At Poplar Forest, we are excited to offer internship opportunities to students year round. These include two new paid summer research internships in historical archaeology. These internships are intended for early-phase graduate students and advanced undergraduate students who have previous field training and are looking for more experience conducting fieldwork and supervising field school students in a research-oriented setting. Simply click on the following link to learn more about applying for this summer’s James O. Watts III Summer Research Internship.

We also offer a wide variety of unpaid internships all year round that are intended for all levels of undergraduate students. Below are a few suggested topics for semester-long internships at Poplar Forest. Each will be supervised by one or more staff members in the Department of Archaeology and Landscapes, and will be structured to meet the requirements of individual students and their faculty advisors.

Archaeology Practicum The intern will divide his or her time between various members of the archaeology staff to gain a general understanding of methods and theories in historical archaeology. The intern will work in the archaeology laboratory, identifying, processing, and cataloguing artifacts; and will participate in an excavation within Jefferson’s curtilage, the area surrounding the main house. Interns will keep a journal documenting their experiences, which they will turn in at the end of each semester.

Material Culture Internship—Site A
The intern will work in the archaeology laboratory, analyzing and interpreting artifacts from Site A. Site A is the location of an antebellum slave cabin. It is located adjacent to a tenant house that was occupied into the 1970s. Therefore artifacts from Site A range from mid-nineteenth century into the late twentieth century. Artifact analysis will emphasize the antebellum period.

Jefferson–Period Ornamental Landscape
The intern will help the archaeology staff create an encyclopedia of the flowers, trees, and shrubs that Jefferson planted during his tenure at Poplar Forest from 1774-1826. This resource will provide pictures of each plant along with a brief description of its characteristics and natural history. The end result will be a new document that will add to our knowledge of the landscape of Poplar Forest and give insights into the man who designed it.

GIS Internship The intern will help create a new ArcGIS geodatabase at Poplar Forest . This will include a wide variety of spatial information from excavations, written records, historic maps, and the natural environment. The result will be “a living document” that will house past, present, and future spatial data, as well as reveal new insights into the history and archaeology of Poplar Forest . Though the intern will be instructed by archaeology staff, prior experience using ESRI ArcGIS software is a must.

Community History
Documentary and archaeological research are teaching us much about the antebellum landscape of Poplar Forest . Comparative data is needed to place these findings in broader perspective. The intern will work with the archaeology staff to research the history of the farming community living within 10 miles of Poplar Forest between 1840 and 1860. The population, slave, and agricultural schedules of the United States Census will be used with other relevant documents to reveal the community’s social, economic, and environmental history. During the course of this project, the intern will become comfortable using Microsoft Excel and SPSS software as they enter and analyze census data. At the end of the semester, the intern will write a detailed summary of their findings.

Material Culture Internship—Commercial Ties The intern will examine the commercial relationships between Poplar Forest and various merchants in New London, Liberty, and Lynchburg during the period from 1805-1870 through historical documents in order to better understand the flow of consumer goods between town and plantation. Limited use of archaeological collections will augment this study. The intern will write a detailed summary of his or her research findings.

Hutter’s Income and Expense Reports, 1856-1862

The Hutter family kept extensive records of their time at Poplar Forest . These include the records of day-to-day transactions, which can tell us a tremendous amount about the daily life of the Hutter family and community of enslaved African Americans who lived and worked at Poplar Forest . The intern will be responsible for transcribing the Hutter’s Income and Expense Reports, so that they can be placed in a searchable database and used by the staff and others to conduct historic and archaeological research on the property. In addition, the intern will also, over the course of the semester, be introduced to material culture related to antebellum period life at Poplar Forest.