capital moved here and the town was renamed Williamsburg," Colonial Williamsburg archaeologist Mark Kostro said.

"So any discoveries of that period are entirely by chance. It's certainly the most significant feature we've uncovered in this excavation."

Like several of the other structures associated with Middle Plantation, including the Nassau Street tavern site excavated in 1999, the foundation of the newly discovered building conforms to the natural contours of the landscape.

That makes its southeast by northwest orientation conspicuously at odds with the strict east-west rectilinear grid adopted by Virginia Gov. Francis Nicholson when he laid out a plan for the new 220-acre capital in 1699, Kostro said.

The land-hugging site plan of the early building also provides a marked contrast with several later structures erected nearby during the early and mid-18th century.

Developedby prosperous contractor James Wray and his predecessor, David Minetree, the sloping property required considerable drainage improvements in order to make the new buildings comply with the town plan.

Two unusually extensive brick drains lead away from the complex of workshops and dwellings, with one surface line carrying storm water from Wray's residence and a second subterranean drain drawing ground water from the cellar of a sawyer's shop. Though neither line survives intact, Kostro estimates that each measured at least 200 feet in length and required considerable time, labor and materials to construct.

"The 17th-century structure conforms to the landscape. But in the 18th century they had an imagined plan - and it took considerable effort to make that plan fit the existing landscape," the archaeologist explained.

"The drains suggest that