STORM2K

(AP) -Jamestown/Williamsburg Virginia: Archaeologists say they have evidence now that the 400-year-old bones found earlier this year at Jamestown are most likely those of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.

William Kelso, head of the Jamestown Rediscovery project, tells the Richmond Times-Dispatch that recent revelations about the spearlike staff discovered with the skeleton support their assumption.

Officials earlier said that the decorative staff indicated the man was a high-ranking official of the Jamestown colony, the first permanent European settlement in North America.

Gosnold was second-in-command at the founding of the Jamestown settlement.

Gosnold commanded the Godspeed, one of three ships that landed 107 settlers at Jamestown in May 1607. He also helped design the triangular fort where they lived.

Why do they need to be in there poking around, disturbing people's graves?

For the most part, the original settlements at Jamestown and Martin's Hundred (on the lands now owned by "Colonial Williamsburg") were, and are ruins; even the old grave markers are no longer there (wooden), and (at least at Martin's Hundred, up river from Jamestown) people were buried hastily where they fell after the Wampanoeg uprising, often along the foundations of once-existing buildings.

When excavating the foundations, these bones "pop up" unexpectedly, and their identities are of historical interest. One of these, at Martin's Hundred, was identified as Lieutenant Richard Keen, military second-in-command of the settlement; he'd been killed by a heavy blow from a war club to the skull, and the right arm and wrist had unusual development, typical of an accomplished swordsman. His age and height were commensurate with Lieutenant Keen's description, and he was found hastily buried, on his side, next to the homestead assigned to him. Other settlers were equally interred with dispatch at the same time, in fear that the Wampanoegs would soon return.

This particular "fort" at Jamestown was thrown together in the "let's stop it right about there" fashion, with cannon at each point of the triangle; two facing inland, and one protecting the river estuary/docks from possible Spanish raiders (who claimed the whole of North America at that time) or pirates.