Painting depicting the baptism of Virginia Dare.
Now, two independent teams have 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.
History.com August 10, 2015
Archaeologists bring more than than just digging tools to a project, of course. They bring a knowledge of how all the clues might fit into a giant, historical jigsaw puzzle. And by 2015 more work on that puzzle was coming together.
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… 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… The slate…. bears a small letter “M” still barely visible in one corner; it was found alongside a lead pencil.
A gold signet ring excavated from the Cape Creek site on Hatteras Island, engraved with a prancing lion or horse, may have belonged to a prominent member of the Roanoke colony.
In addition to these intriguing objects, the Cape Creek site yielded an iron bar and a large copper ingot (or block), both… 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.”
History.com August 10, 2015
Note that these particular Sherlocks need a range of skills–the scientific skills to uncover useful items and identify them, the historical knowledge to place them in context, and the deductive reasoning skills to eliminate certain possibilities while favoring others.
It may be slow work, but can bear a lot of fruit in the end.
These finds, it would appear, lend weight to the thought that at least some of the settlers ended up in intimate association with the Natives already well established in the area.
