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A Skeleton, a Catholic Relic, and a Mystery About American Origins

posted on July 29, 2015

In The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance reports that archaeologists have found a small Catholic reliquary, buried with the remains of Captain Gabriel Archer, a prominent leader at the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Researchers “may have just discovered proof of an underground community of Catholics – including Archer and perhaps the person who buried him with the relic – who pretended to be Protestants,” LaFrance writes. The relic calls into question researchers’ “understanding of Archer as an individual, and of Jamestown and the trajectory of Catholicism in America more broadly.”

Read at The Atlantic