No Site is an Island

“No man is an island” John Donne once stated, referring to the idea that no individual can ever truly live in isolation. We each constitute and actively participate in our society; we each have complex and strong ties to one another. The same idea could be applied to archaeology and its role in interpreting the past.While each individual archaeological site can reveal a great deal by itself, the true value and beauty of archaeology comes from the ability to use information from many sites and sources to discover broader connections and gain new insights.

Examining a single site can reveal a great deal about the individuals who lived there, such as how they spent their income, how they used their resources, and how they performed daily tasks. However, using multiple information sources such as other sites and historical documents can present a richer picture and greater understanding. An intriguing example is the main house at Morven Farm, a structure built for merchant David Higginbotham, who was wealthy enough to rival or at least draw close to many of the local gentry. Higginbotham was able to even hire the same architect, Martin Thacker, who built Redlands for the Carters. Building one’s house in the latest style and decadence of the time was the perfect display of power and affluence, but social customs constrained Higginbotham. Despite his wealth, Higginbotham was still a merchant, and custom dictated he build his house in a manner befitting his social role. Thus, even though he had the means to construct a house similar to the Carter’s, Higginbotham had to limit his design to one befitting a merchant. Without documented evidence and information from the Carter house, the story of the Higginbotham house would be incomplete.

Juxtaposed against the decadence of the main house is the George Haden site, also on Morven Farm. A white tenant farmer living in the 1790s and 1800s, Haden and similar tenant farmers formed a social class of which we know little. The daily life, material culture, and even living spaces of such farmers have been poorly documented and ill-studied. Our work on the Haden site has showed promise by revealing a little of how tenant farmers lived, through artifacts such as nails, buttons, glass, lime, and earthenware. We can compare such findings to similar sites and to other, perhaps better-studied sites, such as Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. For example, in many of the test units at the Haden site we found a great deal of lime, a fact that in isolation offers little information about its function or history. However, letters and various documents show that Thomas Jefferson was experimenting with plaster and lime as fertilizers for planting, and that he and William Short, the owner of Morven Farm, were discussing and implementing such procedures. Excavation at Poplar Forest also shows large amounts of lime in the soil. Thus, it is very possible the lime at the George Haden site, far from being an anomaly, was the result of Short’s and Jefferson’s agricultural experimentation. Focusing on a specific site can be beneficial, but just as with their human occupants, archaeological sites are joined by networks of society, family, and history.

Had John Donne been writing of archaeological interpretation, he might have revised his maxim to “No site is an island.” Just as their human occupants were embedded and woven into a network of customs, rules, and relationships that render individuals never truly solitary, archaeological sites are rich with connections to other sites, documents, and even oral histories. To focus on one site and ignore such associations would be attempting to fashion an island from a continent, and disregard a broader, more vivid picture.

Historical information for the Higginbotham house and Haden site from Laura Voisin-George. Information from Poplar Forest from the Poplar Forest Archaeology Team.