When they found her, they thought she'd fallen asleep on the trash pit, but on closer inspection it was obvious she'd been partially scalped, and had pulled herself into the pit -- presumably to hide -- and bled to death.
The archaeologists called her "Granny" because she'd lost her lower molars. In fact, she was only 40 years old and one of the 78 people -- out of a population of 140 -- who died in the Indian attack that March day in 1622, on Martin's Hundred, one of the earliest English settlements in the New World. The rest of the settlers were either captured or had fled to nearby Jamestown.
I was sitting on a bench in the late summer heat near where Granny had died. At my back, Virginia's James River was nudging the shore and gently sighing. Before me was a partial reconstruction of the house where Granny had been a servant. The cicadas were droning away, and my legs were tired from the bike trip out here. Like Granny, I could have drifted away, though to a less permanent sleep.
My husband, John, and I had come to find the Williamsburg beyond the bustle of Duke of Gloucester Street.
From when we checked into the Market Square Tavern, one of the street's restored 18th-century buildings with overnight accommodations, until we left late the next day, we immersed ourselves in the earliest stirrings of colonization in English America by walking or biking everywhere we went, mostly to the two major archaeological digs in the area -- Martin's Hundred and the original 1607 fort at Jamestown, long thought lost under the eroding shore of the James River.
Martin's Hundred was found by accident in the early 1970s, by archaeologists searching around Carter's Grove, a stately 18th-century plantation eight miles east of Williamsburg, for evidence of its early outbuildings. What they instead found were traces of an early 17th-century town and fort and domestic and military artifacts -- a fragment of a Dutch delft tile, table knives encrusted in silver, a gilded spur, body armor, sword guards, two iron helmets, ceramics from Italy, Portugal, Germany. They also found bodies -- some hastily buried; several, like Granny, brutalized.
The short, sad history of this fragile moment in American history began in 1618 when the Virginia Company of London granted a charter to the Society of Martin's Hundred (Richard Martin, the recorder of the City of London, lent credibility to the venture) to colonize 22,000 acres in Virginia and generate a profit for the shareholders.
Early in 1619, the ship The Gift of God delivered the 220 men and women to their tract of land downriver from Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World. Settled in 1607, Jamestown was finally enjoying a period of stability after a labor-intensive birth complicated by fires, famine and conflicts with the Indians.
Four centuries later
John and I, enjoying a weekend without children, had arrived at Martin's Hundred on bicycles by way of the eight-mile Country Road linking Williamsburg to Carter's Grove. But, before we took to our bikes, we stopped at the Cheese Shop in the center of Williamsburg and bought a variety of cheeses, good bread and dried fruit for a picnic.
Country Road took us past tidal creeks dark and sinuous as snakes; marshes with fiddler crabs gamboling in the mud; forests of beech, oak and maple; and through open fields. We found six-inch fossilized scallop shells spilling out of a muddy creek bank, telling of life here millions of years ago.
We parked our bikes at the Carter's Grove Reception Center and ate our picnic on the attractive back deck. Then we wandered through the heat to the Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeo-logical Museum, a small, fascinating place displaying some of the more impressive finds from Martin's Hundred and telling how the archaeologists dated objects using old paintings, whose reproductions are displayed next to the objects.
A 1630 Dutch painting, for example, revealed that an odd-looking earthenware bowl was used to hold live coals from which men could light their pipes.
Two early 17th-century iron helmets were "one of the most exciting discoveries in the annals of American archaeology," according to Ivor Noel Hume, the now-retired director of Archae-ological Research for Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The helmets have been meticulously restored -- a 15-minute film at the museum tells how -- and stare grandly but silently out from their display cases.
Martin's Hundred, a flat, broad plain along the James River, is dotted with wooden barrels that, when activated, tell the story of this short-lived settlement.
All the archaeologists found of the buildings and palisade were the stains and trenches where posts once stood. These are now marked with short wooden poles, and, occasionally, a larger section is reconstructed to give a better idea of what the whole looked like.
There are plenty of benches where one can sit and stare out over the scene and almost see, mirage-like in the heat, this small band of people forging new life in this new world, building homes, a fort, a storehouse, dreaming of a better life, only to have it all collapse three years later when the Indians, exasperated with the colonists' land hunger, attacked.
The next year, 50 settlers returned to Martin's Hundred, but disease quickly reduced them to 27. One of the victims, Richard Frethorne, wrote to his parents in England shortly before he died:
"I have nothing at all, no not a shirt to my backe. ... I am not halfe a quarter so strong as I was in England, and all is for want of Victualls, for I do protest unto you that I have eaten more in one day at home than I have allowed me here for a Weeke."
The settlement never regained itself and was absorbed into the York-Hampton Parish in 1713.
A grand moment
Cycling back along the quiet Country Road kept us in the mood of this earlier time, when people didn't have the choice of eating at a tavern -- as John and I would do this evening.
But first an hour's respite in our room in the Market Square Tavern, where Thomas Jefferson once lodged and Patrick Henry kept a running tab.
Today there are 28 such houses in the historic district offering single rooms or entire houses to the weary traveler. Our room was furnished in a cozy Colonial style with a canopied bed, wing chairs, writing desk and, thankfully, air conditioning. The muggy summer heat, so unlike England, decimated the early Colonists and had taken its toll on me.
Dressed for dinner, we got to do something I've always wanted to do -- walk out the front door of a Colonial house onto Duke of Gloucester Street, in the heart of Williamsburg, as if we lived there. It was a grand moment.
We had reservations at Christiana Campbell's Tavern, which specializes in seafood. As we walked down the broad, sandy street, the crowds and heat diminished, and we peered into shop windows and over garden fences, reveling in the smells and textures of this re-created old world.
I love eating in the Williams-burg taverns; over the years I've eaten in all four and feel completely at home in their simple, candlelit interiors, with bare board floors, mismatched chairs and, always at some point in the evening, a musician wandering through to entertain.
George Washington and the other leading men of those heady Colonial days frequented Camp-bell's tavern until 1779, when the capital moved to Richmond.
Mrs. Campbell didn't want to move, so she closed her tavern and retired. She died 12 years later, but the tavern lives on, and we dined well there on crab cakes and Carolina Fish Muddle -- a mixture of fresh fish, shrimp, scallops, clams and roasted vegetables served over noodles -- accompanied by sourdough bread, sweet potato muffins and spoon bread like my mother used to make.
Duke of Gloucester Street was mostly deserted at 9 o'clock when we finished supper. Across the street from the House of Burgesses was an archaeological dig in progress tucked in for the night under a tarpaulin -- Mr. Charlton's Coffee House, in business from 1755 to 1769, catering only to men.
As we ambled down the street, the thick air pungent with summer grass and flowers, it could have been the 18th century until we spied a television alight in a basement room and a woman in long dress and mop cap leaning against the side of a tavern, smoking.
Pedaling to the past
We were up early the next morning with the town to ourselves until just before 9 a.m., when Williamsburg came to life like a movie beginning to roll.
We ate breakfast at Aromas, a funky, college sort of place behind the Cheese Shop, with student art on the walls, Cat Stevens singing a little too loudly and tables on the sidewalk. My order of tea was served in a proper china teapot.
Late morning we hopped on our bikes and pedaled the three miles to the Gabriel Archer Tavern at the Williamsburg Winery on our way to the excavations on Jamestown Island.
The winery opened in 1985, the first to operate in the area since the 17th century. It offers tours and tastings, but we opted for lunch at its tavern, a pleasant place with tables under a wisteria-draped pergola, picnic tables on the back porch or the interior dining room with modern music.
We chose the back porch and enjoyed the breeze and view of the ripe grapes on the vines. Service was slow, but it didn't matter. We were on bikes. We were slow, too.
On a map, the Colonial Parkway is not far from the winery, but no one -- neither the bike rental shop at the Williams-burg Lodge nor other locals we spoke to -- could tell us if there was a route through. The several bookstores we tried were void of any local biking books or maps.
After lunch, we peddled to the end of the state road and by chance found an official "bike route" sign pointing through pine trees up onto the parkway.
The ride to Jamestown was beautiful, with vistas over the James River and the groomed parkway. Stopping to rest on a sandy beach, we startled a deer and her fawn grazing nearby.
We rode by the Jamestown Settlement with its reproduction 1607 fort, replicas of the three ships that brought the first settlers and reconstructed Powha-tan Indian village, which I've enjoyed in the past. But that was back when I believed, as everyone did, that the original fort site was submerged by the James River.
Now I wanted to see the real thing, 85 percent of which is above water.
In preparation for the 400th anniversary in 2007 of the Jamestown settlement, archaeologists decided in 1994 to try once more to find the original fort. In just over two years, they found the post molds -- stains in the ground -- and the slot trenches where the posts were inserted.
Thousands of early 17th-century artifacts were unearthed -- thimbles, ceramics, brass buckles, human teeth, candlesticks, curtain rings, a silver half-penny, square pieces of copper used in trading with the Indians, and the governor's signet ring -- a small portion of which is on display near the dig site.
Most of the collection is in storage until the proposed Jamestown Rediscovery Muse-um and research center opens for the 400th anniversary.
Archaeologists work the site Monday through Friday. Interpreters are there all week. We were met by "Mrs. George Yeardley," wife of an early governor of Virginia who, in character, told us about life in the early colony.
Colonists' struggles
That first summer, nearly half of the 104 settlers died from disease. Then the fort, which Capt. John Smith had called "a homely thing like a barn," burned, and the settlers lost "our fort . . . and the most of our apparel, lodging and private provision."
They rebuilt, and more settlers arrived from England. But the corn stores were destroyed by rats, and another batch of settlers brought the plague with them.
The "starving time" set in, reducing the colony to 60. In June 1610, those remaining were sailing home down the James River when the new governor, Lord De La Warr, came sailing up the river with more people and supplies, and persuaded them to return.
Shortly thereafter, John Rolfe arrived with tobacco seeds, married Pocahontas, and Virginia blossomed. America was off and running.
The Indian uprising of 1622, the coup de grace to Martin's Hundred, had little impact on nearby Jamestown because the colonists there were forewarned and prepared. The town was expanding west of the fort and morphing into a stable community and capital of Virginia. But, in 1698, another fire devastated the site. The next year the capital moved to Williamsburg, and Jamestown Island slowly reverted to wilderness.
Since 1994, about a third of the palisade line of the 1607 fort and the 1608 extension have been uncovered. Because one colonist left a specific account of the fort's dimensions, archaeologists have a good idea where the entire fort is.
When we visited, archaeologists were digging in the area of the fort's north bulwark near the church where Rolfe married Pocahontas, and they had come across a 17th-century well. Daniel Schmidt, who's been working the site for about seven years, was exposing the brick-lined well with a small trowel. Soon the well itself would be dug out.
"When a well collapsed back in those days," Schmidt said, "it was used as a trash pit. We'll probably find leather shoes, tools, pieces of ceramic. It's trash that tells the tale."
(Indeed, in the past few weeks, an early-17th-century iron breastplate was unearthed, and more discoveries are expected as the excavation continues.)
Nearby, Rodney Taylor, 75, a volunteer at the site who grew up on Jamestown Island, was sifting through the excavated dirt to be sure nothing was overlooked.
"On my 70th birthday, I found an ivory dice here," he said. "We've found lots of 17th-century Venetian chevron beads that they used for trading, and when I was a kid we used to find old wine bottles in the river."
"We could go on digging for 70 more years here," said Eric Deetz, an archaeologist at the site.
"What we're really shooting for is a research center here for 17th-century studies," said Deetz, helping Taylor close down the sifting area for the night. "We could go on for decades analyzing all we've found."
The sun was getting low, silhouetting John Smith's statue against the silver river and sky. In the parking lot, car doors slammed and buses spewed diesel fumes. Time to go home.
We got on our bicycles and, for a while, endured a parade of vehicles sweeping past us on the parkway. Then we were alone -- except for the muskrat, deer, osprey, groundhog, herons and Canada geese we saw along the way.
An ideal day
8 a.m.: Breakfast at Aromas or order room service from the Williamsburg Inn.
9 a.m.: Bike the Colonial Parkway to Jamestown Rediscovery Center to watch the excavation of the 1607 fort.
Noon: Lunch at the Williamsburg Winery's Gabriel Archer Tavern.
1 p.m.: Bike the Country Road to Carter's Grove to tour the excavated 17th-century settlement, Martin's Hundred. Be sure to visit the Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeological Museum first. If there is time, tour the 18th-century mansion and reconstructed slave quarters.
7:30 p.m.: Have supper at one of the four reconstructed 18th-century taverns in Williamsburg.
9 p.m.: Walk Duke of Gloucester Street to enjoy an uncrowded taste of Williamsburg.
When you go
Getting there: Colonial Williamsburg is about 200 miles from Baltimore. Take I-95 south to Richmond, then I-64 east to Exit 238 and follow signs to the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center.
Lodging: The Colonial Houses of Williamsburg offer 77 rooms in 28 different restored and / or reconstructed 18th-century buildings in the historic district. Rates range from $99 in the low season (January and February) to $525 for an entire house in the high season. Private parking and room service are available from the Williamsburg Inn. For reservations and information: www.colonialwilliamsburg.org; 800-447-8679.
Dining: Reservations for the Williamsburg taverns are required for dinner, but lunch is on a first-come, first-served basis. Call 800-447-8679:
* Christina Campbell's, 101 South Waller St.: noted for its seafood; lunch 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., dinner 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
* Chownings, 109 E. Duke of Gloucester St.: hearty tavern food; lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., dinner 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
* Shields, 422 E. Duke of Gloucester St.: seafood and meat dishes; lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., dinner 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
* King's Arms, 416 E. Duke of Gloucester St.: elegant dining specializing in beef and game; lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., dinner 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Gabriel Archer Tavern, at the Williamsburg Winery, 5800 Wessex Hundred, Williamsburg, VA 23185
757-229-0999
www.williamsburgwineryltd. com
* Pleasant, informal dining, indoor or out. Open for lunch and dinner.
Aromas, 431 Prince George St., Williamsburg
757-221-6676
www.aromasworld.com
* Funky, college-town eatery offering sandwiches, coffee, teas and pastries.
The Cheese Shop, 424 Prince George St., Williamsburg
800-468-4049
* A great place to get a picnic lunch. Open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Activities:
Jamestown Rediscovery archaeology project at Historic Jamestown, 1365 Colonial Parkway, Jamestown, VA 23081
757-229-0412
www.apva.org
* Hours: The archaeological dig is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Visitor's Center is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
* Admission: adults $6, children 16 and under admitted free.
Jamestown Settlement, Route 31 South, Williamsburg
888-593-4682
www.historyisfun.org
* This site has the replica of the three ships that brought the first colonists to Jamestown, a replica of a 1607 fort and a reconstruction of an Algonquin Indian village.
* Hours: Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
* Admission: $10.75 adults, $5.25 children ages 6 through 12.
Carter's Grove, Martin's Hundred, six miles east of Colonial Williamsburg on Route 60
800-447-8679
www.colonialwilliamsburg.org
* Carter's Grove is an 18th-century plantation with a mansion and reconstructed slave quarters. Various interpretive events on plantation life are offered. Martin's Hundred is the archaeological site of a 17th-century settlement.
* Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Memorial Day to Labor Day and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the rest of the year. Closed Mondays.
* Admission: $18 adults, $9 children ages 6 through 17.
Colonial Williamsburg, 101 Visitor Center Drive, Williamsburg, VA 23187
800-447-8679
www.colonialwilliamsburg. org
* More than 500 acres of restored and reconstructed 18th-century Virginia.
* Hours: Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
* Admission: $33 adults, $16.50 children ages 6 through 17.
Bike rentals:
* Tazewell Club Fitness Center at the Williamsburg Inn, 310 S. England St., Williamsburg; 757-220-7690. Rates: single seat, $8 an hour, $28 a day; tandem, $14 an hour, $38 a day
* BikeBeat, 4640-9B Monticello Ave., Williamsburg; 757-229-0096, www.bikebeatonline.com. Rates: Single seat, $20 a day, $60 a week.
For more information about the Williamsburg area, contact the city's convention and visitors bureau: 800-368-6511, www.visitwilliamsburg.com.