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The Chowan River basin first appears in the historical record of English exploration and colonization of America in 1584 with the report of Arthur Barlowe on the first of the voyages made under a charter Queen Elizabeth I granted to Walter Raleigh that same year.

In June 2016, NPS archaeologists and First Colony Foundation’s Eric Deetz located Elizabethan pottery in a salvage excavation on an eroding bluff 400 yards northeast of the Fort Raleigh earthwork.

UNC-TV feature highlighting the work of the First Colony Foundation. (external link)

In late July, Nick Luccketti directed a small team of archaeologists to Site X, the focus of FCF investigations on the locality indicated on Raleigh’s ‘Virginea Pars’ map of eastern North Carolina as the possible location of a colonial outpost. Our evidence continues to mount that this site deserves further, and more intense, archaeological investigation.