The First Colony Foundation

A copper earring unearthed by First Colony Foundation archaeologists at Roanoke Island’s Elizabethan Gardens was almost certainly traded – or gifted – to local Native Americans by Sir Walter Raleigh’s explorers, based on scientific tests released this week.

Read More

Archaeologists from the First Colony Foundation discovered pieces of 16th-century Algonquian pottery and a copper ring of European origins in North Carolina.

Read More

The story of an English settlement known as the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke and Sir Walter Raleigh’s early explorers remains one of the most fascinating mysteries of American history.

The search for what happened to the English settlers has recently focused on the Elizabethan Gardens in Manteo, where researchers uncovered more evidence of a farmstead belonging to the “Algonquian village of Roanoke” (also spelled Roanoac), an Indigenous community that hosted the explorers in 1584.

Read More

First Colony Foundation will launch a new book, Excavating Fort Raleigh, by the late Ivor Noel-Hume on his archaeological search for traces of Sir Walter Raleigh’s efforts to plant an English colony on Roanoke Island, with an event at the Pioneer Theater in Manteo on Saturday, April 6, at 4 p.m. Open to the public, the free, one-hour event will include a ceremonial presentation to the Park Service, brief remarks and background on the book, followed by a Q&A session and book signing.

Read More

Pottery sherds uncovered during First Colony Foundation’s most recent dig at Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island may have been used during the First Contact between Sir Walter Raleigh’s explorers and local Native Americans in 1584. And, in the present day, they help establish the size and extent of the Algonquian village of Roanoac that hosted that long-ago encounter.

Read More

Archaeologists with First Colony Foundation will begin a new dig at Roanoke Island’s Elizabethan Gardens next week, looking for more evidence of the Algonquian village of Roanoac that hosted Sir Walter Raleigh’s explorers in 1584.

Read More