Reconstruction
Jamestown’s “Starving Time” properly names the winter of 1609–1610, not the colony’s entire 1607–1610 founding period. By autumn 1609, the Virginia Company settlement had been weakened by disease, poor water, inadequate provisioning, fractured leadership, and dependence on exchange with surrounding Powhatan communities. A fleet carrying hundreds of newcomers had crossed the Atlantic, but its flagship, Sea Venture, was wrecked in Bermuda, and the ships that reached Virginia brought too little food. Tree-ring and oyster-shell research independently places these years within an exceptional 1606–1612 drought, which constrained crops and fresh water for English and Indigenous people alike.
Food access then collapsed politically as well as environmentally. Relations with Wahunsenacawh’s Powhatan paramount chiefdom deteriorated into war. Powhatan forces restricted movement outside James Fort, while English demands and violent expeditions undermined trade for maize. Depending on whether outlying settlements are counted, records describe roughly 300 people trapped at the fort and about 500 in the wider colony. By spring 1610, only about 60 were left at Jamestown.
Before the worst months, colonists ate traded maize and provisions from England alongside local sturgeon, other fish, deer, birds, turtles, shellfish, and livestock. During famine, documentary accounts list horses, dogs, cats, rats, mice, snakes, and boiled leather. Archaeology strongly supports the widening diet, although not every bone from deposits dated around 1610 can be assigned specifically to the starving winter. Faunal remains include fish and wildlife as well as butchered horse and dog bones; recent ancient-DNA work shows that dogs consumed in a securely dated Starving Time context carried Indigenous maternal ancestry. Cut and chop marks indicate carcasses were processed with knives, axes, or cleavers. Whether much of the meat was roasted, boiled, or cooked in pottage remains a reasonable reconstruction rather than direct observation.
The most disturbing evidence concerns “Jane,” an unidentified English girl about fourteen years old. Her partial skull and tibia were discarded with food refuse. Postmortem cuts and blows show deliberate removal of flesh and efforts to open the skull. Smithsonian investigators interpret this as survival cannibalism, corroborating period accounts. Yet her cause of death is unknown, consumption itself cannot be observed archaeologically, and the scale of cannibalism across the colony remains uncertain.
Relief arrived in May 1610 when survivors of the Bermuda wreck reached Jamestown, but their supplies were limited. The colony briefly began evacuation in June, then returned after meeting Lord De La Warr’s incoming force and provisions. The aftermath brought stricter martial government, further warfare, and continued efforts to secure food through farming, fishing, livestock, trade, and coercion.
The Starving Time left no celebrated dish. Its lasting food-history significance is sharper: famine can occur amid edible landscapes when drought, disease, transport failure, violence, and unequal access converge. Jamestown’s refuse pits turn that systems lesson into physical evidence—and warn against treating colonial survival as a simple story of wilderness overcome.
Historical context
Jamestown was a precarious outpost of the investor-owned Virginia Company within Tsenacomoco, a Powhatan polity comprising about 30 Algonquian-speaking groups. Estimates of its Indigenous population vary substantially, commonly ranging from roughly 13,000 to more than 22,000 people. The English settlement, founded in May 1607, depended heavily on transatlantic supplies and Indigenous maize rather than established local agriculture. The crisis unfolded during the severe regional drought of 1606–1612, reconstructed from tree rings as the driest seven-year episode in approximately 770 years of the study record. Atlantic voyages took months, and storms or shipwrecks could therefore sever a colony’s food supply for an entire growing season.
Evidence
Archaeological
StrongExcavated pits, ditches, cellars, wells, and refuse deposits within James Fort preserve food remains and artifacts dating to the colony’s earliest occupation. Some deposits are securely associated with approximately 1610, although several aggregate material from before, during, and shortly after the Starving Time.
Zooarchaeological
StrongThousands of identified animal bones document consumption of fish, turtles, birds, wild mammals, livestock, horses, and dogs. Butchery marks provide direct evidence of carcass processing. Exact assignment of every specimen to the winter of 1609–1610 is not possible because some early assemblages combine multiple occupation phases.
Written sources
StrongGeorge Percy, William Strachey, John Smith, and other early writers describe famine, siege conditions, extreme mortality, consumption of normally rejected animals and leather, and alleged cannibalism. These accounts strongly establish the crisis, but several were written or published years later and contain rhetorical or disputed details.
Food identification
StrongComparative osteology securely identifies many consumed taxa. Ancient mitochondrial DNA further shows that several early Jamestown dogs had maternal lineages associated with Indigenous North American dogs.
ProbablePostmortem tool marks on the remains of the adolescent called Jane, together with their food-refuse context and documentary accounts, strongly support survival cannibalism. Consumption cannot be directly observed, her cause of death is unknown, and the frequency of cannibalism across the colony remains uncertain.
Preparation method
ModerateCuts, chops, fractures, and occasional burning directly support butchering and some exposure to fire. Specific dishes and the relative use of roasting, boiling, or pottage preparation remain uncertain unless stated in written testimony.
Dating
StrongDocumentary chronology securely places the Starving Time in the winter of 1609–1610. Archaeological deposits are generally dated to approximately 1610, but some cannot be isolated to that winter alone.
Geographic attribution
StrongThe excavated features lie within or immediately around the archaeologically identified James Fort site on Jamestown Island, Virginia.
Historical interpretation
ModerateDrought, disease, inadequate provisioning, leadership failures, warfare, and restricted access to food are all supported factors. Their relative contribution to individual deaths cannot be calculated precisely.
Visual reconstruction
InterpretiveJane’s facial reconstruction is a forensic and artistic approximation based on incomplete skeletal remains. It should not be treated as a directly observed portrait or secure identification.
Sources
- 1.George Percy (2020). “This starveing Tyme”; an excerpt from “A Trewe Relacyon of the procedeings and ocurrentes of Momente which have hapned in Virginia”. Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities; transcription of a mid-1620s account. encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/this-Historical primary source
- 2.Joanne Bowen and Susan Trevarthen Andrews (2000). The Starving Time at Jamestown: Faunal Analysis of Pit 1, Pit 3, the Bulwark Ditch, Ditch 6, Ditch 7, and Midden 1, James City County, Virginia. Report submitted to Jamestown Rediscovery, Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. historicjamestowne.org/wp-content/uploads/StarviPrimary archaeology
- 3.David W. Stahle, Malcolm K. Cleaveland, Dennis B. Blanton, et al. (1998). The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts. Science 280(5363): 564–567. doi:10.1126/science.280.5363.564Scientific literature
- 4.Juliana M. Harding, Howard J. Spero, Roger Mann, et al. (2010). Reconstructing Early 17th Century Estuarine Drought Conditions from Jamestown Oysters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(23): 10549–10554. doi:10.1073/pnas.1001052107Scientific literature
- 5.Ariane E. Thomas, Matthew E. Hill Jr., Leah Stricker, et al. (2024). The Dogs of Tsenacomoco: Ancient DNA Reveals the Presence of Local Dogs at Jamestown Colony in the Early Seventeenth Century. American Antiquity 89(3): 341–359. doi:10.1017/aaq.2024.25Scientific literature
- 6.Rachel Winchcombe (2025). The Limits of Disgust: Eating the Inedible During Jamestown’s Starving Time. Global Food History 11(1): 1–23. doi:10.1080/20549547.2023.2234252Modern synthesis
- 7.Smithsonian Institution (2013). Forensic Analysis of 17th-Century Human Remains at Jamestown, Va., Reveals Evidence of Survival Cannibalism. Smithsonian Institution. www.si.edu/stories/survival-cannibalism-historicModern synthesis
Limitations
- moderatedate start
The colony was founded in 1607, but “the Starving Time” specifically denotes the winter of 1609–1610. A 1607 start date is suitable only for broader background, not for the named crisis itself.
