Archaeology and the Birth of the American Chemical Enterprise

By Robert D. Hicks

Popular history has it that the fledgling Roanoke colony, a settlement of over 100 English men, women, and children in modern North Carolina, disappeared four centuries ago—a mystery that remains unsolved. A few decades later, the story goes, the Indian princess Pocahontas saved the life of Captain John Smith, leader of a band of English settlers at Jamestown, Virginia. From behind the popular history a new narrative is emerging, one based on the archaeological excavations at two locations: the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, where Roanoke colonists built a fort, and Historic Jamestowne and Jamestown National Historic Site, the two adjacent modern properties occupying ground along the James River in Virginia, where colonists built the James Fort of 1607. The archaeological evidence, coupled with a reexamination of the historical record, points to early Virginia as the birthplace of the American chemical enterprise.

Centuries ago Virginia, which in Smith’s day stretched from Spanish Florida to modern Canada, was the point of intersection for many interests, from the English ambition to create chemical industries involving glass, metals, and perfumes to an Indian trading empire that highly valued copper. The English ambitions ushered in another European presence, Germans and Poles, who served as glassblowers, miners, apothecaries, and chemical practitioners. Recent archaeological excavations have uncovered evidence of these intersecting interests in early Virginia, in the form of tools and apparatus for detecting, identifying, and processing natural resources for commercial purposes.

Commercial and scientific ambition was an impetus for discoveries and innovations among varying groups in the New World. The settlements at Roanoke and Virginia produced several North American firsts, including the earliest known piece of European chemical glassware, the first Jewish colonist, the earliest site of experimental inquiry, and, of course, the first permanent colony of English-speaking peoples. Jamestown not only continued Roanoke’s efforts to explore the potential of natural resources with chemical experimentation but also created a glassworks, North America’s first chemical enterprise.

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence at several early settlement sites showing that European scientific inquiry flourished in the New World. Yet to better understand this evidence, archaeologists and scholars turn to clues from similar excavations in Europe. At most European archaeological sites related to chemical work, such artifacts as dull glass or ceramic fragments suggest use in distillation or fire assay (testing metals for commercial viability). The abundance of tools for distillation should not be surprising since alcohol-rich substances were produced for a variety of purposes, such as medicines and perfumes (see p. 40). Recent archaeological analysis at European settlement sites in North America, however, has focused on the material remains of fire assay, specifically the humble crucible and other ceramic vessels. We now know that most European crucibles and other ceramics found in North America were made in Germany to a very precise tolerance in order to stand high heat, remain chemically inert, and serve dependably for repetitive processes under like conditions. Colonists brought with them the best available apparatus. Taken as a whole, the archaeological evidence speaks to a colonial a leadership adept at mathematical learning, including astronomy and surveying, with practical skills in mining, metallurgy, and medicinal arts.

Antecedents to Virginia: Frobisher's Voyages

Artifacts in Europe and in North America offer clues to the methods and ambitions of settlers in the New World. The Englishmen who planned chemical investigation and exploitation of the natural resources at Roanoke and Jamestown had a predecessor in Martin Frobisher, one of Queen Elizabeth’s “sea dogs,” who participated in the fight against the Spanish Armada, explored what he believed to be the Northwest Passage, and had a career in state-sponsored piracy. Between 1576 and 1578 Frobisher led three expeditions to the vicinity of Baffin Island. His final voyage, the largest-scale Arctic expedition ever attempted at the time, dispersed 100 miners to Kodlunarn Island, then known as Countess of Warwick Island. Potentially lucrative ores spotted on the first voyage were believed to bear gold or silver. The ores, probably marcasite or iron pyrite, were mined during Frobisher’s second and third voyages and taken to Bristol.

Frobisher’s voyages were characterized by astute early planning for experimental inquiry, but they ended in mining fraud with false assays. The ores proved worthless despite early claims to the contrary. Although ceramics from these sites have not been well analyzed, archaeologists have identified structures that include smithies with charcoal-stained deposits, remains of crucibles, slag, coal, and clay on Kodlunarn Island. An assay office has been identified, and contains, in addition to the aforementioned substances, firebrick and roof tiles, plus a variety of crucibles. This evidence suggests that Frobisher’s crew included experts in early chemistry and metallurgy and that the voyages were strategically planned for commercial exploitation of natural resources. In a pattern that would dominate English exploration of the New World, German mining experts managed or supervised assay work, and, as at other English settlements, German miners performed the labor. In Frobisher’s case he enlisted the Germans Jonas Schutz and Burchard Kranach as experts.

Frobisher’s preparations reflected the latest practices in chemical medicine, influenced by the 16th-century medical practitioner Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus. Medical practices on Frobisher’s voyages, with their emphasis on chemical drugs, introduced Paracelsian practices into the New World. Given the increasing acceptance of chemical compounds as remedies for illness, it is not surprising that apothecary supplies carried on Frobisher’s ships included such resins as turpentine, myrrh, mastic, alum (a styptic), and copperas, or green vitriol (an antiseptic).

Roanoke

Excitement about the possibility of establishing permanent English colonies in North America impelled Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Elizabeth I, to acquire a patent for colonization in present-day North Carolina. Between 1585 and 1587 several attempts were made to establish a permanent settlement. The last was the “lost colony” of Roanoke, a village whose inhabitants mysteriously disappeared. Raleigh sent a well-esteemed natural philosopher, Thomas Hariot, on a voyage to reconnoiter the area in 1584. We can infer from Hariot’s report, which would later influence planning for Jamestown, that certain instruments were used to sample or assay local materials. Of all the substances and potential raw materials Hariot described, copper took on particular importance: he recorded the whereabouts of copper and silver from native informants and noted that he saw pieces of copper “hanging in the ears of a werowance or chief lord.” To the Algonquian Indians, copper signified a high-status ornament; it was offered to deities, it bought warriors, and it aided a journey to the afterlife. Within the Indian system of exchange, it was significant: the werowance, or tribal chief, imported copper through a trade network extending from the Atlantic coast to Lake Superior. Moreover, only the head chief could buy English copper, which he would then distribute to minor chiefs.

The Raleigh voyages landed colonists in multiple locations, but most of these sites have not been located. However, near the preserved fort at modern Fort Raleigh, the archaeologist Ivor Nöel Hume has located the first site dedicated to scientific investigation in what would become the United States. At this site stood the workshop apparently shared by Hariot and Joachim Gans, a well-known, influential German metallurgist and the first Jewish settler in English America. Born in Prague, Gans came to England in 1581 to advise government leaders on developing a British-based mineral industry. Fire-blackened bricks with a concavity recovered at the site are probably part of a furnace used by Gans. Crucibles and pharmaceutical pots were recovered nearby. Astoundingly, excavations in 1991 uncovered part of the original laboratory floor and about 60 diagnostic artifacts of chemical processes. Glass shards are from chemical glassware; remains of Indian pottery indicate distilling; other fragments come from stoneware flasks and crucibles. A recovered chunk of antimony betokens assaying as well as Paracelsian interest in the element for its putative pharmaceutical properties. Some shards contain copper residue, including copper oxide, which may have resulted from smelting Indian copper. The archaeological evidence is conclusive about the chemical investigation in Roanoke; the presence of copper attests to English interest in the metal’s commercial potential.

Jamestown

Although the Roanoke voyages failed to establish a permanent English presence, they furnished sufficient information about the tidewater region of modern North Carolina and Virginia to inform planning for the next round of attempted colonization, at Jamestown in 1607. The artifacts recovered from Jamestown reflect the number of chemical practitioners in the colony, including an apothecary, barber-surgeon, physician, alchemist or metallurgist, and other metal-related tradesmen, such as refiners, goldsmiths, and blacksmiths. Also present, the artifacts tell us, were artisans skilled in glass manufacture.

The apothecary’s artifacts attest to vigorous experimentation with Virginia flora. Numerous drug jars, mostly Dutch in origin, relate to the work of the apothecaries, men who, trained through apprenticeship, constituted an elite group both in Europe and in Virginia. It is clear that Jamestown’s medical practices stemmed from Paracelsians, who advocated chemical drugs. One such physician, Johannes Fleischer, was German, and he earned a medical egree at the University of Basel the year the Jamestown colonists departed England. A medical tool for relieving constipation owing to impacted fecal matter, a spatula mundani, has been recovered and is known to have been rovided in a surgeon’s chest prepared by John Woodall, a Paracelsian physician who later became surgeon general o the East India Company. Woodall’s medicines and treatments make extensive reference to the Paracelsian tria prima, or three principle medical materials: salt, mercury, and sulfur. Woodall’s medical treatments and medicines may also be reflected in other early Jamestown finds: a skull bearing the mark of a trephining tool (the cranial piece having been removed during a postmortem examination) and a piece of sulfur.

Jamestown’s colonists had established the first glass factory in the New World, an enterprise that employed Germans and Poles—some of the many foreign specialists and artisans who were recruited for the Jamestown and Roanoke settlements. Archaeologists found the location of glass furnaces that attest to glassblowing, and Jamestown’s sand was high in metallic oxides with high lime content, a key ingredient in glass.

The search for metals was a priority in Jamestown. Colonists intended to establish a trading center, and they were “not permitted to manure or till any ground” but instead were required to invest their labor in profitable activities. In fact, letters patent to the colony leaders instructed the settlers “to dig mine and search for all manner of mines of gold silver and copper.” Archaeology has provided insights into colonists’ intentions regarding metals.

Assesment of Early New World Chemistry

The artifacts uncovered at Roanoke, Jamestown, and Baffin Bay require us to reconsider who the colonists were, particularly the specialists and their sponsors. About a quarter of the people who entered Jamestown during its first year had an association with metalworking. German involvement with English merchant voyages dates to a half century before Jamestown, when German investors agreed to finance English mining. At all three sites Germans were present, and German technology and expertise were employed.

Jamestown’s artifacts tell a story of industrial research and development aimed at fusing English and Virginian natural resources into products for European consumption. We see a pattern of intense chemical experimentation for the metallurgist especially; chemical apparatus were both imported and manufactured on-site under direction of both English and German experts. Settlers may not have come to North America solely for lack of economic opportunity in England; rather, America might have furnished opportunities for the early chemical professions, which were backed by patrons who drew from the best philosophical and practical learning available.