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We can infer from Hariot's work that certain instruments were used to sample or assay local materials, but of all substances and potential raw materials Hariot describes, copper takes on particular importance: he records the whereabouts of copper and silver from Native Americans. He records that he saw pieces of copper "hanging in the ears of a werowance or chief lord.
Within the Indian system of exchange, the werowance imported copper through a trade network extending to Lake Superior, but with English copper, the head chief controlled the trade, distributing it to minor chiefs. The Ralegh voyages landed colonists in multiple locations, most of which have not been located archaeologically. Recovered artifacts include fire-blackened bricks with a concavity, probably part of a furnace used by Gans, and crucibles and pharmaceutical pots.
Gans, born in Prague, came to England in and advised government leaders about developing a British-based mineral industry. Astoundingly, part of the original laboratory floor survives. Excavated in , the floor produced about 60 diagnostic artifacts representative of chemical processes. Finds include glass sherds from chemical glassware, the remains of Indian pottery used in distilling, and other fragments from stoneware jugs and crucibles.
A recovered chunk of antimony suggests assaying, as well as the high interest among Paracelsians for its putative pharmaceutical properties. Some sherds contain copper residue, including copper oxide which may have resulted from smelting local native copper. The archaeological evidence is conclusive about the presence of chemical investigation, and the interest in copper attests to English notice of the metal's commercial potential. The Roanoke voyages to Virginia, although they failed to establish a permanent English presence, furnished sufficient information about the tidewater region of modern North Carolina and Virginia to inform planning for the next round of attempted colonization beginning at Jamestown in The archaeological record at Jamestown—similarly to the evidence from the Frobisher voyages and Roanoke—speaks to many chemical practitioners of the era, including the apothecary, barber surgeon, physician, alchemist or metallurgist, and other metal-related trades such as refiners, goldsmiths, and blacksmiths.
Also present, based on artifacts, were artisans skilled in glass manufacture. Artifacts of the apothecary attest to vigorous experimentation with Virginia flora, and Jamestown medical practices stemmed from Paracelsians who advocated chemical drugs. One such physician, Johannes Fleischer, a German, earned a medical degree at the University of Basel the year the Jamestown colonists departed England. Numerous drug jars, of Dutch or English origin, relate to the work of the apothecaries.
These men, who were trained through apprenticeship, belonged to the elite both in Europe and in Virginia. Further, a medical tool for relieving constipation due to impacted fecal matter, a spatula mundani, has been recovered.
This instrument is known to have been provided in a surgeon's chest prepared by John Woodall, a Paracelsian physician who later became surgeon-general to the East India Company. Woodall's medicines and treatments make extensive reference to the tria prima of Paracelsus: salt, mercury, and sulfur. Woodall's medical treatments and medicines may also be reflected in other early Jamestown finds, a cranium bearing the mark of a trepanning tool the cranial piece having been removed during a postmortem examination , and a piece of sulfur.
The evidence of perfumery at Jamestown links with medical and apothecary pursuits. Perfumer Robert Alberton produced scented preparations.
An earthenware fuming pot has been discovered which might have used a burning substance—obtained from a perfumer—to fumigate for medical purpose. In fact, the advancement of perfumery using New World resources was a priority in an exploratory voyage to the Chesapeake Bay before the founding of Jamestown. Samuel Mace's voyage to Virginia aimed to search for the Lost Colonists of Roanoke and search for plants, seeds, and bark of flora identified during a previous voyage as useful for perfumery and apothecary.
English recruitment of foreign specialists and artisans was evident at Jamestown, as it had been at Roanoke. The first glass factory—which employed Germans and Poles—had been established in the New World at Jamestown in Archaeological investigations have found the locations of glass furnaces which attest to the technology utilized.
Colonists used silica, lime, and soda, or potash substituted for soda, materials known at the time as "salts. Old glass, or cullet, fragments of which are abundant at Jamestown, were also an ingredient. Jamestown's metallurgy, however, reveals the most tantalizing evidence of early chemical practice.
A sample of the dirt was sent to England with Captain Christopher Newport in June of to be analyzed by London's assayers, but disappointingly Beale's precious dirt lacked any sign of gold.
During testing "all turned to vapor. Exploring for and testing possible gold ores in Virginia had an all too familiar outcome that rings throughout the records of Jamestown's first two years. Accounts by men such as Cope frequently speak of gold mines, but none of the alleged sources are known to have yielded their treasures. As a result of such records modern historians have tended to form biased views of Jamestown and the relative historiography of the colonizing effort commonly refers to lazy and unproductive settlers who carried out little more in Virginia than a "reckless search for gold.
Financial gain was, of course, the primary goal of the Virginia Company of London, the corporate organization responsible for the settlement of Jamestown. It was established in as a joint-stock company. Along with a desire to find a Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean for trading purposes, the company sponsors hoped to profit by exploiting the natural resources of Virginia. Although they expected to find precious metals such as gold and silver, recent historical and archaeological scholarship are revealing how the Virginia Company equally sought to discover sources of more utilitarian materials, such as ores required at home for the production of brass.
The search for metals, in fact, was a priority at 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 labor in profitable activities.
In fact, letters patent to the colony leaders specified "to dig mine and search for all manner of mines of gold silver and copper. The archaeological excavations of James Fort, carried out by the Jamestown Rediscovery Project, have recovered a wealth of artifacts related to the colony's metallurgical endeavors.
Crucibles, cupels, scorifiers, alembics, slag, and melted metal indicate that a host of metals and minerals were processed, refined or tested at Jamestown during the colony's earliest years. Of Jamestown's metalworking remains, evidence for copper-based metallurgy is particularly strong. Numerous triangular and beaker shaped crucibles have been excavated, and several examples contain copper residue.
Further indications of copper-related activities at Jamestown come in the form of melted copper masses, including one uniquely shaped piece that fits perfectly into the bottom of a triangular Hessian crucible. The connection between these artifacts, along with the crucibles containing interior copper residue, exemplifies how working or testing copper took place at Jamestown, and consequently, how metallurgical activities other than those strictly associated with the search for gold occurred within the settlement.
Because clear documentation of such endeavors is not evident within the accounts of the early Virginia settlement, the discovery and investigation of these finds provides new insight into the pursuits of the colony and the motives of the Virginia Company investors. Additional artifacts recovered from James Fort that offer details of Jamestown's non-ferrous metallurgy include over 8, pieces of sheet copper. Taking the form of small scraps and trimmings, these finds have been interpreted as off-cuts related to the production of goods used for trade with the local Powhatan Indians.
Copper was the pre-eminent commodity held and desired by the Native American populations of eastern North America during the early 17th century, and the settlers of Jamestown recorded how they frequently exchanged copper for foodstuffs. On one occasion John Smith noted that the Virginia Indians were "covetous of copper" and "offered pieces of bread and small handfuls of beans or wheat for a hatchet or a piece of copper.
However, when examined scientifically alongside Jamestown's non-ferrous metallurgical debris, it becomes apparent that much of Jamestown's scrap copper can more accurately be explained as manufacturing waste that was supplied by English copper industries as an ingredient to assess New World mineral ores for their use in the formulation of brass.
Crucial to understanding the metallurgical function of Jamestown's scrap copper is knowledge of the metal's geographical and commercial origins. To assist in revealing these details, pieces of Jamestown's scrap copper were subjected to chemical analysis with the technique of inductively coupled-plasma atomic emission spectrometry ICP-AES. ICP-AES is an effective spectroscopic tool that allows investigators to detect the percentages of major, minor, and trace elements in a given artifact.
The presence of minor and trace element concentrations is important because copper retains small but distinctive percentages of natural elements from its ore source throughout its production. By comparing the elemental compositions or "signatures" of Jamestown's copper against the compositions of contemporary sheet copper artifacts with known origins the regional provenance of Jamestown's metal can be identified. Based on ICP-AES study, Jamestown's copper proved to be European smelted copper due to concentrations of the minor and trace elements lead, silver, zinc, tin, iron, and arsenic.
When examined alongside of European smelted copper, the Jamestown copper was found to have derived primarily from the arsenic-rich copper ores of England. This conclusion is surprising considering that the demand for copper in 16th and 17th century Europe was principally satisfied by metal from the Falun mine in Sweden, the Harz Mountains in Saxony, Mansfeld in Thuringia, the Schwaz region of Austria's Tyrol, as well as more easterly sources such as Neusohl and the Zips Mountains in present-day Slovakia.
Nevertheless, identifying the predominantly English origins of Jamestown's copper helps to recognize the industrial sources of the copper as all English copper mined and processed during the late 16th and early 17th centuries can be presumed to have originated from English copper monopolies, the Society of Mines Royal and the Society of Mineral and Battery Works.
From the 's until the midth century, the Society of Mines Royal and the Society of Mineral and Battery Works operated mutually in the hopes of promoting English metallurgical self-sufficiency.
The Society of Mines Royal was granted the patented right to the mining, processing, and production of raw copper, among other metals. With equal interests in copper alloys, the Society of Mineral and Battery Works held the rights to the creation of brass, the drawing of wire, and the use of a novel type of water-driven battery hammer to manufacture sheet copper and brass domestic wares.
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