Roanoke Colonies Research Newsletter
Volume 1.2 (May 1994)

Advisory Committee Discusses Bibliography Project, Future Symposiums and Fort Raleigh Excavations

The Roanoke Colonies Research Office advisory committee met on the campus of East Carolina University on February 25, 1994, to discuss the various projects that the office has undertaken and to help plan future projects. Members of the advisory committee able to attend were Ivor Noël Hume, David S. Phelps, William Powell, and David Stick. Also in attendance were office director E. Thomson Shields, Jr., National Parks Service liaison Bebe B. Woody, Dean W. Keats Sparrow of East Carolina University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and Virginia Company Foundation officers William M. Kelso and Nicholas Luccketti.


Several topics were discussed, including the project to assemble a bibliography of Roanoke colonies related materials, future symposium and conference plans, and excavations at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. Also discussed were the cataloguing project of artifacts from Roanoke Island, the creation of a relationship with the Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar, the results of the Fort Raleigh Shoreline Conference, the Manteo Preservation Trust, and the publication of papers from the May 1993 Roanoke Decoded symposium.

Tackling the issue of the Roanoke colonies bibliography project, the committee came to several conclusions. First, all known publications, from the original sixteenth-century texts to the most recent scholarship, should be included. The committee also agreed that every effort should be made to make the bibliography available in both printed and electronic forms, the latter preferably accessible by modem. This summer the Roanoke Colonies Research Office staff will look into various methods of achieving these goals. Finally, the committee felt that the project should be tackled in stages, first assembling a checklist of materials and later adding annotations, with the bibliography available to interested researchers at each stage of the project.

On the topic of symposiums and conferences, the committee suggested that a second invitational miniconference, similar to December’s Fort Raleigh Shoreline Conference, should be held this coming fall to discuss the archaeology being done–and that which still needs to be done–in light of the erosion occurring on Roanoke Island’s north shore. Plans for this conference are underway. Anyone interested should contact the Roanoke Colonies Research Office. Decisions concerning a larger, multi-disciplinary scholarly conference, tentatively scheduled for 1995 or 1996, will be made at the next advisory committee meeting.

A third item discussed was the state of excavation projects at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. Noël Hume indicated that he and other members of the Virginia Company Foundation who have worked on the excavations for the past three years need a few more pieces of information before they will draw their final conclusions about the most recent findings; however, what has been found thus far is coming out in an article for the journal Colonial Williamsburg. In light of their findings, however, the Virginia Company Foundation is raising money to excavate north of the reconstructed earth fort. Kelso, president of the Virginia Company Foundation, noted that most of the money raised to date for their digs at Fort Raleigh has come from donors in Virginia, but that they are now approaching North Carolina donors as well. The advisory committee felt that giving the project the endorsement of the Roanoke Colonies Research Office, with its base in North Carolina, might help influence local donors to contribute. Additionally, the advisory committee suggested several sources of grants in North Carolina to the Virginia Company Foundation.

One shorter item discussed was the cataloguing project of artifacts from Roanoke Island. Being done under the direction of David Phelps by East Carolina University’s Institute for Historical and Cultural Research archaeology laboratory, the cataloguing project will include both prehistoric and historic era materials from the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site's collections. The laboratory is also studying artifacts from private collections on the island.

Information on other items discussed, including the Manteo Preservation Trust and setting up formal ties with the Thomas Harriot Seminar, can be found elsewhere in this issue of the Roanoke Colonies Research Newsletter.

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