WILLIAMSBURG — Jamestown Rediscovery has launched a new platform that offers a unique look into Jamestown.
“Digital reDiscovery: A Virtual Tour of James Fort,” is a new series of virtual tours from Jamestown Rediscovery that focuses on the exploration of resources related to Jamestown’s history and archaeology.
Through an interactive map, video tour segments guide viewers around the James Fort site and the Voorhees Archaearium museum at Historic Jamestowne.
Each tour stop allows viewers to explore the location and topic further through images, artifacts, historical sources, web pages, reports and other videos.
One tour highlights the many significant discoveries made at the site over the past quarter century.
Videos are narrated by members of Jamestown’s education and archaeology teams.
Additionally, five of the videos were filmed with 360° technologies that gives viewers a more vivid look at some of the archeological discoveries by taking them inside the buildings or features. Some of the related artifacts have also been scanned and presented as three-dimensional objects.
The other tour, “Anas Todkill’s Jamestown,” gives a tour of James Fort in the fall of 1609 from the first-person perspective of Todkill, an early settler and comrade of Captain John Smith, who is portrayed by William Balderson, Director of Living History and Trades.
The video series is based on the writings of Todkill as well as other early settlers.
The videos and interactive maps can be used in schools, as the website includes lesson plans for incorporating the resources into elementary, middle and high school classrooms.
The project was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which was awarded to Jamestown Rediscovery last year.
“We are most grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for helping us develop this new multimedia, online approach to making the archaeology and history of Jamestown accessible to a broader public,” James Horn, President and CO of Jamestown Rediscovery, said.
To begin exploring the new portal, visit here.
