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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
'Lost Colony' of Roanoke may have assimilated into Indigenous society, archaeologist claims — but not everyone is convinced
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Archaeologists have uncovered two large piles of iron flakes on North Carolina's Hatteras Island that they say are evidence of a 16th-century "Lost Colony" of English settlers who disappeared in 1587. But some experts are unconvinced and say more evidence is needed. "We've been digging there for 10 years off and on," Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at the Royal Agricultural University in the U.K., told Live Science, "and I think the real breakthrough was the hammer scale mixed in with 16th-century artifacts." Hammer scale is a flaky byproduct of traditional blacksmithing. When iron is heated, a thin layer of iron oxide can form, which is then crushed into small pieces as the blacksmith hammers the iron. "The colonists must have been desperate for a type of material that they otherwise didn't have," Horton said. "They're forging new iron artifacts from the material that they've got with them," he said, to make "new nails for building houses or ships." Horton studies the Lost Colony, a group of about 120 English settlers who arrived on Roanoke Island in North Carolina's Outer Banks in 1587. The colonists struggled to survive and sent their leader, John White, back to England for supplies. When White returned in 1590, he couldn't find his compatriots — but he discovered the word "CROATOAN" carved into wood. For centuries, historians and archaeologists have been puzzled by the disappearance of the colony. They've wondered whether the Croatoan tribe killed the settlers or whether the English moved elsewhere, perhaps to live with members of the Croatoan tribe on what is now called Hatteras Island. Related: Jamestown colonists killed and ate the dogs of Indigenous Americans "But then last summer, we did an excavation on Hatteras Island, and we found hammer scale in a pit underneath a thick shell midden that contains virtually no European material in it at all," Horton said, adding that he thinks the English basically assimilated into the Indigenous tribe. Radiocarbon dating of the layer of dirt in which the hammer scale was found suggests its age aligns with the Lost Colony. Since hammer scale is waste and not something that is traded, and because the Indigenous people are not known to have used iron forging technology, this iron trash strongly suggests that the English settlers made it to Hatteras Island in the late 16th century, Horton said. His group's finding has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The new discovery fits in well with historical and archaeological information, Kathleen DuVal, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Live Science. "It absolutely makes sense that the Lost Colony would have moved to Hatteras Island," DuVal said. "They wrote exactly where they were going: to Croatoan." But not everyone is convinced by the piles of hammer scale. "I would like to see a hearth if we're talking about forging activity," Charles Ewen, a professor emeritus of archaeology at East Carolina University, told Live Science. And even then, the hammer scale may be from Indigenous people's repurposing of the colonists' items for their own use, Ewen said, or it could even be trash from 16th-century explorers and settlers who stopped over while sailing the Gulf Stream up the East Coast. "The hammer scale is just not doing it for me without good context — and without a report, I'm not seeing good context," he said. Horton said that, with archaeological excavations largely complete at the site — which is on private land, with cooperation from the landowner — he and his team plan to move forward with a publication. RELATED STORIES —Bear hair and fish weirs: Meet the Indigenous people combining modern science with ancestral principles to protect the land —Ancient DNA reveals mysterious Indigenous group from Colombia that disappeared 2,000 years ago —Ancient Indigenous lineage of Blackfoot Confederacy goes back 18,000 years to last ice age, DNA reveals "The hammer scale is another piece of really compelling evidence that we've got," Horton said, "but there are still several loose ends." For example, it is still a mystery whether some of the colonists moved elsewhere and whether some of them died at the Roanoke Island or Hatteras Island settlements. Ewen, who co-authored the 2024 book "Becoming the Lost Colony: The History, Lore and Popular Culture of the Roanoke Mystery" (McFarland, 2024), said the archaeological and historical evidence does not clarify what happened to the Lost Colony. But he thinks that someday, the mystery might be solved, particularly "if we could find European burials that we could tie to the 16th century with European materials and not trade items," Ewen said.
New York Post
3 days ago
- General
- New York Post
Archaeologists may have finally solved the mystery of Roanoke's ‘Lost Colony'
A team of researchers believes they may have cracked one of America's most enduring legends: Where did the settlers of the Roanoke Colony go? The Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, was the first permanent English settlement in the United States. A group of over 100 colonists settled on North Carolina's Roanoke Island in 1587, led by Sir Walter Raleigh. John White, the governor of the colony, returned to England for supplies in 1587. When he came back to Roanoke Island in August 1590, he found the settlement mysteriously abandoned – and all the colonists, including his daughter Eleanor Dare and his granddaughter Virginia Dare, gone. One of the only clues remaining at the site was the word 'CROATOAN' carved into a palisade. It either referred to Croatoan Island, which is now called Hatteras Island, or the Croatoan Indians. The mystery has haunted Americans and Brits for the past four centuries, with several investigations launched into the matter. Whether the colonists were killed by Native Americans, starved to death, or left for greener pastures has eluded historians. But new research suggests the colonists' fate may not have been tragic after all. Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at the Royal Agricultural University in England, spoke with Fox News Digital about his findings. 5 A team of researchers believes they may have cracked one of America's most enduring legends: Where did the settlers of the Roanoke Colony go? Getty Images For the past decade, the British researcher has worked with the Croatoan Archaeological Society's Scott Dawson to uncover the mystery. Horton said they've uncovered proof that the colonists assimilated into Croatoan society, thanks to a trash heap. 'We're looking at the middens — that's the rubbish heaps — of the Native Americans living on Hatteras Island, because we deduced that they would have very rapidly been assimilated into the Native American population,' Horton said. The smoking gun at the site? 5 The mystery has haunted Americans and Brits for the past four centuries, with several investigations launched into the matter. Youtube/IslandTimeTV Hammerscale, which are tiny, flaky bits of iron that come from forging iron. Horton said it's definitive proof of iron-working on Hatteras Island, which could have only been done by English colonists. 'The key significance of hammerscale … is that it's evidence of iron-working, of forging, at that moment,' he said. 'Hammerscale is what comes off a blacksmith's forge.' Start your day with all you need to know Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Horton added, 'This is metal that has to be raised to a relatively high temperature … which, of course, [requires] technology that Native Americans at this period did not have.' Hammerscale shows that the English 'must have been working' in this Native American community, according to the expert. But what if the hammerscale came longer after the Roanoke Colony was abandoned? Horton said that's unlikely. 'We found it stratified … underneath layers that we know date to the late 16th or early 17th century,' he said. 'So we know that this dates to the period when the lost colonists would have come to Hatteras Island.' 5 The Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, was the first permanent English settlement in the United States. Getty Images 5 'We're looking at the middens — that's the rubbish heaps — of the Native Americans living on Hatteras Island, because we deduced that they would have very rapidly been assimilated into the Native American population,' Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at the Royal Agricultural University in England, said. Youtube/IslandTimeTV 'It's a combination of both its archaeological position but also the fact that it's evidence of people actually using an English technology.' At the site, archaeologists also found guns, nautical fittings, small cannonballs, an engraved slate and a stylus, in addition to wine glasses and beads, which all paint a vivid picture of life on Hatteras Island in the 17th century. When asked if the colonists could have been killed in a later war, Horton said they survived among the Croatoans and successfully assimilated. 'We have one little snippet of historical evidence from the 1700s, which describes people with blue or gray eyes who could remember people who used to be able to read from books,' he said. 'Also, they said there was this ghost ship that was sent out by a man called Raleigh.' 5 When asked if the colonists could have been killed in a later war, Horton said they survived among the Croatoans and successfully assimilated. Youtube/IslandTimeTV Horton added, 'We think that they assimilated into the Native American community and their descendants, their sons, their granddaughters, their grandsons carried on living on Hatteras Island until the early 18th century.' When asked if he's officially solved the mystery, Horton said that though the archaeological evidence is definitive, the legend will probably still endure. 'Have we solved the mystery? Well, you know, it's pretty good evidence, but there's always more work to be done,' he said. Horton added, 'And people love mysteries. They hate resolving things one way or the other. So I'm sure that the mystery will continue, you know, whatever the scientific evidence says.'
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
An Author Claims the Lost Colony of Roanoke Was Never Actually Lost—and He Can Prove It
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: The Lost Colony of Roanoke is one of the United States' most enduring mysteries. An amateur archaeologists claims to have discovered proof of what happened to the colony members who completely vanished from the site. Scott Dawson claims to have found 'hammerscale,' a byproduct of iron forging, on Hatteras Island, the home of the indigineous Croatoan people, suggesting the colony members lived alongside them. This story is a collaboration with It's one of America's earliest and most enduring mysteries: what happened to the 'Lost Colony of Roanoke?' Before the Revolution, even before Jamestown, an English colony was established in what is now North Carolina. Intended as an additional source of income for the kingdom, conditions quickly turned harsh and supplies ran short. A representative of the colony set out for England to seek assistance; but while reports of possible hostilities with the Native population in the New World might have normally tugged at the sympathies of the Crown, a conflict brewing between England and Spain kept any aid from coming to the colony for three years. When help finally arrived, it arrived to find no one there to be helped. The colonists, and virtually all traces of the colony, were gone. A single palisade remained, with the word CROATOAN carved into it (the name of a nearby indigenous tribe). In the centuries since, the mystery of what became of the colonists at Roanoke has inspired stories, films, and even a long-running theatrical production at the very site the colony once stood. But now, an author, museum owner, and self-described 'amateur archaeologist' claims to have solved this long-standing mystery. What's more, he asserts that there was no mystery at all, the colonists were never lost, and the whole story is merely 'a marketing campaign.' And he believes his latest discovery is 'empirical evidence to prove it.' Scott Dawson, the aforementioned author, museum proprietor, and president of the Croatoan Archaeological Society, did not find the buildings or the bodies that once populated the colony at Roanoke. But he, alongside archeologist and TV presenter Mark Horton, found some small flakes of rusted metal on Hatteras Island that they believe indicates the fate of the colonists who once lived 50 miles north at Roanoke. These shavings, which the Daily Mail notes are 'barely larger than a grain of rice,' are known as hammerscale, a byproduct of iron-forging. The indigenous population who populated the area, the Croatoan, would not have been conducting the type of blacksmithing that would produce these shavings, asserts Horton. But the English would have. 'The hammerscale shows that English settlers lived among the Croatoans on Hatteras and were ultimately absorbed into their community,' Horton remarked to the Daily Mail. 'Once and for all, this smoking gun evidence answers any questions about the supposed mystery of the lost colony.' The pair have 'been digging near Buxton on the Croatoan Hatteras Island for more than a decade,' uncovering weapons and other European artifacts in the area, all of which have been put on display in Dawson's museum in Buxton (unrelated to the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, operated by the National Parks Service, whose museum sits adjacent to the original site of the colony). But they claim the hammerscale is more definitive proof than these previously found items, because 'coins and sword hilts could have got to Hatteras through trade or a passing settler.' To them, it's obvious that the colonists would have relocated and taken up with the Croatoan. 'The lost colony narrative was a marketing campaign,' Dawson defiantly declared. '...and now we have empirical evidence to prove it.' Dawson and Horton are not alone in the belief that the colonists went off to seek refuge with a friendly indigenous tribe. Many over the centuries have asserted such a conclusion; it even factors into the latest incarnation of the aforementioned theatrical production, 'The Lost Colony,' performed at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. In fact, it's one of the more prominent theories as to the fate of the colony, so Dawson and Horton are not alone in their 'assimilation' assertion. However, they are also not alone in the pantheon of those confident that their latest archaeological discovery has solved the Lost Colony mystery 'once and for all.' When the legend of the Lost Colony took hold in the United States during the 19th century, in a fervor toward forging a sense of national identity, the focus was on Virginia Dare, the first English (or as she was more often touted then, first 'white') child born in the New World. In many of the stories crafted around the colony in this time, it was suggested that the innocent colonists were killed by angry Natives, as though to suggest there was some original sin in the American experiment that could justify the genocide perpetrated against the indigenous population throughout the Age of Jackson. That particularly bloody theory was 'confirmed' in the 1930s, with the 'discovery' of the so-called Dare Stones, a series of 48 carved stones which revealed that Virginia Dare and her father were killed by natives in 1591. But in 1941, Boyden Sparks of The Saturday Evening Post exposed these stones to be merely a hoax. And so, the mystery of the Lost Colony endured. More recently, a different North Carolina-based archaeology group known as the First Colony Foundation made their own noteworthy and well-publicized discovery, when they revealed that a 400-year-old map featured a hidden fort, never-before-discovered. When they excavated that site, some distance from Roanoke at the Bal Gra plantation along Salmon Creek, they found what they felt was fairly compelling evidence that at least some of the colonists had, in fact, left the colony and went north, to this area they dubbed Site X, as opposed to Hatteras Island. In their book, Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery, the First Colony Foundation doesn't claim to have a 'smoking gun,' but instead lay out what they consider a prima facie argument in favor of their theory. So, has the Lost Colony mystery been solved? In all honesty, probably. By someone, somewhere. Now it's just a matter of figuring out whose solution that is. 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