Plow Scars and People

In the past weeks we’ve focused more on the items found and the methods used in order to find them. But, what’s the bigger picture? While we know the brief history of this site, the excavations here will, in the future give us a better story. So far, we are aware that this land, when owned by William Short, was used as an experiment. William Short was against slavery, so his dream for Morven was to prove that white tenant farmers’ work, and not that of slaves could run America. At site D, we are attempting to find the home of George Haden, one of the tenant farmers whose home was mapped there.

Long after the time of George Haden, Morven farm was owned by the Kluge family and used as a stud farm. When the Kluge’s owned the farm, the field at site D was plowed for years. The years of plowing churns up the soil and therefore the artifacts in it, creating the thick artifact-rich layer we call the plow zone layer.

The plowing displaces the artifacts in a vertical manner allowing for multiple years of artifacts to be in the same stratigraphic layer. This creates an artifact and stone rich layer that can be multiple tenths of a foot deep. While we know of the plowing from the appearance of most of our second contexts, the first solid evidence of plowing was unearthed this week in unit 28. We found two plow scars in the Eastern side.

A plow scar is a feature left by the uneven movement of the plow through the top and sub soils. The plow scars were excavated separately from the other contexts, but no artifacts were found in them. However, while they lacked artifacts, the fact that we had plow scars means we were correct in our assumptions of post-Haden-era plowing. While we haven’t found any domestic features yet, it will be interesting to see if anything pops up in the final week. Perhaps units 29 and 37 will provide us with something!

-Caroline Huber ’12

Archaeology, History, and Technology at Site D

The Archaeology of Site D at Morven Farm has turned up artifacts and features in the ground that indicate where things once existed and where to dig next. Lately at the site because of indications of plow scars and another rocky feature digging has progressed in units adjacent to already excavated units. These further excavations are to investigate as fully as possible any features, or changes and discoloration in the soil from its natural color and consistency. Previous archaeology in the general area of Site D by an archaeological company is also helps this field school look at where we are digging now. The distribution maps of specific categories of artifacts from the companies findings has helped us to make sense of the patterns of artifacts that we are finding. While digging these past few weeks I have thought of digging to investigate features and the placement of artifacts in a unit as way to test a hypothesis. And usually with the more digging that goes on the better the information we have about the site gets and the more accurate and interesting the hypothesis can get. While units are random across a site each one is used to test the archaeological hypothesis that those coordinates maybe significant to the site and its history.

In regards to the history of the site we know that there have been different phases of habitation and usage for the terrain of Site D. Thanks to a wonderful Power Point presentation by Laura Voisin George, the director of research at Morven Farm, our field school knows a lot about the history of the occupation of Morven Farm. Before the arrival of European people there may have been Native Americans living in the area of Morven Farm. That land is also referred to as Indian Camp, and in excavations that took place back behind Dick’s Branch stream across from where we are working there is possible evidence for a Native American encampment on the land.  The land was first held by a European as an estate inherited by Edward Carter and had its three original for life tenant farming families in the Price family among others by 1791. In 1795 Thomas Jefferson bought the land we now know as Morven Farm for his friend William Short who somehow had the audacity to not use this gift as a place to live to be Thomas Jefferson’s neighbor (yes, we drive past Monticello every day to get to site) but instead turned it into a tenant farm.  Depending on a lot of factors including why you were a tenant farmer (if you were working off the debt of a passage to the New World, if you were just trying to make a beginning for you and your family, or if you were somewhere in between), your experience as a tenant farmer could be very different. The earlier tenant farmers of Morven Farm are identified by maps with their family name written presumably in the places that they are occupying and from 1795 to 1810 there are ten of them. A letter from the year 1800 shows the names Terrill, Cornelius, still the Prices, and Haden as tenants of Morven Farm and the Giannini’s (Anthony Giannini was Jefferson’s gardener) as their neighbor. There is genealogical uncertainty and probability that the Haden’s that appear at Morven Farm are related to the Haden’s that appear in records in and around Albemarle County. We know of some of the marriage between neighbors on Morven Farm and we know that the Morven Farm Haden’s moved to Alabama roughly around 1820 and that the Terrill’s moved to Kentucky by about 1806. The land changed hands in 1813 when David Higginbotham bought the land, his main house was built by 1820, and the land became a plantation. Since then the land has acquired a Historic Garden and is now owned by the University of Virginia. The work that the field school at Site D is trying to do is to help uncover the importance of the tenant farmers’ of Morven Farm and what their experiences must have been like. Being able to know more about them than their names and who they married is a valuable part of history, the little guy’s story can be just as important and interesting as a man like Thomas Jefferson’s and our histories are biased and incomplete if we do not at least attempt to understand how everyone in a society lived. Basically, what I am saying is that of course the tenant farmers lives are interesting and important to study.

One other way that we can get at learning about a site is analyzing and cataloguing its artifacts. Usually lab work occurs off site and can take a considerable amount of time to come up with solidly interpretable results. With the help of the X-Ray Florescence Spectrometer (XRF) that Dr. Uffelman kindly brought out to Site D the field school was able to analyze the elemental compositions of artifacts within minutes. This information can be helpful in dating a site which we can couple with the knowledge of knowing who and when they lived on Morven Farm to know even more about the site. One example of chemicals that can be used for dating an artifact is the elements used to color the glazes on ceramics: copper would be an authentic green colorant while a more modern green coloring uses a different element. It was fascinating to find traces of arsenic in a piece of tableware glass, I wonder how much of it could leech from the glass and who got served from that vessel… Some people call lab work boring but in reality it is essential to the process and one of the only times when a person can really get a chance to sit down with all of the new information that the artifacts bring and really think about what they may reveal about a site.

Combining all of our sources of information, from archaeological discoveries, historical records, and laboratory analysis, to create as lucid and extensive a picture as possible about the lives of every person that lived at Morven Farm is significant work. It is so that each name on the list of tenants is not just a combination of letters and not just a credit to the wealthy and powerful men of society. Everyone has a story and everyone deserves to have that story told. And with that said I can’t wait to get back to digging because that is where all of the discovery comes from!

-Victoria Cervantes ’14

Why Morven?

That is an excellent question. Why would we choose to dig in a field in central Virginia when we are surrounded by more high-profile sites like Monticello or Jamestown?  Simply put, archaeology at Morven seeks to piece together the stories of the “unknowns” in Virginia history, in this case tenant farmers in the late 18^th-early 19^th century. Unlike sites like Jamestown or Monticello, the written record for the middle class tells us little about them, so we have to use archaeology, with other areas of study like geology and chemistry, to find out about their lives. Do stereotypes made by the upper class or the theories of  “permanent tenancy” (that tenants could never pay their way out of being tenant farmers) hold up? What can these people, specifically the Hadens supposedly on our Site D, tell us about Morven that we don’t know?

Morven Farm, donated to the University of Virginia in 2001, has undergone a variety of changes and events that have shaped its rolling landscape. The first recordings of the Morven property appear in 1730, where William Carter bought the 1,773 acre property as part of a much larger land grant. The original name, “Indian Camp,” suggests that there was an American Indian settlement nearby, as soon as the 17^th century and as early as several thousand years ago (as determined by pottery fragments discovered on the property). In 1795, Thomas Jefferson bought the land for his friend William Short. Jefferson managed the property, allowing tenant farmers to farm according to his theory of crop rotation. Other than the names mentioned in correspondence between Jefferson and Short, a map of the property, and census records, we have little information on the tenants and their lives. The property ceased to be a tenant-based operation around 1813, when the farm changed hands several times (including becoming a full on plantation and a 20^th century stud farm) until the Kluge family donated it to UVa.**

The instance of the Haden family is particularly interesting to W&L and Morven researchers. A map puts the Haden residence on Site D, a site situated by a spring. The names “George Haden” and “John Haden” pop up in records relating to Indian Camp. These records put a John Haden with “road orders at Indian Camp” and list George Haden as a tenant in 1802, but there are 3 records of a John Haden in the area as well as another George Haden who appears in Fluvanna County. Interestingly, an Anthony Haden, related to the two Hadens, owned property and was appointed a Lieutenant, two qualities that signify social status. Who are all of these Hadens? What ones lived on Site D? How free were the Hadens in terms of cash, social mobility, and choice of crops?

Site D has revealed a lot of interesting information. As demonstrated in previous blogs, our site is rich in artifacts, both in terms of concentration and in variety of artifacts from tiny pieces of lime (CaCO₂) to green shell-edged pearlware. We have begun to piece together the evidence gathered from the site to put together. According to one of our most recent artifact distribution maps, a ceramics distribution done on Surfer software, there is a definite spike in concentration towards the southwest corner of our site. We have also noticed some interesting artifacts, including a piece of iron from a Dutch oven, a large number of table glass, and a tooth we conjecture is from a horse. In addition, the change in subsoil color from north to south, from more red to more yellow, and its correlation with increase in lime in the south might say something about their agricultural practices. Finally, we know that the Hadens were not the only residents on the property as we have also recovered pieces of Native American pottery in the same units as we find nails and glass.

Based on the artifacts and the progress made by our field school, I am confident that we will positively identify the core of the tenant farm (which hopefully includes a foundation!) and fill in the holes in the Haden story.

-Erin Schwartz ‘12

**Historical information is based on a presentation of Laura Voisin George’s archival research, which she was kind enough to share with our class.

Archaeology and Tenant Farmers

During our field work at Morven Farm, particular attention has been paid to knowing the background behind the artifacts we are extracting. Purchased for William Short in 1795, the land was mostly used by tenant farmers, especially within the time period of 1795-1810. Short was a good friend of Thomas Jefferson, who attempted to use the land to entice Short to settle near Jefferson’s beloved Monticello. Unfortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful as Morven Farm, or “Indian Camp,” was used by tenant farmers, who left behind the artifacts we are now finding. Site D, or the location which we are currently excavating, was used by a George Haden. Despite historical proof that Haden was in charge of this piece of land, there is no actual evidence that he lived on Site D so there is a bit of ambiguity as to the ownership of the artifacts we are finding.**

Over the weeks that we have worked on Site D at Morven Farm, the artifacts we have unearthed have led us to make some conjecture, unofficial of course, as to the activity going on during the period of tenant farming. In some of the units, plow-scars were found, furthering our evidence that the field had been plowed and used for growing crops. In addition, the ceramics our field school has found, both creamware and pearlware, have been fairly utilitarian, most of the pieces having little to no decoration as well as the presence of stoneware instead of a great deal of heavily detailed and delicate pieces. The amount of nails and window glass on the site could point to the presence of a building; however, there have no been no features found that directly prove the existence of a building.

While there is still a bit of time left in the field school as well as better conjectures to be put together, the archaeological evidence we have discovered in our time at Morven Farm thus far has already added a great deal of insight into the work of the tenant farmers, specifically George Haden, and the lives they lived.

-Lauren Hatfield ‘14

**Historical information is based on a presentation of Laura Voisin George’s archival research, which she was kind enough to share with our class.