Chemistry in the New World

A triangular Hessian crucible and examples of melted copper waste from early Jamestown c. 1607-1610.

By Carter C. Hudgins

In the summer of 1607, Sir Walter Cope wrote to Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, explaining the promises of the New World and the treasures of Virginia: “In steed of mylke we fynde pearl, & golde inn steade of honye.” Cope’s writings were influenced by a metallurgist named Beale, “an excellent trier of minerals,” who had identified a precious supply of “durt” that was sure to yield a large percentage of gold. A sample of the dirt was sent to England with Captain Christopher Newport in June 1607 to be analyzed by London’s assayers, but, disappointingly, Beale’s precious dirt lacked any sign of gold. During testing “all turned to vapore.”

The records of Jamestown’s first two years are filled with references to the search for gold. The accounts left by men like Cope frequently mention gold mines, but none of the alleged mines are known to have yielded their treasures. These records have led some modern historians to view the colonists as lazy and unproductive settlers who carried out little more in Virginia than a reckless search for gold. But this view does not give the settlers enough credit: they had more practical sights in mind than gold.

The organization responsible for the Jamestown settlement was the Virginia Company of London, which was established in 1606 as a joint stock company. The sponsors’ primary goal was financial gain, which they planned to achieve by discovering a northwest passage to the Pacific Ocean and by exploiting Virginia’s natural resources. Not surprisingly, they hoped to find such precious metals as the gold and silver from which the Spanish had profited so handsomely in the New World, but they also sought to discover sources of more mundane materials that England had to import from other countries, including everything from minerals and medicinal herbs to valuable flora. Jamestown was once viewed by scholars as a primitive outpost that hosted North America’s first gold rush, but the site is quickly becoming recognized as having broader importance. As we shall see, the Virgina Company of London had a particular interest in metallurgy.

Uncovering Evidence

Scholars once thought that the site of James Fort, the original fort built by the settlers of the colony, had long ago washed into the James River. Since 1994, however, the Jamestown Rediscovery Project has uncovered much of the original settlement. The project’s archaeological investigations have uncovered over a million artifacts dating from the settlement’s earliest years including a surprising cache of metallurgical tools and metalworking waste. Crucibles, cupels, scorifiers, alembics, slag, and melted metals indicate that Jamestown’s earliest colonists processed, refined, and tested a host of metals and minerals. They seem to have been particularly interested in copper, as evidenced by numerous triangular and beaker-shaped crucibles, several containing copper residue. Archaeologists have also found melted copper masses, including one uniquely shaped piece that fits perfectly into the bottom of a triangular Hessian crucible that was also recovered from the site. Because written accounts of the Virginia settlement make no mention of metallurgical activities other than the search for gold, researchers are turning to artifacts for new insights into the pursuits and motives of the colonists and of the men who invested in the Virginia Company of London.

Among the most plentiful artifacts recovered from James Fort are more than 8,000 pieces of sheet copper. Taking the form of small scraps and trimmings, these finds were at first assumed to be offcuts related to the production of goods used for trade with the local Powhatan Indians. Copper was the preeminent commodity held and desired by the native 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 colonial leader John Smith noted that the Virginia natives were “covetous of coppeer” and “off’red pieces of bread and small handfuls of beans or wheat for a hatchet or a piece of copper.” Undoubtedly some of Jamestown’s scrap copper was associated with the Anglo-Powhatan commodities exchange. Scientific examination of these copper trimmings, however, reveals another story: as well as being used for trade, Jamestown’s scrap copper may have actually been part of a 17th-century industrial research project.

The geographical and commercial origins of Jamestown’s scrap copper offers an important clue about the colonists’ pursuits. Copper retains small but distinctive percentages of natural elements from its ore source. Thus, in theory, comparing the elemental compositions, or “signatures,” of Jamestown’s copper with the composition of contemporary sheet copper artifacts with known origins could reveal the regional provenance of Jamestown’s metal. To unlock this crucial information, researchers subjected 300 pieces of Jamestown’s scrap copper to chemical analysis with 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 ICP-AES analysis revealed two surprises. First, the concentrations of lead, silver, zinc, tin, iron, and arsenic found in the samples indicate that the origin of Jamestown’s copper was in Europe rather than North America. More specifically, when compared with European smelted coppers, the Jamestown copper appears to have been primarily derived from the arsenic-rich copper ores of England. This finding was particularly striking given that most commercial copper in 16th- and 17th-century Europe originated from a handful of regions outside of England: the Falun mine in Sweden, the Harz Mountains in Saxony, Mansfield in Thuringia, the Schwaz region of Austria’s Tyrol, and the Neusohl and Zips Mountains in present-day Slovakia.

All English copper mined and processed during the late 16th and early 17th centuries originated from the two English copper monopolies: the Society of Mines Royal and the Society of Mineral and Battery Works. From the 1560s until the English Civil War in the mid-17th century, these two organizations operated to promote English metallurgical self-sufficiency. The Society of Mines Royal was granted the patented right to mine, process, and produce raw copper along with other metals. With equal interests in copper alloys, the Society of Mineral and Battery Works held the rights to create brass, to draw wire, and to use a novel type of water-driven battery hammer to manufacture sheet copper and domestic brass wares. An examination of the Jamestown copper trimmings with the naked eye reveals that a majority of the sample—nearly three-quarters—was created using the Society of Mineral and Battery Works’ techniques. Radiographs of Jamestown’s scrap copper show that much of this metal was battered in a regular pattern, consistent with patterns made by large hammers like those used by England’s copper monopolies. In addition, more than 400 pieces feature a concave angle consistent with offcuts from large circular discs with diameters ranging between 20 and 40 centimeters. These copper pieces were industrial by-products; they had been cut off round sheet metal plates that would have subsequently been worked into finished goods, such as kettles, pans, bowls, and lanterns. Since manufacturing industries capable of forming such waste did not exist in early Virginia, the copper must have been supplied as scraps, not as a manufacturing material.

At first glance it might seem historically insignificant that Jamestown’s copper scraps originated as English industrial waste. But this new archaeological evidence has the potential to reveal what had previously been invisible. The economic and occupational interests of the men who settled Jamestown start to look rather different when viewed next to the English copper monopolies’ industrial pursuits.