During the first week of the 2007 Field School , we began orienting ourselves with the Poplar Forest landscape and history of the property. Since many of the field school participants were first time visitors to Poplar Forest , we toured the house, plantation grounds, and lab facilities. We took part in many introductory lectures discussing Thomas Jefferson, the restoration of Poplar Forest , landscape archaeology, and cartography.

Our first experience in the field occurred on Tuesday when we dug site survey test pits at the Wingos site and began excavating at Site B. Wingos designates a 1,000 acre tract of land that was given by Thomas Jefferson to his daughter, Martha, upon her marriage in 1790. Before this area of land was partitioned off by Jefferson , Wingos was a location for enslaved men and women at Poplar Forest . With our test pits, we were attempting to find evidence of the location of the overseer’s house and slave quarters that are documented to be in the area. Unfortunately, our test pits had a low concentration of artifacts recovered from Wingos. Although field school students found a nail and a few pieces of ceramics, the majority of our artifacts were pieces of quartz shatter and flakes from prehistoric times. Our work did help define the site boundaries.

The main site of archaeological excavation for this year’s field school is Site B, located at the southeast side of Jefferson ’s curtilage, an area of enclosed land around the main house. Poplar Forest ’s goals for Site B in 2007 are mainly concerned with learning more about several features already uncovered within the site and their functions. This year students will help in gaining insight about a stone-lined drain, brick formations, a gully, and archaeological evidence of a fence all found to be included within the area of Site B.

Working at our excavation units throughout the second half of the week, we removed the level of topsoil and began excavating the layer of plowzone. Students were finding a greater amount of artifacts at Site B compared to the Wingos site. Artifacts recovered included several recent artifacts, such as rubber pieces of an inner tube, as well as historic pieces of brick, glass, ceramics, and metal.