Monticello Archaeology Blog

October 22, 2024

The Monticello Archaeology and DAACS team will be heading to Williamsburg, VA in November for the 80th annual Southeastern Archaeological Conference. We have a wide range of papers, posters, and workshops planned to share our some of our recent archaeological work. Three of these papers will be highlighting efforts to update our methods for analyzing archaeological and artifact data from sites on and off the mountaintop at Monticello. The DAACS team will also be sharing a poster and paper about their recent analysis of the 17th-century settlement at Flowerdew Hundred. Finally, there is a DAACS-hosted workshop on open-science and archaeological data analysis. Check out the abstracts for all of these projects here!

September 10, 2024

Scroll through this image gallery to see examples of vessels so far recovered and analyzed from our current excavation at Site 30. These lead-glazed coarse earthenwares vary significantly in their physical attributes, providing a glimpse into the level of experimentation occurring in American potteries during the late-18th century. Interestingly, a vessel-level analysis showed that there are two identical bowls recovered from Site 30 that resemble similar sherds recovered from Sites 6 and 8 as well as Buildings o and D/j. We are continuing to examine this assemblage to investigate the growing pottery industry in Virginia and how this may expand our understanding of material access during the Revolutionary War and occupation of Site 30.

March 18, 2024

Paper presented at the Mid-Atlantic Archaeological Conference in Ocean’s City, MD Mary 7-10, 2024

By Corey Sattes and Chris Devine

In 1957 and 1958, two Harvard graduate students—Oriol Pi-Sunyer and Vladimir Markotic—undertook respective archaeological investigations at Monticello. They exposed building foundations on Mulberry Row as well as the garden wall and pavilion. Pi-Sunyer and Markotic collected large and diverse artifact assemblages, including an array of fascinating architectural, metal, and ceramic artifacts associated with the lives of those on the mountaintop. For decades, archaeologists refrained from analyzing the assemblages, which had been boxed together and labeled ambiguously. However, the fortuitous discovery of fieldwork records and subsequent investigations have provided the keys necessary to undertake a re-organization and re-examination of these two projects. This paper will outline the history of these excavations, the methods by which we parsed out their resulting artifacts, and the ways these assemblages will contribute to our historical interpretation of the mountaintop as well as our efforts to curate a collection for educational programming. 

March 1, 2024

Download our Education Resource Packet and check out archaeology activities and lessons for the classroom or at home! 

Monticello Magazine Fall/Winter 2023

Did you know that Monticello is home to one of the longest running digital archaeological archives in the world? For over 20 years, the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery at Monticello has helped scholars and the public understand the early modern Atlantic World in which Jefferson lived. It does so by sharing archaeological data from early modern slave societies, allowing us to frame Monticello in its larger Atlantic context. Check out some of this work and learn about collaboration between the DAACS team and colleagues in Suriname and St. Croix!

Monticello Magazine Fall/Winter 2023

Monticello is much more than a great place to visit. It’s also a bustling hub of interdisciplinary research, where curators, archaeologists, historians and scholars of all types come together to continually expand the limits of what we know about history. Their work is driven by documentary evidence, material culture, oral histories, and - of course - archaeology. Learn about how archaeological research has been so important for better understanding life at Monticello!

Monticello Magazine Spring 2023

Site 30 2023 Updates

Check out a short summary from the beginning of the 2023 field season at the Monticello Home Farm Quarter Site 30, a domestic site where enslaved field laborers lived in the late 18th century! This is an important archaeological project that is expanding our knowledge of all people living on the plantation and the ways in which they participated in local trade and networks of exchange.

November 23, 2022

Site 30 is an archaeological site located a half-mile southeast of the Monticello mansion and occupied by enslaved agricultural laborers during the 1770s and 1780s. There is also evidence for seasonal occupation by Native Americans here. Check out the updates from the first season of archaeological excavations carried out at Site 30!

Monticello Magazine Winter 2018

Archaeological Clues about Slavery at Monticello

Learn about excavations from Summer 2017 when Monticello archaeologists, aided by students in the Monticello-UVA Archaeological Field School and by participants in the Getting Word Oral History Project, explored a plot of land hidden in the woods. There, in the place known archaeologically as Site 6, a treasure trove of archaeological finds is helping answer new questions about slavery at Monticello.