Collapse and Coalescence in the Early American South

Finding Fort San Juan in the Appalachians

Robin A. Beck, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan, is part of a research team that discovered Fort San Juan—originally established by the Spanish—in the Appalachians. It is now the oldest known European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States and predates by almost 20 years the lost English colony of Roanoke.