Jamestown settlers’ trash confirms hard times

Analyses of discarded oyster shells chronicle deep drought during Virginia colony’s early years

Oyster shells excavated from a well in Jamestown, Va., the first permanent British settlement in North America, bolster the notion that the first colonists suffered an unusually deep and long-lasting drought.

COLONIAL DROUGHT-O-METERS Oyster shells dumped into an abandoned well by the early settlers of Jamestown, Va.,