Randolph Turner

Randy Turner faced a choice nearly 25 years ago: Whether to stay with the forerunner of the Department of Historic Resources or become a professor. ‘After thinking about it very carefully,' he recalls, ‘if my interest was keeping up with Virginia archeology from a statewide perspective, I was better off with the state. Now it makes perfect sense and I've been quite pleased with my decision to stay with the state.'

At times I describe my job like being a kid in a candy shop and I have the keys to all the containers. The problem is, there are only 24 hours in a day and so much to learn about Virginia's past.

People were living in Virginia 15,000 years ago. With the excavations in Sussex County, we were clearly rewriting the history of the Western Hemisphere. There are not that many sites that had that good information.

You recently became involved with the examination of Werawocomoco, Chief Powhatan's principal residence on the York River in present-day Gloucester County. What is the significance of that archeological find?

That's not something that happens every day in a career, placing [Capt.] John Smith and Chief Powhatan on the same piece of property.

If you look at early 17 th century maps, that's where Werowocomoco should be. Once I saw the artifacts [collected by the property owners] I was convinced this was the site of Werowocomoco. As we learn more about Werowocomoco we'll learn more about the interaction between the Powhatan Indians and the English settlers. It's clear the English would not have survived without Indian help. Clearly the Indians could have wiped out the colony, but they found it to their advantage to have the English here to have certain items for trade.

What prompted you to become an archeologist?

In 1957 when I was nine I visited Jamestown as part of the 350 th celebration. Within a year after that I decided I wanted to be an archeologist, wanted to study Virginia, find out exactly what happened here.

In some respects I'm like a historian, but rather than working with written documents, I'm dealing with materials and things in the ground from people who proceeded us. I'm trying to create a history based basically on trash that people left behind – pottery, broken pots, pieces of stone used as knives or scrapers, projectiles – the list goes on and on.

Do you think the public appreciates the work you do?

I think they find the discoveries exciting, but they don't realize that for every hour on a site, there are 20 hours of administrative responsibility. The mystique and reality of being an archeologist are quite different.

Randolph Turner received his bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia and a master's and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. He has written over 50 articles related to Virginia archeology and ethnohistory.