Virginia Heritage: Menokin

Some of you may have noticed that I occasionally disappear Monday-Thursday.  This is why!  I've been working on an archaeological project at Menokin, a site near Warsaw, Virginia.  It's not your typical ground-truthing project: we're actually excavating rubble from a house, part of which is still standing.

Menokin's northeast corner

Menokin, the home of Francis Lightfoot Lee (signer of the Declaration of Independence and brother of Richard Henry Lee) and his wife Rebecca Tayloe, was built around 1769.  It was inhabited until the 1930s, after which it fell into disrepair.  The Menokin Foundation would like to rebuild the mansion with structural glass.  This would protect but still show architectural elements of the house, and be a great way to teach about historic architecture.  DATA Investigations has been excavating rubble from Menokin, room by room, since 2006 (I believe).  During this field season, we cleared out a large portion of the southeast cellar room, and rubble around the exterior.  My job?  I screened a lot of dirt, and found a lot of nails and window glass.  Doesn't sound particularly exciting, but it's fun to see the progress we're making on the project - especially when the weather's as beautiful as it was this past week!

We reached the floor!

My time at Menokin, interestingly enough, lined up with the liturgical season of Lent.  The first week of the season, I rushed home from a dusty day of excavation to shower and go to Ash Wednesday Mass - where I was reminded that I am dust.  It's a sobering thought, and not one that is easy to forget while working at Menokin.

The backdirt pile (or "mountain") - it's even bigger now!

This coming week I will be working down in Gloucester at the Fairfield Foundation.  I'll be gone from Northern Virginia, but should have slightly better access to the internet!

Virginia Heritage: Buckland

I'm still alive!  I've just been running helter-skelter across the state, and into D.C. and Maryland as well.  This past Thursday/Friday I voyaged to Williamsburg to go apartment hunting with my former-and-future roomie, Angela.  I will be returning to William and Mary as an MA student in the fall - and I cannot express how happy I will be to live in Williamsburg (and to live with Angela) again!

Springtime in CW

I have been working and volunteering at several archaeological sites over the past few months, so I thought I'd devote one blog entry to each.  All the sites I've been working at lately are "historic" sites, which means that he written record, in addition to archaeology, is used to study the past.  Hopefully by the end of the summer, I'll have at least one Virginia prehistoric site to write about!

Broad Run and the Buckland Mill

I spent several weeks working with a team of archaeologists at Buckland in Prince William County.  (For more information see: Buckland Preservation Society).  Built alongside Broad Run, the small town of Buckland was established in 1798.  By around 1830 it home to a large distillery and a grist (flour) mill, among many other buildings.  Today there are several historic structures still standing - including the old mill, a former post office converted into a residence, and a tavern.  There are additional buildings across Rt. 29 as well.

Our job was to carry out survey testing in the hopes of locating the distillery.  We dug shovel tests - about 1x1 foot round holes, about 1-3 feet deep - to determine stratigraphy (soil layers) and artifact type/density.  We didn't find the distillery (well, probably not), but we did find a lot of interesting "junk" from multiple centuries, from old pottery and oyster shells to industrial 19th century iron to old buckets and chunks of cement.  Further investigation north of the mill shed light onto the foundations of another structure - perhaps a woolen mill mentioned in documents.  Since much of the surveyed land was in a floodplain, cultural deposits have been obscured by seasonal and hundred-year floods.  Sounds like ground penetrating radar (GPR), other remote sensing, or geoarchaeology may be in Buckland's future!

A shovel test reveals a foundation

This coming week I'll be working at Menokin, on Virginia's Northern Neck.  I'm looking forward to some great digging weather!