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The Roanoke Colonists: Lost, and Found?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/scienc...found.html

EXCERPT: [...] They call the spot Site X. [...] 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.

[...This...] most tantalizing clue in centuries as to the Lost Colonists’ fate came in 2012, after the British Museum re-examined one of [John] White’s coastal maps [...] 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 [...] 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. James Horn [...] had written a book hypothesizing that the location, with its protected harbor and a nearby Native American village, could have been a destination. The idea was without concrete evidence, though; while the map appeared to support it, only shovels in the ground could confirm it.

[...] On and off for three years, Mr. Luccketti and colleagues with the First Colony Foundation have been excavating parts of the hillside, hoping to find traces of the colonists. [...] “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.” In Chapel Hill, N.C., on Tuesday, the foundation will reveal its findings, which have been submitted for peer review, and the theory that at least a few of the settlers moved inland to Site X.

The announcement, along with separate findings from another excavation on a coastal island, is sure to stir excitement. Some scholars who have seen the evidence are supportive of the findings, but at least one sees the evidence as too slight to draw firm conclusions. All agree that more digging is needed. The new findings are likely to set off a new round of questions: Why would some of the settlers have split off to the inland site? Where did they go after that? And what became of the rest of the Roanoke colonists?.....
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