Barracks

Most buildings at James Fort were built with earthfast, or post-in-ground, construction, with main structural posts set directly into the ground without footings. After such buildings disappeared, rotted posts and postholes remained, and the patterns of those postholes suggest that the early structures were likely built in a style known as mud and stud, a method well recorded in 17th-century documentary sources and in centuries-old standing buildings in Lincolnshire. This building had a cellar, the first major archaeological feature from the fort period identified by the Jamestown Rediscovery project. After the building above it fell into disrepair, the cellar became a trash pit, and careful excavation and water screening of its fill recovered many thousands of late 16th- and early 17th-century artifacts.

Virginia · United States