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!