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Mystery has haunted the Roanoke colony of American settlers since their strange disappearance all the way back in 1590.

The group of 115 colonists followed John White, who acted as their governor, from England to establish a community off the coast of what is now North Carolina. They arrived in 1587 and soon found they were dangerously low on food and supplies. As their leader, John decided to make the trip back to England, intending to return with more supplies.

Unfortunately, it was at the same time England was at war with Spain, meaning his return trip was postponed for three years. By the time John made it back to the island, he found it completely deserted apart from two eerie clues: a single skeleton and the word "Croatoan" etched into one of the trees.

Croatoan was the name of both a nearby Native American tribe and the island they inhabited south of Roanoke.

No one knows for sure what really happened to all of the colonists in that short time span, but it hasn't stopped them from coming up with plenty of theories.

Take a look, and be sure to SHARE the theories about Roanoke with your friends on Facebook!

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From Witchcraft To Alien Abduction: 12 Theories Why The Roanoke Colonists Disappeared In 1590

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Mystery has haunted the Roanoke colony of American settlers since their strange disappearance all the way back in 1590. The group of 115 colonists followed John White, who acted as their governor, from England to establish a community off the coast of what is now North Carolina.

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The settlers, who arrived in 1587, disappeared in 1590, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" carved into a fort's gatepost and "Cro" etched into a tree.

Thanks to technological advances and a cover-up on a map, researchers are getting closer to finding out what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke Island.
What Do We Know?
The lost colonists were the third group of English arrivals on North Carolina's Roanoke Island, settling near the modern-day town of Manteo.

The first group to arrive, in 1584, came to explore and map the land for future groups. A second group, which arrived in 1585, was charged with a military and scientific mission. But this second group's trip was far from peaceful.

The third group arrived in 1587. Entire families came with children-17 women and 11 children accompanied a party of 90 men. That meant the group wanted to settle in the New World and was not a military excursion, which would have included only male explorers.

A clue uncovered in a long-forgotten, centuries-old map of the area called "La Virginea Pars" -drawn by the colony's governor -kicked off a reexamination of the fate of the lost colonists. An artist and employee of explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, White was later appointed governor of the new lands; he was also the grandfather of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World.

A clue uncovered in a long-forgotten map kicked off a reexamination of the fate of the lost colonists.

Two patches on the map made Brent Lane of the (the group behind the latest archaeological trip and whose work is supported by National Geographic and the Waitt Grants Programs) in Durham, North Carolina, First Colony Foundation wonder if they might hide something beneath.

Scientists at the British Museum looked into the patches and discovered a tiny red-and-blue symbol. Could it have indicated a fort or a secret emergency location?

Most researchers think the colonists likely encountered disease-caused by New World microbes their bodies had never encountered before-or violence.

The research team thinks that when the crisis-whatever that may have been-hit, the colonists split up into smaller groups and dispersed.

No single Indian tribe or village could have supported them. They would be even larger than some villages.

"It's a good strategy," he said, explaining that the previous group from 1585 had been ordered to do so if disaster struck. "We don't definitely know that they do, but it's obvious that that's the only way they could have survived. No single Indian tribe or village could have supported them. They would be even larger than some villages-I mean, they were over a hundred people."

Furthermore, archaeologists have identified the nearby site of a small Native American town named Mettaquem, which may have adopted some of the colonists. Klingelhofer said that while researchers don't know much about the Native American town and its inhabitants, its existence has been verified.

"It's a very strategic place, right at the end of Albemarle Sound," he said. "You can go north up the Chowan River to Virginia or west to the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were big trading partners" with other Native American tribes.

Malcolm LeCompte , a research associate at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, was responsible for the addition of GPR in the archaeological search for what happened to the lost colonists of Roanoke.

The process began earlier this year with a satellite survey of the site.

"What we do is we get the oldest maps we can find-so we can get a historic sense of what was there and what's there now-and orient them," LeCompte said. The point is to compare "what may have been there in the past to what is there now."

Researchers look for similarities between the old maps and the current geography of the area. Once they identify where the spots on the map correspond with today's landscape, a painstaking process of laying out a grid and systematically searching it with their GPR ensues.

The technology emits radio waves into the ground and measures the echo as the signal bounces off of various things buried underground. Essentially, it measures the depth that signals travel before hitting something that causes a measurable bounce back. In other words, signals potentially indicate a hidden object underground.

Metal objects-like the iron cannons that have been found at the site-act like "giant antennas." Graves and coffins are also detectable, because they contain voids with different densities and poorer conductive properties than the surrounding soil.

LeCompte and his colleagues found a previously undetected pattern that may indicate the presence of one or more structures, possibly made of wood, under about three feet (a meter) of soil.

"I don't know if it's one or a group [of structures]," he said, adding that they "could be joined or they could be close together." Perhaps the wood of the structures collapsed over time, leaving impressions in the surrounding soil, LeCompte speculated.

The device measures distortions of the Earth's magnetic field due to the presence of various objects buried underground.

"We're looking for anything that affects the local magnetic field," Swindell stressed. "That could be things like burn pits."

Swindell, for his part, thinks there may also be remains of a palisades that would have been used by farmers to keep wild animals away from crops.

The presence of the buried structure and the fence strongly indicate that there was some sort of colonial presence in the area. What complicates the story further is the presence of later colonial sites in the area through the 1700s.

Unfortunately, neither piece of technology has shed light on the role of Native American populations in the area. That's a puzzle that remains to be solved.

In the days of the Roanoke Colony, relations with the local Native Americans were mixed.

Tensions were especially high between the colonists and the Secotan tribe.

"There is no doubt that there was a lot of hostility," Klingelhofer said. "Not all the tribes were hostile, but some of them were hostile. They felt imposed upon. There was fighting between [the groups]"-both among the tribes, and between some of the native peoples and the English settlers.

The area does seem to hold clues to contact between local tribes and European colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries.

It didn't help that the English attempted to explore the area multiple times. The group that arrived prior to the lost colonists were driven back to England, which meant when the ill-fated third group of colonists showed up, some sour feelings remained.

"It would not surprise me that the Secotan would want to be done and get rid of the English," Swindell said.

Whether groups of Secotan banded together to rid themselves of what they saw as interlopers is anyone's guess, he said.

The area does seem to hold clues to contact between local tribes and European colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The next step in solving this age-old American mystery? "We have to go in and dig some holes, I guess," Swindell said.
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Have We Found the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island?

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The settlers, who arrived in 1587, disappeared in 1590, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" carved into a fort's gatepost and "Cro" etched into a tree. Thanks to technological advances and a cover-up on a map, researchers are getting closer to finding out what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke Island.

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So what happened to the Roanoke colonists? Ultimately, no one knows for sure. When it comes to the lost colony, historians are long on theories but short on hard evidence. Gov. John White, the first person to discover the colonists' disappearance, reported everything he saw in a letter. There were no bones, like those that had been left behind from the 1585 colony. The houses had been "taken downe," not destroyed or burned [source: Neville]. The "CROATOAN" carving didn't indicate distress with a Maltese cross. Everything pointed to the settlers simply having picked up and left.

In White's opinion, they moved "[f]ifty miles into the maine," arguably meaning they moved inland, into the forests of North Carolina [source: Keiger]. This idea has appealed to historians over the years; exactly why the colonists moved inland or what became of them afterward if they did ignites new debate.

It's conceivable that the colonists met a less violent fate. The Jamestown colonists sent out several search parties to find members of the lost colony and made a habit of questioning any Native Americans with whom the Jamestown members made contact. Some of these natives told tales of white settlements further down the coast, with two-story, thatched-roof houses, a style unique to the English. Others told of nearby tribes who could read English and dressed similarly to Europeans. Perhaps the most dramatic report from Jamestown was the sighting of a boy dressed as a native. He had blond hair and was fair-skinned.

These reports corroborate the most widely held theory of what became of the Roanoke colonists: They assimilated into some friendly Native American tribe. Over the course of generations, intermarriage between the natives and the English would produce a third, distinct group. This group may be the Lumbee tribe.

The Lumbee tribe is native to North Carolina, yet no certain lineage can be pinned down. The tribe's oral history links them to the Roanoke settlers, and this tradition is supported by some of their surnames and the tribe's ability to read and write English. Family names of some of the Roanoke colonists, like Dial, Hyatt and Taylor, were shared by Lumbee tribe members as early as 1719. The settlers who met them were astonished to find Native Americans that had grey eyes and spoke English. Even within the Lumbee tribe, the veracity of the group's link to the Roanoke colonists is in dispute. The Lumbee Connection, as it's come to be called, is intriguing.

But another explanation is that the Roanoke settlers fell victim to the Spanish, whose settlement was just down the coast in Florida. It's certain that the Spanish in the West Indies were aware of the English colonists' presence. One Roanoke settler named Darby Glande left the 1587 expedition once it set ashore in Puerto Rico to take on supplies. He later reported that he told Spanish officials the location of the Roanoke settlement [source: Keiger].

In the opinion of Johns Hopkins University anthropologist Lee Miller, the colonists wandered into a violent shift in the balance of power among inland tribes. Natives with whom the colonists were friendly lost their hold over the area, and Native Americans hostile to the settlers took control. If the Roanoke colonists made the trip inland when this happened, the men would've likely been killed and the women and children captured as slaves. The colonists would have then been traded along a route that spanned the U.S. coast from present-day Georgia to Virginia [source: Keiger].

All of these theories remain debated. But if the Lumbee Connection is true, then the Roanoke colonists aren't lost -- their genes can be found in people living today in Robeson County, North Carolina.

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What happened to the lost colony at Roanoke?

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So what happened to the Roanoke colonists? Ultimately, no one knows for sure. When it comes to the lost colony, historians are long on theories but short on hard evidence. Gov. John White, the first person to discover the colonists' disappearance, reported everything he saw in a letter.

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Just south of Roanoke was an island named Croatoan that was home to a Native American tribe of the same name. Since the settlers had developed a good rapport with the tribe and the name "Croatoan" was found, it was assumed the settlers must have moved to the island of Croatoan and been absorbed into the tribe or simply moved inland, perhaps driven off by Spanish troops. Some theorize they moved north to join the Chesapeake tribe, or perhaps the Chowanocs or Weapemeocs, among many others.

There were many sightings of Europeans and European-made goods in the area in the years following the colony's disappearance, though most were hearsay. The "Zuniga map, a map of the area drawn about 1607 by a settler from Jamestown, states "four men clothed that came from roonock" were living among the Iroquois. Another English man claimed the had seen two-story stone houses at the Indian settlements of Peccarecanick and Ochanahoen; supposedly, English settlers had taught them how to build such houses.

Contemporary archaeologists have found some more verifiable evidence, including a gold signet ring, part of a rapier, and a slate and pencil that may have belonged to the Roanoke colonists living among Native people.

It is also possible the colonists met with Native people who were less friendly. The contemporary historian William Stachey reported seeing Native tribes with European slaves, who were forced to beat copper.

To this day, many Native people in the region claim to have European ancestry. However, a DNA analysis of present-day local families that hoped to prove the people of Roanoke intermingled with Native people in the area has so far proven inconclusive.

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17 Utterly Fascinating Theories Behind The Vanishing Roanoke Colony

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The disappearance of the Roanoke colony remains one of the oldest unsolved mysteries in the United States. It all began back in 1587, when Sir Walter Raleigh financed the attempts of John White to establish a colony on Roanoke Island, just off the coast of North Carolina. They landed on July ...

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As a result of the findings, experts are now nominating food shortages brought about by the mega-droughts as a possible root cause of both the Lost Colony's failure and Jamestown's well-known miseries and near failure. Jamestown survived to plant the first seed of the British Empire and its political values in North America, but just barely. The ill and starving settlers had abandoned the colony and were sailing down the James River for home when they met a relief convoy sailing up.

As for the Lost Colony, it ''might well have survived if not for the drought,'' said Dr. Warren Billings, a historian at the University of New Orleans and an authority on the early settlements, who did not participate in the new study but is familiar with it.

The role of climatic and environmental change in shaping human events over the last several hundred years has largely been ignored by historians. ''They tend to assume, and I think wrongly, that conditions haven't changed a lot,'' Mr. Blanton said.

Evidence has mounted in recent years that climatic change played a major role in the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, especially in the Middle East and South America. But scarce attention has been paid to its possible role in more recent centuries.

The latest findings add a dimension to the study of early American history, although the authors of the study do not claim that drought was wholly responsible for the misfortunes of Roanoke and Jamestown. ''We don't want to come across as environmental determinists,'' Mr. Blanton said. ''The stories are complex.''

But the revelation about the super-droughts of the late 16th and early 17th centuries casts a new light on what transpired. It also offers something of a cautionary tale about what type of climatic disasters might strike in the future, either from natural causes or as a result of human alteration of the atmosphere.

In fact, said Dr. David W. Stahle of the University of Arkansas, the chief author of the study on Roanoke and Jamestown, the findings grew out of an effort to reconstruct the past climate of the southeastern United States as an aid in producing a baseline against which any climatic changes caused by the emission of waste industrial gases might be gauged.

Dr. Stahle is a dendrochronologist, one of a breed of scientists who have made a speciality of analyzing tree rings. The rings are regarded as highly accurate gauges of climatic conditions in a given year or even in part of a year, since their thickness and consistency vary with soil moisture, and the year can be pinned precisely by using the most recent year's ring as a benchmark.

In this case, the scientists analyzed the rings of bald cypresses growing along the Blackwater and Nottoway Rivers in Southeastern Virginia, part of the climatic region that includes Jamestown and Roanoke Island. These trees, which commonly live 600 to 800 years and sometimes reach 1,700 years, are the longest-lived trees in eastern North America.

The ring samplings were taken a decade ago, and Mr. Blanton, as part of a reassessment of the Jamestown site sponsored by the National Park Service, suggested using the samples to investigate the climate of the early colonial period.

The scientists were astounded by the results. Dr. Stahle, said Mr. Blanton, ''called me back and he was just on top of the table, saying, 'Good God! This is incredible.' '' The analysis showed that the most extreme three-year growing-season drought in 800 years coincided exactly with the period in which the Roanoke colony was established and then vanished. The worst single season occurred in 1587, the year of Virginia Dare's birth.

It also showed that the worst seven-year drought in 700 years coincided precisely with the foundation and early years of Jamestown.

Both sets of colonists would have been highly vulnerable to drought, the experts say, because they were living off the land and, rather than farming, depended for food on trade with the Indians and on gifts of corn from them. An extreme drought would have cut food supplies sharply, wiping out any surplus the Indians had. The Indians themselves may well have been afflicted by famine and reduced to eating roots and berries, as happened in an earlier drought, from 1562 to 1571, documented in the historical account of a Spanish priest.

Several clashes broke out between the Jamestown colonists and the Indians, and Dr. Billings believes that a conflict over food, brought on by the drought of 1606 to 1612, helps explain the hostility. And the new study suggests that almost certainly, the Jamestown drought contributed directly to the colony's high mortality.

Malnutrition was a leading cause of death at Jamestown, and the number of deaths rose during dry years while dropping off in others. In all, 4,800 of 6,000 settlers sent to Jamestown from 1607 to 1625 died.

Drought might also have contributed to the colonists' ill health, since water quality is poorest then. The brackish James River would have become saltier, and a lowered water table would have made it difficult to dig wells. Mr. Blanton says some colonists might have suffered from salt poisoning.

Jamestown's plight became most critical in the winter of 1609, known as the ''starving time.'' The previous summer's drought probably prevented the colonists from saving any food for winter, Mr. Blanton said, and the winter itself was harsh, aggravating the situation. It was after this winter that the Jamestown settlers packed up and headed for home, only to return when succor arrived.

The end game on Roanoke Island could have played out in any of several ways, the experts say. The colonists could have been wiped out by the local Indians, the Croatans, in a clash over food. They could have left, sailing north to Chesapeake Bay, their original but never-achieved destination, and perished there or on the way. They could have joined forces with the generally friendly Croatans and moved out of the drought-stricken area, farther south, where today some Indians claim that the blood of Roanoke's settlers flows in their veins.

All that is known is that when ships returned to Roanoke in 1590, they found a single word carved on a tree: ''Croatoan.''

The drought may have ultimately doomed the Lost Colony. But exactly what happened to its members, Dr. Billings said, ''will always be one of the great mysteries.''
Correction: April 25, 1998, Saturday A drawing yesterday showing the Roanoke colony in 1590, with an article about the colony's disappearance, carried a misspelled credit. The source was Corbis-Bettmann, not Bettman.

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Analysis of growth rings of trees has shown that 16th century English colonists at Roanoke Island and Jamestown, Va, settlers who followed them arrived in worst droughts of last 800 years in that part of country; experts say that food shortages brought about by mega-droughts are probably main cause of Lost Colony of Roanoke's failure and Jamestown's near failure; College of William and Mary archeologist Dennis Blanton is co-author of report on findings, which are being published in April 24 issue of Science; map; photo (M)

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Climate Change and the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island

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Climate change including the onset of the Little Ice Age doomed the colonists Roanoke Island.

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Background Information: Ralph Lane (Governor of Roanoke)

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Background Information: Ralph Lane (Governor of Roanoke)

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National Park Service Logo National Park Service

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An online comunity of Southern Algonquian descendants and researchers as a place of historical, genealogical and cultural research, and rekindling old ties.

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Background Information on the Relationship Between Settlers and the Native Americans

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Background Information on the Relationship Between Settlers and the Native Americans

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Native Americans - Disappearance of Roanoke

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Article Supporting Assimilation to Native American Tribes

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Article Supporting Assimilation to Native American Tribes

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When John White, appointed by Sir Walter Raleigh as governor of Roanoke Colony, returned to England for more supplies in late 1587, he left behind his wife, his daughter and his infant granddaughter-Virginia Dare, the first child born in the New World to English parents-among the other settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, he found no trace of his family or the other inhabitants of the abandoned colony. Over the centuries to come, archaeologists, historians and explorers would delve into the mystery of the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke, all failing to find definitive answers.

Based on the scant clues left behind, some speculated that Native Americans attacked and killed the English colonists. "Croatoan" was the name of an island south of Roanoke, now Hatteras Island, which at the time was home to a Native American tribe of the same name. Alternatively, they might have tried to sail back to England on their own and been lost at sea, or been killed by hostile Spaniards who came north from their own settlements in Florida. One enduring theory was that the settlers might have been absorbed into friendly Native American tribes, perhaps after moving further inland into what is now North Carolina.

Stock Montage/Getty Images

Two independent teams found archaeological remains suggesting that at least some of the Roanoke colonists might have survived and split into two groups, each of which assimilated itself into a different Native American community. One team is excavating a site near Cape Creek on Hatteras Island, around 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of the Roanoke Island settlement, while the other is based on the mainland about 50 miles to the northwest of the Roanoke site.

Cape Creek, located in a live oak forest near Pamlico Sound, was the site of a major Croatoan town center and trading hub. In 1998, archaeologists from East Carolina University stumbled upon a unique find from early British America: a 10-carat gold signet ring engraved with a lion or horse, believed to date to the 16th century. The ring's discovery prompted later excavations at the site led by Mark Horton, an archaeologist at Britain's Bristol University, who has been directing volunteers with the Croatoan Archaeological Society in annual digs since 2009. Recently, Horton's team found a small piece of slate that seems to have been used as a writing tablet and part of the hilt of an iron rapier, a light sword similar to those used in England in the late 16th century, along with other artifacts of European and Native American origin. The slate, a smaller version of a similar one found at Jamestown, bears a small letter "M" still barely visible in one corner; it was found alongside a lead pencil.

In addition to these intriguing objects, the Cape Creek site yielded an iron bar and a large copper ingot (or block), both found buried in layers of earth that appear to date to the late 1500s. Native Americans lacked such metallurgical technology, so they are believed to be European in origin. Horton told National Geographic that some of the artifacts his team found are trade items, but it appears that others may well have belonged to the Roanoke colonists themselves: "The evidence is that they assimilated with the Native Americans but kept their goods."

The Trustees of the British Museum

A watercolor map drawn by none other than John White inspired the search at Site X (as it's known), located on Albemarle Sound near Edenton, North Carolina, some 50 miles inland. Known as La Virginea Pars, the map shows the East Coast of North America from Chesapeake Bay to Cape Lookout; it is housed at the British Museum as part of its permanent collection. White began drawing the map in 1585, two years before he became governor. In 2012, researchers using X-ray spectroscopy and other imaging techniques spotted a tiny four-pointed star, colored red and blue, concealed under a patch of paper that White used to make corrections to his map. It was thought to mark the location of a site some 50 miles inland, which White alluded to in testimony given after his attempted return to the colony. If such a site did exist, the theory went, it would have been a reasonable destination for the displaced Roanoke settlers.

According to archaeologist Nicholas Luccketti of the First Colony Foundation, which is conducting the excavations at Site X, the group has found shards of pottery that they claim may have been used by Roanoke settlers after they left the colony. Located nearby is a site that archaeologists believe might have been a small Native American town, Mettaquem. After the Roanoke colony met its end, English settlers eventually came south from Virginia into North Carolina, but the first recorded settler in the area did not arrive until about 1655. But the recently uncovered pottery is in a style called Border Ware, which is typical of the pottery dug up on Roanoke Island, as well as at Jamestown, but was no longer imported to the New World after the early 17th century, when the Virginia Company dissolved.

In addition to the Border Ware pottery, archaeologists at Site X discovered various other items, including a food-storage jar known as a baluster, pieces of early gun flintlocks, a metal hook of the sort used to stretch animal hides or tents and an aglet, a small copper tube used to secure wool fibers before the advent of the hook and eye in the 17th century. Based on his team's findings, Luccketti thinks the Roanoke colonists may have moved inland to live with Native American allies sometime after White left, and these artifacts might have been among their belongings. As reported in the New York Times, the First Colony Foundation will reveal more about its findings and theory this week in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Though the newly announced discoveries don't solve this lingering historical mystery, they do point away from Roanoke Island itself, where researchers have failed to come up with evidence pointing to the Lost Colony's fate. Archaeologists on both teams are hoping that a detailed study of their new finds will yield more clues, and-of course-that more evidence remains, waiting to be discovered, in the endless layers of dirt that surround them.

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Archaeologists Find New Clues to "Lost Colony" Mystery

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When John White, appointed by Sir Walter Raleigh as governor of Roanoke Colony, returned to England for more supplies in late 1587, he left behind his wife, his daughter and his infant granddaughter-Virginia Dare, the first child born in the New World to English parents-among the other settlers.

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Mystery at Roanoke Video - Jamestown Colony - HISTORY.com

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Before Jamestown and Plymouth, the English attempted to forge a colony at Roanoke. Within three years, it had disappeared, leaving a mysterious clue behind. What really happened to the Roanoke settlers?

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New York Times: 2013 Archaeological Dig at Roanoke

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New York Times: 2013 Archaeological Dig at Roanoke

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"We need to know more," said Eric Klingelhofer, a vice president for research at the foundation and a history professor at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. "This whole story is a blank - a blank page, a blank chapter of history, and I think archaeology is the only way to come up with answers."

The story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke has long lent a spooky note to grade schoolers' study of American history. In 1587, an intrepid Englishman named John White took more than 100 settlers to Roanoke Island, which lies inside the chain of barrier islands that is today called the Outer Banks. It was Sir Walter Raleigh's second attempt to colonize North Carolina, but the first to include civilians and families. White's granddaughter, Virginia Dare, was the first child born in the New World to English parents, just a few weeks after their arrival.

A resupply trip sent White back to England, but a naval war with Spain delayed his return. When he finally came back, three years after he left, the settlers had vanished, but they had left behind cryptic clues: the word "Croatoan" carved into a fence post, and the letters "CRO" on a tree. Many people believe these referred to what is now Hatteras Island, 50 miles south. A search run by a separate group has been going on there for the last several years.

Part tragedy, part mystery, part historical curiosity, the fate of the colony and Virginia Dare has spawned a folkloric cottage industry, a mix of sober scholarship, wild speculation and at least one outright hoax. A widely held theory - though unproven - is that colonists hitched themselves to area tribes and gradually assimilated.

The most tantalizing clue in centuries as to the Lost Colonists' fate came in 2012, after the British Museum re-examined one of White's coastal maps for the First Colony Foundation. X-ray spectroscopy and other imaging techniques revealed that a patch hid a four-pointed blue and red star on the western end of Albemarle Sound. That spot, near the outlets of the Chowan River and Salmon Creek, roughly corresponded to White's oblique reference to a site 50 miles inland, which he mentioned in testimony he gave after trying to return to the colony.

James Horn, a foundation board member, had written a book hypothesizing that the location, with its protected harbor and a nearby Native American village, could have been a destination. The idea was without concrete evidence, though; while the map appeared to support it, only shovels in the ground could confirm it.

The fact that the property was undisturbed was something of a miracle. Tucked into economically depressed and largely rural Bertie County, the land had been slated for development into more than 2,000 luxury condominiums, restaurants and a marina, but the plan collapsed after the financial crisis of 2008.

North Carolina law requires archaeological surveys before large coastal developments can proceed. By coincidence, the developers had hired Mr. Luccketti's outfit, the James River Institute for Archaeology, to survey the site in 2007. The dig had turned up many Native American artifacts, which are common in the region - but also some European artifacts. At the time, Mr. Luccketti hypothesized that they had been left by later European settlers, from a nearby plantation or the homestead of a trader who arrived in the mid-1600s.

But the recent insights from the British Museum's analysis of the map prompted the foundation to re-examine the 2007 findings from Merry Hill and other dig sites in the region. A key to identifying the earliest colonial life was a type of ceramic known as Surrey-Hampshire Border ware, which was no longer imported to the New World after the Virginia Company dissolved in the early 17th century.

The reconsideration of the Site X artifacts led to a decision to explore further. With the landowner's cooperation, archaeologists began sifting the soil again in 2012.

Slowly, the pits gave up their secrets. In just the small areas excavated, the hillside has yielded an unusually high concentration of Border ware and other colonial artifacts, such as a food-storage jar called a baluster, a hook used to stretch hides, a buckle, and pieces of early gun flintlocks called priming pans. No signs of a fort or other structures have been found, but the aggregate of the artifacts convinced the archaeologists that at least a few of the colonists wound up there.

Mr. Luccketti insists on the caveat that only a small number - fewer than a dozen - were present for an indeterminate amount of time. "It wasn't the relocated colony - I keep emphasizing that - and we need to do some more work here to understand," he said.

There are theories for other locations where colonists might have scattered to, including the one farther south, on Hatteras Island. That site has been known since the 1930s and in the past has yielded intriguing metal items such as a signet ring, part of a horse bridle, two 17th-century coins and part of the firing mechanism for a gun.

Over the last few years, a British archaeologist,Mark Horton, has led an excavation there. He, too, has found unusual artifacts, such as a rapier hilt, late 16th-century gun hardware and part of a slate writing tablet. Many of the 16th-century items were mixed in with artifacts from almost a century later, though, making it nearly impossible to date them. And no Border ware pottery - a telltale sign of habitation - has been found on the Hatteras site.

Mr. Horton, whose findings have not been published or peer reviewed, posits that colonists made their way south to Hatteras around 1590 and assimilated with the tribe there. After years of cohabitation, European items could have been gradually discarded long after they were brought to the site, which would account for their being mixed in with later detritus, he said in an interview.

"I don't necessarily see that what we've found on Hatteras rules out their site, or vice versa," he said.

Mr. Luccketti also said the two were not mutually exclusive; if the colonists split up, they could have ended up in multiple locations. But he says he believes Site X has stronger evidence of lost colonists because of the ceramics found there.

Carter L. Hudgins, the director of the graduate program in historic preservation at Clemson/College of Charleston, said, "Any evidence that helps open the door to this mystery, even if it's just a little bit, is something folks have been looking for at least since John White's return to the site in 1590." While not directly affiliated with the foundation, Dr. Hudgins has volunteered at Site X and other foundation projects over the years.

Others are more circumspect. Charles R. Ewen, the president of the Society for Historical Archaeology and director of the Phelps Archaeology Laboratory at East Carolina University, says he wants incontrovertible proof of 16th-century occupation, such as a European grave from the period.

He is also unconvinced that colonists removed to the Hatteras site, although the findings there could indicate contact between colonists and Native Americans. "I know we want a definitive answer, and there's just not enough evidence yet from either site to say that, yes, this is where some of the lost colonists went," he said. "I'm not cynical, but I haven't seen enough evidence to say, yeah, you bet, I'm on board with that."

For now, the foundation hopes to find funding to secure the 15 acres to excavate it thoroughly. Michael Flannelly, whose company owns the land, said he hoped to find a way for the archaeological work to proceed while allowing nearby land to be developed.

"It's a 430-year-old mystery, and if I can be a part of solving that mystery, that's something I'm interested in," he said.

As the sun reached its zenith one day last week, the work began to slow. Mr. Luccketti retired to the shade, sweat dripping from his brow. Soon the pit would be filled, the sifting screens packed up and the work paused until the future of the site could be determined.

"Everyone has encouraged us that what we're finding is really exciting and terribly significant," he said, "and we just need to do some more here."

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The Roanoke Island Colony: Lost, and Found?

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"We need to know more," said Eric Klingelhofer, a vice president for research at the foundation and a history professor at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. "This whole story is a blank - a blank page, a blank chapter of history, and I think archaeology is the only way to come up with answers."

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An artifact found 20 years ago turns out to not be what archaeologists thought

smithsonian.com

It seemed too good to be true. And it was.

Nearly 20 years ago, excavators digging on North Carolina's remote Hatteras Island uncovered a worn ring emblazoned with a prancing lion. A local jeweler declared it gold-but it came to be seen as more than mere buried treasure when a British heraldry expert linked it to the Kendall family involved in the 1580s Roanoke voyages organized by Sir Walter Raleigh during Elizabeth I's reign.

The 1998 discovery electrified archaeologists and historians. The artifact seemed a rare remnant of the first English attempt to settle the New World that might also shed light on what happened to 115 men, women, and children who settled the coast, only to vanish in what became known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

Now it turns out that researchers had it wrong from the start.

A team led by archaeologist Charles Ewen recently subjected the ring to a lab test at East Carolina University. The X-ray fluorescence device, shaped like a cross between a ray gun and a hair dryer, reveals an object's precise elemental composition without destroying any part of it. Ewen was stunned when he saw the results.

"It's all brass," he said. "There's no gold at all."

North Carolina state conservator Erik Farrell, who conducted the analysis at an ECU facility, found high levels of copper in the ring, along with some zinc and traces of silver, lead, tin and nickel. The ratios, Farrell said, "are typical of brass" from early modern times. He found no evidence that the ring had gilding on its surface, throwing years of speculation and research into serious doubt.

"Everyone wants it to be something that a Lost Colonist dropped in the sand," added Ewen. He said it is more likely that the ring was a common mass-produced item traded to Native Americans long after the failed settlement attempt.

Not all archaeologists agree, however, and the surprise results are sure to reignite the debate over the fate of the Lost Colony.

The settlers arrived from England in the summer of 1587, led by John White. They rebuilt an outpost on Roanoke Island, 50 miles north of Hatteras, abandoned by a previous band of colonists. White's group included his daughter Eleanor, who soon gave birth to Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parents in the New World.

White quickly departed for England to gather supplies and additional colonists, but his return was delayed by the outbreak of war with Spain. When he finally managed to land on Roanoke Island three years later, the settlement was deserted. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved on a post, the name of a tribe allied with the English and the island now called Hatteras.

ECU archaeologist David Phelps, now deceased, found the ring while excavating a Native American village there and took it to a jeweler named Frank Riddick in nearby Nags Head. Phelps reported that the jeweler tested the ring and determined it was 18-carat gold.

Riddick, who now runs a fishing charter company called Fishy Bizness, recalled recently that he didn't conduct an acid-scratch test typically used to verify the presence and quality of the precious metal. "Since this wasn't about buying or selling, we didn't do that," he said. "I just told him that I thought it was gold." Phelps apparently didn't want to subject the object to potential damage.

A senior member of London's College of Arms subsequently noted that the seal on the signet ring was of a lion passant, and suggested that it might relate to the Kendall family of Devon and Cornwall. A Master Kendall was part of the first colonization attempt in 1585, while another Kendall visited Croatoan when a fleet led by Sir Francis Drake stopped by in 1586. Though this link was never confirmed, the object was nicknamed the Kendall ring.

Since Phelps thought the ring was made of a precious material and likely belonged to the Elizabethan era, he argued it was an important clue. "That doesn't mean the Lost Colony was here," he told a reporter at the dig site after the ring's discovery. "But this begins to authenticate that."

Some archaeologists, however, were skeptical of the artifact's connection to Roanoke, given that it was found with other artifacts dating to between 1670 and 1720-about a century after the Elizabethan voyages. This was also an era in which brass rings showed up at Native American sites up and down the East Coast.

But Mark Horton, an archaeologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, says that Ewen's results don't necessarily preclude that it belonged to a Roanoke colonist. "The fact that the ring is brass actually makes it more similar to other British examples," he said, noting that the ring could have been made in the 1580s. "I would argue that it was kept as an heirloom, passed down, and then discarded."

Horton is currently digging at the Hatteras site where the ring was discovered. The excavations, sponsored by the Croatoan Archaeological Society, have so far uncovered several artifacts that may have been made during Elizabethan times, including the handle of a rapier and bits of metal from clothing.

If the Lost Colonists left Roanoke for Croatoan in the late 1580s, argues Horton, they might have brought along their most precious objects. Over a couple of generations they may have assimilated with the Algonquian-speaking Croatoan people and their English heirlooms would have eventually worn out. "Oh, there's granddad's old sword in the corner rusting away," said Horton. "Why are we keeping that?"

His theory is also based on archaeological finds that show that Native Americans on Hatteras manufactured lead shot and used guns to hunt deer and birds by the 1650s. Prior to this, their diet was based heavily on fish and shellfish. The technological sophistication, Horton suggests, hints at the presence of Europeans before the second wave of English arrived in the area in the late 1600s. That, too, could point to the presence of assimilated colonists and their descendants.

That theory is a stretch, says archaeologist Charles Heath, who worked with Phelps and was present when the ring was found. "Such items would have been used, modified, traded, re-traded, lost, discarded or curated by their native owners-and subsequent native owners-for many years," he argued. In the end, he said, "a stray 16th-century artifact found here and there on the Outer Banks will not make for a Lost Colony found."

Horton acknowledges that rather than Roanoke colony possessions brought along by assimilating English, the Croatoan people could have acquired the goods from Jamestown, the later Virginia colony to the north, instead. Gunflints, coins, and glass beads found at the site almost certainly came from the newer English settlement. But he is confident that the current excavations will soon reveal additional evidence.

Meanwhile, the hunt for the Lost Colony continues. Another group of archaeologists working about 50 miles west of Roanoke Island at the head of Albemarle Sound say that they have pottery and metal artifacts likely associated with the Lost Colony. The digs by the First Colony Foundation were sparked by the 2012 discovery of a patch concealing the image of a fort on a map painted by John White.

But like the finds at Hatteras, the objects might be associated with the second wave of English settlement.

Last fall, a dig by the National Park Service at Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island-thought to be the site of the original settlement-yielded no trace of the colonists. But earlier in 2016, archaeologists did find a handful of fragments of an apothecary jar that almost certainly date from the 16th century.

That the gold Kendall ring is likely a cheap brass trade item won't derail the quest to find out what took place on the Outer Banks more than four centuries ago. As for Ewen, he hopes that the analysis of the ring will help put researchers back on track in their search for scarce clues to the Roanoke settlers. "Science actually does work," he said-"if you give it time."

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The Mystery of Roanoke Endures Yet Another Cruel Twist

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smithsonian.com It seemed too good to be true. And it was. Nearly 20 years ago, excavators digging on North Carolina's remote Hatteras Island uncovered a worn ring emblazoned with a prancing lion.

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New Clues About Roanoke...

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When John White, appointed by Sir Walter Raleigh as governor of Roanoke Colony, returned to England for more supplies in late 1587, he left behind his wife, his daughter and his infant granddaughter-Virginia Dare, the first child born in the New World to English parents-among the other settlers. Upon White's return in 1590, he found no trace of his family or the other inhabitants of the abandoned colony. Over the centuries to come, archaeologists, historians and explorers would delve into the mystery of the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke, all failing to find definitive answers.

Based on the scant clues left behind, some speculated that Native Americans attacked and killed the English colonists. "Croatoan" was the name of an island south of Roanoke, now Hatteras Island, which at the time was home to a Native American tribe of the same name. Alternatively, they might have tried to sail back to England on their own and been lost at sea, or been killed by hostile Spaniards who came north from their own settlements in Florida. One enduring theory was that the settlers might have been absorbed into friendly Native American tribes, perhaps after moving further inland into what is now North Carolina.

Stock Montage/Getty Images

Two independent teams found archaeological remains suggesting that at least some of the Roanoke colonists might have survived and split into two groups, each of which assimilated itself into a different Native American community. One team is excavating a site near Cape Creek on Hatteras Island, around 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of the Roanoke Island settlement, while the other is based on the mainland about 50 miles to the northwest of the Roanoke site.

Cape Creek, located in a live oak forest near Pamlico Sound, was the site of a major Croatoan town center and trading hub. In 1998, archaeologists from East Carolina University stumbled upon a unique find from early British America: a 10-carat gold signet ring engraved with a lion or horse, believed to date to the 16th century. The ring's discovery prompted later excavations at the site led by Mark Horton, an archaeologist at Britain's Bristol University, who has been directing volunteers with the Croatoan Archaeological Society in annual digs since 2009. Recently, Horton's team found a small piece of slate that seems to have been used as a writing tablet and part of the hilt of an iron rapier, a light sword similar to those used in England in the late 16th century, along with other artifacts of European and Native American origin. The slate, a smaller version of a similar one found at Jamestown, bears a small letter "M" still barely visible in one corner; it was found alongside a lead pencil.

In addition to these intriguing objects, the Cape Creek site yielded an iron bar and a large copper ingot (or block), both found buried in layers of earth that appear to date to the late 1500s. Native Americans lacked such metallurgical technology, so they are believed to be European in origin. Horton told National Geographic that some of the artifacts his team found are trade items, but it appears that others may well have belonged to the Roanoke colonists themselves: "The evidence is that they assimilated with the Native Americans but kept their goods."

The Trustees of the British Museum

A watercolor map drawn by none other than John White inspired the search at Site X (as it's known), located on Albemarle Sound near Edenton, North Carolina, some 50 miles inland. Known as La Virginea Pars, the map shows the East Coast of North America from Chesapeake Bay to Cape Lookout; it is housed at the British Museum as part of its permanent collection. White began drawing the map in 1585, two years before he became governor. In 2012, researchers using X-ray spectroscopy and other imaging techniques spotted a tiny four-pointed star, colored red and blue, concealed under a patch of paper that White used to make corrections to his map. It was thought to mark the location of a site some 50 miles inland, which White alluded to in testimony given after his attempted return to the colony. If such a site did exist, the theory went, it would have been a reasonable destination for the displaced Roanoke settlers.

According to archaeologist Nicholas Luccketti of the First Colony Foundation, which is conducting the excavations at Site X, the group has found shards of pottery that they claim may have been used by Roanoke settlers after they left the colony. Located nearby is a site that archaeologists believe might have been a small Native American town, Mettaquem. After the Roanoke colony met its end, English settlers eventually came south from Virginia into North Carolina, but the first recorded settler in the area did not arrive until about 1655. But the recently uncovered pottery is in a style called Border Ware, which is typical of the pottery dug up on Roanoke Island, as well as at Jamestown, but was no longer imported to the New World after the early 17th century, when the Virginia Company dissolved.

In addition to the Border Ware pottery, archaeologists at Site X discovered various other items, including a food-storage jar known as a baluster, pieces of early gun flintlocks, a metal hook of the sort used to stretch animal hides or tents and an aglet, a small copper tube used to secure wool fibers before the advent of the hook and eye in the 17th century. Based on his team's findings, Luccketti thinks the Roanoke colonists may have moved inland to live with Native American allies sometime after White left, and these artifacts might have been among their belongings. As reported in the New York Times, the First Colony Foundation will reveal more about its findings and theory this week in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Though the newly announced discoveries don't solve this lingering historical mystery, they do point away from Roanoke Island itself, where researchers have failed to come up with evidence pointing to the Lost Colony's fate. Archaeologists on both teams are hoping that a detailed study of their new finds will yield more clues, and-of course-that more evidence remains, waiting to be discovered, in the endless layers of dirt that surround them.

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Archaeologists Find New Clues to "Lost Colony" Mystery

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When John White, appointed by Sir Walter Raleigh as governor of Roanoke Colony, returned to England for more supplies in late 1587, he left behind his wife, his daughter and his infant granddaughter-Virginia Dare, the first child born in the New World to English parents-among the other settlers.

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