Skip to main content

Evidence for Early Seventeenth-Century Surgery and Dissection at James Fort, Virginia

Chapter

Publications

Complete Citation

Overview

Abstract

  • Historical documents reveal that from the 1607 outset of its colony on Jamestown Island, the Virginia Company of England sent physicians, apothecaries, and surgeons to minister to the medical needs of its settlers. Evidence of these medically trained individuals, in the form of discarded tools and surgically altered bone, has been archaeologically uncovered by the Jamestown Rediscovery Project over the past two decades during investigations of James Fort, the initial settlement. Of particular interest are three partial human crania found mixed with colonists' trash in pre-1617 contexts that are not graves. All three crania represent males and two show evidence of perimortem trauma. One of the cranial vaults further reflects two aborted attempts at trephination and subsequent dissection cuts. Forensic analyses of these discarded human crania and their recovery contexts suggest that they were not interred with the bodies to which they belonged, but perhaps retained by fort surgeons.

Publication Date

  • 2017

Authors