Karen E. McIlvoy Who does the laundry in your house? Do you have a machine? According to the most recent statistics, almost 78% of laundry in the US is done […]

By Iris Puryear This week we wrapped up field work at the Braxton site and processed the final artifacts and data collected in the lab. A final unit, opened to […]

by Georgia Delamar Public archaeology was the topic this week for field school students at Poplar Forest. The students were able to gain first hand experience in public archaeology during […]

This week’s lessons focused on the landscape of Poplar Forest Field. Field school students had lectures and readings on various topics related to understanding and interpreting Thomas Jefferson’s retreat home […]

By Katie Harris This week’s lectures and field work have revolved around the ways archaeology can fill the holes in our knowledge regarding the culture and personal lives of those […]

By Savannah Weaver This week’s topic for the Field School students at Poplar Forest was material culture. Material culture deals with artifacts, landscapes, buildings, and even words, all of which […]

By Adam Macbeth 2017 Summer Research Intern   Poplar Forest’s 2017 field school began on a rainy June 5th. The students spent the first day receiving a tour of the […]

By J. Ogborne When Poplar Forest archaeologists excavated the area that had once been the kitchen in Jefferson’s Wing of Offices, they found two cast iron grates. The kitchen, and […]

By Karen E. McIlvoy Thomas Jefferson owned and designed many clocks and watches throughout his life; enough that his home at Monticello contains at least one in nearly every room. […]

It’s time to admit a difficult truth…archaeologists are not perfect. We are not omniscient and the artifacts we recover during excavation are sometimes misidentified. One of the many reasons why […]

Anthropomorphic clay tobacco pipes, also sometimes called figural pipes or face pipes, were a popular type of commemorative souvenir in the nineteenth century. Pipe manufacturers often made pipes depicting the […]

By Ryan McDowell Six weeks, gone by in a blink of an eye, but time is strange like that.  Logically, standing outside in the hot sun all day, digging up […]