The fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s 1587 “Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island has been one of the most enduring mysteries in the history of European settlement in North America. For generations, writers, scholars, and others have speculated about the disappearance of more than one hundred colonists, whose only obvious clue left behind was the word “CROATOAN” carved on the palisade of the settlement. But in the early 1990s, archaeologists at Roanoke opened fresh lines of inquiry, and in 2012 the search for evidence gained new momentum when a reexamination of an Elizabethan map revealed a hidden symbol. The symbol seemed to indicate the location of a Renaissance-style fort some distance from Roanoke Island, starting the quest for “Site X.” After leading a team to explore multiple lines of research, Eric Klingelhofer here draws together the fullest possible account of what can be known today about the colony. The book features authoritative research by historians, archaeologists, and other experts, and it is richly illustrated with maps and photographs, including never-before-seen artifacts recovered in recent excavations. While some of the Lost Colony’s mysteries may never be solved, readers will enjoy this informative and accessible account of efforts to reconstruct events more than four centuries ago. Contributors include: Peter Barber, Phillip Evans, James Horn, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Nicholas Luccketti, Kim Sloan, Beverly Straube, and Edward Clay Swindell. Published in association with the First Colony Foundation. “A concise and well-illustrated summary of the [First Colony Foundation]’s search for the Lost Colony.”— American Historical Review “Given the expertise of the authors assembled, there can be little doubt that the contents of this volume represent the culmination of an exhaustive trawl of available primary sources. . . . [E]ssential reading for all scholars of the early colonies and Anglo-Algonquian relations.”— North Carolina Historical Review “Beautifully illustrated. . . . [T]his book is guaranteed to become a reference on the topic [of the Lost Colony], for scholars, but also for citizen-historians and tourists drawn to the tale of the Lost Colony, as well as for the people of North Carolina at large and more widely all North Americans interested in the history of early settlements on the continent.”— Southeastern Geographer Carefully edited by exacting archaeologist Eric Klingelhofer, Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery is a carefully-documented report on two decades of creative research by the First Colony Foundation of North Carolina to unravel the Gordian Knot surrounding the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s most elaborate effort to plant a permanent English colony on the Carolina coast. Unlike hundreds of previous efforts seeking that same end, these essays, by an impressive roster of authors associated with the Foundation’s multi-pronged inquiries, set forth in meticulous detail the most promising results of their documentary, cartographical, archaeological, historical, and literary investigations. In the process, Klingelhofer and his associates set a professional standard that wisely should be replicated by many other “lost colony” argonauts." —Larry E. Tise, author of Circa 1903: North Carolina’s Outer Banks at the Dawn of Flight Based on the newest research, fresh insight into the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony on Roanoke Island Eric Klingelhofer is emeritus professor of history at Mercer University.