The Lost Colony… found?

New York Times reveals what might be the ultimate fate of the Lost Colony of Roanoke:

They call the spot Site X. Down a dusty road winding through soybean fields, the clearing lies between two cypress swamps teeming with venomous snakes. It is a suitably mysterious name for a location that may shed light on an enigma at the heart of America’s founding: the fate of the “lost colonists” who vanished from a sandy outpost on Roanoke Island, about 60 miles east, in the late 16th century.

On and off for three years, Mr. [Nicholas] Luccketti and colleagues with the First Colony Foundation have been excavating parts of the hillside, hoping to find traces of the colonists. As if clues in a latter-day treasure hunt, hidden markings on a 16th-century map led them to the spot on the sound’s western shore, which Mr. Luccketti had previously surveyed.

Mr. Luccketti, 66, chose his words carefully as he described the fruits of their latest work. “I’m trying to make sure that I say this correctly,” he said. “We have evidence from this site that strongly indicates that there were Roanoke colonists here.”

The most tantalizing clue in centuries as to the Lost Colonists’ fate came in 2012, after the British Museum re-examined one of White’s coastal maps for the First Colony Foundation. X-ray spectroscopy and other imaging techniques revealed that a patch hid a four-pointed blue and red star on the western end of Albemarle Sound. That spot, near the outlets of the Chowan River and Salmon Creek, roughly corresponded to White’s oblique reference to a site 50 miles inland, which he mentioned in testimony he gave after trying to return to the colony.

The fact that the property was undisturbed was something of a miracle. Tucked into economically depressed and largely rural Bertie County, the land had been slated for development into more than 2,000 luxury condominiums, restaurants and a marina, but the plan collapsed after the financial crisis of 2008.

North Carolina law requires archaeological surveys before large coastal developments can proceed. By coincidence, the developers had hired Mr. Luccketti’s outfit, the James River Institute for Archaeology, to survey the site in 2007. The dig had turned up many Native American artifacts, which are common in the region — but also some European artifacts.

[T]he recent insights from the British Museum’s analysis of the map prompted the foundation to re-examine the 2007 findings from Merry Hill and other dig sites in the region.

There’s a copy of the 1585 map at the link, and photos of some pottery that was no longer imported to America after the Virginia Company went bust in the early 17th century.