Detail of the map “Williamsburg and Envrions…” drawn in 1781. The red circle is just to the left of Burwell’s New Quarter (Walsh 1997:16; also, Rochambeau Collection, Library of Congress)
Archaeologists from the Fairfield Foundation will venture across the York River to New Quarter Park in York County, to conduct a public archaeology project on an 18th-century site related to the Burwell family. The Burwells, who owned Fairfield in Gloucester, as well as Carter’s Grove and Kingsmill near Williamsburg, were a powerful and important colonial family who significantly impacted the early colonial development of Tidewater Virginia. This public outreach project, which aims to unearth more details about the slave quarters on these Burwell family landholdings, is a collaborative project between the Tidewater Virginia Historical Society (TVHS) (www.tv-hs.org), the Fairfield Foundation, and New Quarter Park. The archaeology will take place on November 21st and 22nd.
“This is an exciting opportunity for members of the public to learn about and participate in hands-on archaeology at an 18th-century site just outside of Williamsburg,” said Thane Harpole, Co-Director of the Fairfield Foundation. “Archaeologists have explored many sites in this history-rich area, but often it is not possible to involve the public.” The TVHS and the Fairfield Foundation are committed to sharing not just the results of their excavations, but also the process of discovering the past with the community.
“Working alongside professional archaeologists, members of the public will find out how our ancestors lived and what they left behind, and what this means for us today,” said Forrest Morgan, Vice President of the Board of Directors for the TVHS, formerly known as the Colonial Capital Branch of Preservation Virginia. TVHS recently reorganized, and in addition to helping host public archaeology digs, is building an online museum trail to connect the community to public history sites of all sizes throughout Tidewater, Virginia. This is an exciting time for historic resources in the region.
New Quarter Park was part of the vast landholdings of the powerful Burwell family during much of the 18th century. Their nearby plantations have undergone extensive archaeological research, but we know less about the slave quarters, tenant houses, and other buildings that occupied New Quarter. In Lorena Walsh’s book, “From Calabar to Carter’s Grove,” she reconstructs the complex lives of enslaved Africans who lived on the many Burwell family properties, including those at New Quarter, and states that the only way to truly understand what life was like at this time is to “turn to the immediate layout of the land upon which these people lived and worked” (Walsh 2001:49). This project is designed to begin exploring this past, and the public is invited to help out.
This initial work will focus in an area where a previous dig led by David Hazzard, former Tidewater Regional Archaeologist for the Department of Historic Resources, uncovered colonial artifacts. The two-day archaeological survey will involve digging shovel test pits to get a better idea about the size and chronology of the site, as well as the excavation of a larger test unit. These excavations are a promising step towards a greater understanding of the division of labor at New Quarter, and may offer comparative information on the architecture of slave housing, and the cultural and material realities of slave life. This work will also help flesh out our knowledge about how the property changed as it transitioned out of the Burwell family, and could potentially uncover evidence of Civil War activity in the area.
