Archaeology is not a hard science. It is speculation melded with myth, legend, wishes, hopes, and a few facts tossed in for good measure. Nothing makes this more clear than Nova’s latest episode, “Pocahontas Revealed.”
This May marks the 400th anniversary of the settling of Jamestown, the first successful, permanent European colony here in what became the United States. However, until recently, virtually all hard evidence of what had taken place at Jamestown was gone. The fort in which the settlers lived was believed to be currently underwater due to erosion of the land by people living in the area, including tour guides. No one knew where Werowocomoco, the alleged location of the fateful meeting between John Smith and the young Pocahontas, was located. Everything was shrouded in a 400-year-old veil.
Enter the archaeologists, the well-wishers, and the dreamers. The fort has been found. They are starting to get a better idea of what things may have looked like at the time in the fort. However, that still leaves the Native American part of the story in the dark. Happily, a woman who bought a farm in the late 1990s started finding tons of Native American artifacts on her land and made some phone calls. It is now believed that the land where her farm stands is the area once known as Werowocomoco.
Werowocomoco was the political capital of an Indian chief named Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas. Archaeologists are currently uncovering more and more of the site, hoping that they will be able to use the diaries and writings of John Smith, in conjunction with their findings, in order to get a better idea of what took place at Werowocomoco.
However, the romanticized notion of John Smith’s meeting with Pocahontas was not the story Smith first told; that didn’t emerge for over a decade. So, Nova asks repeatedly in this episode, what is the truth of the matter?
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