Page 46 - Maryland Historical Trust - Archaeology Colonial MD

figure 31
Excavation of an early period grave with the skeleton being examined by physical anthropologist Douglas Owsley
of the Smithsonian Institution.
solid. At sites with much clay, water percolation is slow and extended periods of immersion in water slowly decalcifies bones. Such is the situation at Jamestown where many bones appear to be solid when uncovered but are actually very weak and crumble. The chapel skeletons were in a surpris- ingly good state of bone preservation. They had been buried in a traditional pattern, with the grave oriented generally east-west, and the body placed face up with the head on the west end. This is an ancient Christian burial form, rooted in the belief that the person can rise up and face Jerusa- lem when Christ returns for the final judgement. However, there was variation in orientation with the early burials having more diversity. In con- trast, the graves from the Brick Chapel period tended to orient closely to the building, which was aligned 21 degrees south of due east. The post-chapel graves also tended to still follow this general orientation but with some variation.23
Some people initially predicted the graves would be the traditional six feet deep but this idea was soon rejected because the colonial graves at the chapel were all much more shallow. They averaged only about 2.4 feet deep, with a range from 1.5 to 4.4 feet. Depth did vary by wheth- er the individual was an adult or a child, with the children more shallowly buried. But another
important factor was whether the grave diggers encountered earlier burials or not. When they did, the new grave was made less deep to avoid disturbance of the prior interment. This was not the case for graves encountered as workers dug the new foundation trench for the chapel. They cut through a number of pre-1665 graves in that process, beheading some skeletons or removing the lower legs of others. But unlike English grave diggers, they did not just discard the bones after disturbing them. Instead, remains were very care- fully collected and saved. We know this because later archaeology in the north arm or transept of the church encountered a trench filled with human remains. It was an ossuary and held all the bones disturbed in the process of building the chapel. This shows that the builders had much respect for the dead buried at the chapel site. But for some reason they treated one grave in a very different manner. It was a coffined burial at the east end of the chapel.This burial had been present when the foundation trench was dug and about 7 inches of the foot end of the coffin extended out into the trench. It must have been a rather recent interment with the coffin still intact. Why they did not move this individual is unknown. Instead, they laid the bricks of the foundation around the coffin, creating a niche in the brickwork where
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