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