In Jamestown, Virginia, one of the most important places in American history is in a race against time from rising waters.
Sean Romo stops digging the moment he sees a faint line emerge in the sandy Virginia soil.
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It's just a slight change in color, but to Romo, director of archaeology for Jamestown Rediscovery, it may be another piece of America's origin story.
"I think it might be a gate," he says quietly.
Every inch of soil holds the possibility of revealing something that has not seen daylight since at least the early 1600s.
"You can't put a shovel in the ground without finding something," Romo says.
Few places in the United States carry the historical weight of this small island along Virginia's James River.
This was the site of the first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in 1607.
It was here that America's first representative assembly convened in 1619. It was here that Pocahontas married tobacco planter John Rolfe.
And it was here that the first enslaved Africans were forced ashore, marking the beginning of a system of slavery that would shape the nation for centuries.
"For American history it's hard to have more of an impact than Jamestown," Romo says. "It all starts here.
Without Jamestown there is no modern United States."
Archaeologists continue to uncover the past even as the place preserving it is beginning to disappear from rising waters.
