 2013.

Jamestown has yielded plenty of other fascinating graves, but these four - placed side-by-side at the chancel rail of the church - were clearly special. They were painstakingly excavated, and each clue cross-referenced with a blend of historic documents, art, science and forensics to determine identity.

Coffins had rotted away, but iron nails remained, settled where they were over 400 years ago. Mapped with a 3D transit, their patterns indicated expensive handwork - sarcophagus or hexagonal shaped coffins instead of standard rectangles.

Skeletons indicated that the men were not laborers. Isotopes in bones showed which ones had grown up on diets with ample meat, and who had dined on pewter - all signs of affluence.

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"Today's technology is amazing," said David Givens, Jamestown archaeologist. "We couldn't have done this five years ago."

One grave held the barest traces of a fancy, metallic fringed fabric, which was minutely analyzed, then matched with paintings in the Museum of London. It turned out to be a ceremonial sash common to military captains.

For burial, this sash had been draped across Capt. William West who was killed by Indians shortly after his 1610 arrival.

Two of the other graves have been identified as the resting places of the Rev. Robert Hunt, the colony's first minster, and Sir Ferdinando Wainman, the first English knight buried in the New World.

Archer's grave contained the broken remnant of a metal staff - a symbol of military rank - and the silver box. Both surfaced atop the stain left by the lid of his coffin.

The box had a tiny sliding lid - the kind meant to be pulled back with a thumb - that refused to budge.

"We knew something was inside there," said archaeologist Michael Lavin. "We could feel it rolling around in there. But even after we cleaned it, we couldn't get it open."

The search for help was on. A machine at Colonial Williamsburg helped determine that the box was indeed made mostly of silver. X-rays revealed two dense objects inside - probably lead - being held apart by something that remained invisible. A letter etched on the box was determined to be an "M" - as opposed to a "W" - by a microscopic examination of the press and lift points of the knife that scratched it.

The Jamestown researchers moved on, following a road that led to laboratories and contractors and agencies, including the FBI in Quantico and Cornell University in New York.

All were approached with the same question: Do you have a way of seeing inside something without opening it?

Various scanning machines were tried, said Givens. "They'd wind up telling us, 'You've reached the limits of my machine, but I know another guy ...' "

The aha moment came at a General Electric plant in Pennsylvania, where they were given access to the most powerful CT scanner in the world, Givens says. Normally, it's used to probe car engines.

"We're amazed at the help we get from the nation's corporations," he said. "Not all, but many, will do it for free, if they feel like it's an object of national importance. That's the gravity of Jamestown - what this place holds."

That's when they finally saw the human bones, which look different than animal ones, and the pieces of what was once a small lead vessel, or ampulla. The internet provided similar images: a reliquary.

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An answer that only leads to more questions.

Horn shared some info about the man whose grave gave up the silver box. Archer was the settlement's secretary, recording its explorations up the James River. He was a rival of the famous Capt. John Smith, going so far as to attempt to banish Smith from the colony.

"Jamestown was a place of intrigue and plots," Horn said, "and Archer was involved in every one of them. He was a man who never saw a conspiracy he didn't like."

Archer also hailed from a once-staunch Catholic lineage. And there's no mention of his death in period documents.

"It's very mysterious," Horn said. "Was he the leader of some secret Catholic cell at Jamestown? Was the box intentionally sealed to hide its contents?"

Or is it simply that things weren't as cut-and-dried as has always been thought?

New religions do occasionally repurpose an old one's symbols.

And people do tend to cling quietly to family faiths despite government orders. Maybe neighbors can sometimes be persuaded to look the other way.

No one has any idea what the "M" on the silver box stands for, or exactly how to square this latest find with known history.

"I can't let it go. Too many goose-bump moments." - Bill Kelso, Jamestown's director of archaeology

Bill Kelso, Jamestown's director of archaeology, has been digging at the fort's shadows for over 20 years.

"I can't let it go," Kelso said. "Too many goose-bump moments."
Joanne Kimberlin, 446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com

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Archaeologists unearth Jamestown relic that could rewrite history

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Ghosts and mysteries abound at Jamestown. Archaeologists working at the site of the original fort held a press conference at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington today to announce the discovery of more - including one they're calling the most important find since they unearthed the outlines of the fort itself.