400-year-old weapons found at Jamestown

Archaeologists working at the site of historic James Fort have unearthed the first pieces of what appears to be a large cache of armor and arms buried in an early 17th-century well.

The artifacts include numerous tassets - small pieces of armor used to protect the wearer's thighs - as well as a rapier hilt, an iron pole and a nearly complete broadsword with an intact basket hilt.

William Kelso, director of the Jamestown Rediscovery excavation, believes the objects may have been discarded by the colonists as early as June 1610, when the survivors of a particularly brutal winter known as the "Starving Time" trashed much of the settlement's armory before temporarily abandoning the fort.