2011 Field School Photos and Activity Summaries

Week One:

Monica Neff
June 9, 2011

Week One Update

 This week at Poplar Forest starts the annual Summer Archaeological Field School. Five students from across the country are participating this year.  Excavation is being conducted on the property approximately 100 yards southeast of Jefferson’s retreat house. During last year’s  Field School, students found a large posthole that may be a feature left behind from a Jefferson-era building.  Poplar Forest’s archaeologists tentatively interpret that this feature could be part of a stable once used by Jefferson.  The students participating this year are excavating in spots where additional features associated with the large posthole may have been detected by remote sensing techniques conducted last summer.

The search began on Monday, June 6, by taking away the topsoil and sifting the dirt to find artifacts such as pieces of brick, mortar, nails, and glass. As the students continued to carefully dig through the next layers in their units, more artifacts were discovered. Many of these objects date to the mid-19th through the 20th centuries and are likely associated with enslaved laborers and tenant farmers living in nearby cabins during the Hutter family’s ownership of the property. Artifacts such as a bone-handled fork, ceramics, bottle glass, and even buttons and beads help us understand the lives of the individuals who lived and worked at Poplar Forest in the years after Thomas Jefferson. As we come up to the next layers in week 2 we will begin to see features that give us more information about the Jefferson-era of Poplar Forest, and possibly find more postholes associated with a structure such as a stable.

Image 1: Screening for artifacts. The site is located approximately 100 yards southeast of Jefferson’s retreat house, seen in the background.

Image 2: Artifacts recovered from the first layers of the site, including ceramic fragments, animal bones, window glass, and iron nails. These objects were likely used by enslaved laborers living in a nearby cabin in the post-Jefferson period of the plantation.

Image 3: Digging and screening the first layers of the new excavation units.

Image 4: Troweling down to a layer of fill. The bright red soil being exposed in this picture covers an earlier layer that likely dates to the Jefferson-era of the property which may contain the remains of Jefferson’s stables.