on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs on our web site. you can join in the conversation on social media sites. you re watching american history tv. joining us live from the historic jamestown settlement, jim kelso and senior curator bly strom. thank you to both of us for joining us on this beautiful saturday afternoon. we d like to invite our viewers to join us. you can call or you can participate by twitter. i understand, bly, you have something with you that you actually discovered on the project today. can you show it to us and tell us what it is? yes. wonderful this evenings show up all the time. today the archaeologist uncovered this wonderful medallion from a german sto stoneware bottle. we ll have to do some research to figure out who it is depicting. it would have bottle that contained beer or wine. you had mentioned in the hour long preview, the documentary we just saw, that you had to learn how to read the artifacts 1 1/2 million arti
and events. visit college class rooms around the country. go behind the scenes at museums and historic sites on american artifacts and the presidencies, look at the policies and legacies of past president. view our schedule at cspan.org. as the presidential campaign enters its final month and the political parties prepare for their conventions, american history tv will air c-span s original series, the contenders, featuring 14 key political figures who ran for president and lost but impacted political history. we ll air the series every weekend from june 3rd to september 2nd. all here on american history tv on c-span3, and join us as historians preview the series on saturday, june 2nd, at 10:00 a.m. eastern. you re watching american history tv. joining us live from the historic jamestown settlement, bill kelceo, the director of the jamestown rediscovery project, and senior curator blystaube. thank you to both of us for joining us on this beautiful saturday afternoon. we d l
artifacts 1 1/2 million artifacts you ve uncovered in the last 20 years or so. what do you mean by reading it? what s the most important part of that? what i meant by that was that i have to learn the context of each of the materials. why they were made, where they were made, what their purpose was, who may have carried them to jamestown, what their use may have been in jamestown. it may have been different from their original usage in england. and it becomes very complex when you try to put all those stories together, because each material type has a different kind of story to tell. we will get to our phone calls in just a moment. bill kelso, let me ask you a basic question about why you chose that spot in 1993 to start digging. why that spot on the james river. that s a fairly complex question. there were indications in historical records that one in particular said that the church of the early 17th century was in the middle of the fort, and the one above-ground survi