kitchen utensils and fireplace accessories, furniture hardware, lighting
devices, eating and drinking vessels, tableware, costume accessories and
footwear, medical equipment, horse gear, coins and weights, and many
items relating to household and town industries, transportation, trade,
and fishing.

These artifacts provide invaluable information concerning the everyday
life and manners of the first Virginia settlers. A brief description of
many of them is given on the following pages.

Excavated artifacts reveal that the Jamestown colonists built their
houses in the same style as those they knew in England, insofar as local
materials permitted. There were differences, however, for they were in a
land replete with vast forests and untapped natural resources close at
hand which they used to advantage. The Virginia known to the first
settlers was a carpenter's paradise, and consequently the early
buildings were the work of artisans in wood. The first rude shelters,
the split-wood fencing, the clapboard roof, puncheon floors, cupboards,
benches, stools, and wood plows are all examples of skilled working with
wood.

Houses

Timber at Jamestown was plentiful, so many houses, especially in the
early years, were of frame construction. During the first decade or two,
house construction reflected a primitive use found ready at hand, such
as saplings for a sort of framing, and use of branches, leafage, bark,
and animal skins. During these early years--when the settlers were
having such a difficult time staying alive--mud walls, wattle and daub,
and coarse marshgrass thatch were used. Out of these years of
improvising, construction with squared posts, and later with quarterings
(studs), came into practice. There was probably little thought of
plastering walls during the first two decades, and when plastering was
adopted, clay, or clay mixed with oyster-shell lime, was first used. The
early floors were of clay, and such floors continued to be used in the
humbler dwellings throughout the 1600's. It can be assumed that most of
the dwellings, or shelters, of the Jamestown settlers, certainly until
about 1630, had a rough and primitive appearance.

After Jamestown had attained some degree of permanency, many houses were
built of brick. It is quite clear from documentary records and
archeological remains, that the colonists not only made their own
brick, but that the process, as well as the finished products, followed
closely th