Dr. Eric Klingelhofer, vice president of research for the First Colony Foundation, is sitting on a camp stool on the north end of Roanoke Island in a small section of the Elizabethan Gardens that has been closed for safety reasons for years. It is an area of the island that has faced significant erosion for some time.
In his hand is a small thin piece of metal that is clearly drawn wire. The shape is circular, and it is difficult to say what it was originally — maybe a ring, or perhaps an earring.
Kip Tabb/freelance
Dr. Eric Klingelhofer, vice president of research for the First Colony Foundation, discusses the implications of a brass ring found during an archeological dig on Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks. (Photo by Kip Tabb/freelance)
Whatever it may have been, it is indeed tiny, yet its potential significance is far greater than its size.
This little ring of copper came from one of the archeological pits that surround Klingelhofer, pits that are searching for Roanoac, the Native American Algonquin village that Sir Walter Raleigh’s first expedition to Roanoke Island encountered in 1584.
The volunteers, who had been digging at the site for a few months, had already found a lot of charcoal from fires and some sherds of pottery.
“Sherds are for pottery. Shards are for glass. That’s the archeological rule,” Klingelhofer explained.
But that little round piece of copper, there’s only one way it could have gotten to Roanoke Island and there is only one place that it could have originated.
“That is drawn wire,”…
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Twin lake estates in East Stroudsburg. Image credit Vics Photos via Shutterstock 
