By guest blogger Sara E. Lewis If you’ve never joined the Fairfield Foundation for a public dig at New Quarter Park in York County, then you’re missing out on some exciting finds! In the most recent round of excavations, a young volunteer was excited to find this Very Cool Artifact: a locally-made tobacco pipe stem […]
Preserving Fairfield from the Ground Up!
Last week we hosted our second Adventures in Preservation (AiP) workshop of 2017 and made great progress at Fairfield Plantation. We opened a new excavation block on the south end of the house foundation, and continued work around a collapsed chimney that we’ve been excavating for the past two summers. The AiP participants (aka “Jammers”) started […]
Archaeological Journey to Chincoteague
There are many great reasons to take a trip to Chincoteague. This barrier island holding out against the Atlantic Ocean has its own storied history and unique culture, attracting visitors from far and wide who want to experience its solitude and seaside, its salt marsh and sunsets, and its quiet charm. We came for the […]
Discovering history at Mathews Market Days
The Fairfield Foundation hosted a very successful public outreach excavation during Mathews County’s annual Market Days festival in September. More than 40 eager kids and adults helped us excavate four 5′ square units in two days. These units helped investigate the site of a former hotel located along Main Street, providing more clues about how this area was […]
Extraction and Excavation: Archaeology of a Collapsed House Ruin
The house is magnificent. It is everything that you would want in an 18th-century Virginia manor- symmetry, mass, rhythm- and it sits boldly on an elevated landscape surrounded by extensive cropland rimmed with forest and descending towards complex terraced gardens and a wide creek in the distance. It also stands out in the Flemish-bond land of Tidewater, with its rough, […]
Archaeology in Search of Thomas Carter
When you mention the Carters of Lancaster County, or Virginia in general, the typical Virginia history buff thinks of the remarkably wealthy and powerful Robert “King” Carter, wealthiest man in Virginia at the beginning of the 18th century. Unbeknownst to most, though, is an unrelated but important family of Carters who also settled in Lancaster, not […]
Fairfield Foundation: 15 Years and Going Strong
In 2015, the Fairfield Foundation celebrated its 15th anniversary as a non-profit dedicated to archaeological research and education at Fairfield Plantation in Gloucester County and at historic sites across the Middle Peninsula and beyond. In January and July of 2015, we shared in the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal a selection of our favorite artifact finds and a sample […]
Toddsbury: Rediscovering a Lost Plantation Landscape
Five buildings in one day. Not even a full day – maybe half a day. In the span of about four hours our entire perspective of Toddsbury, one of Gloucester County’s best known and most beloved historic properties, changed completely. Alongside residents Mollie, Mary and Carter (grand-daughter, mother and grand-mother), whose personal history at this […]
New Quarter Park: Award-Winning Volunteer Involvement in Archaeology!
Following our fourth public archaeology dig at New Quarter Park in York County, we are as excited as ever about the amazing archaeological discoveries that volunteers are helping reveal at this site. At New Quarter Park we have enjoyed tremendous success excavating and finding remarkable things, partnering with several community organizations (including New Quarter Park, York County […]
Archaeology in Mathews County: What do we know? Where do we go from here?
“You can’t set foot in Mathews County without tripping over a piece of history.” Many of you have heard this before, and you’d be hard pressed to argue against the sentiment. Mathews County, along with Gloucester, Middlesex, and perhaps the majority of the Old Dominion is so infused with history that it is an important part of how […]
