Archaeology Begins at North Kitchen
The North Kitchen site (annotated)
The archaeology season is upon us again! We began excavations at the North Kitchen in April and have already hosted our first three expedition programs this year. So far, we have been removing the duPont layers that have protected this site for the past 100 years. We are very confident in our identification of a Madison surface. With all the rains we have had this April, it is appropriate that the first feature we identified was a Madison-era drainage ditch–apparently the Madisons’ slaves suffered from the same amount of wash coming from the mansion that we have and necessitated the excavation of a shallow ditch between the kitchen and the mansion. The other possibility for this shallow ditch is that it might represent a drip line from the roof of the kitchen.Despite all the rains, we got quite a bit of soil moved during April. We mostly were uncovering 20th century ditches (a 1908 sewer line, a 1929 water line, and a 1992 drainage line). These lines have provided us with “sneak peeks” into the stratigraphy at the site and have also contained lots of artifacts. Some of the more interesting finds include several porcelain plate fragments (which match pieces recovered from Dolley’s Midden), a complete skeleton key (which the crew jokingly refers to the as “key to the kitchen”, a fragment of a carpet bowl, and a beautiful yellowware bowl. If anyone has any idea of when carpet bowling became popular in America, please leave a comment.
We should make lots more progress over the next month–we have 24 students out for our annual James Madison University Field School! We will be using this bumper crop of students to complete the removal of duPont-era fills and fill from various 20th-century trenches. By the time the field school arrived last week, we had already developed an excellent understanding of the site’s 20th century stratigraphy from the three Montpelier Expedition programs that we held during the month of April. These programs added to our understanding of the site provided by the 2008 excavations (see recent report by A. Marshall).
Tags: Kitchens, Landscape, North Kitchen, Slaves and Slavery, Social Life
Those are some nice artifacts the pictures look good keep going and good luck.
How often are you there and how long is each dig? I like the pictures we are loosing too much of our history.
Hi Lindsay,
thanks for the note–we are here year round, but our field season (when we are excavating at the sites around the mansion) runs from March through mid November. We have a full range of field programs that the public can participate from our week-long archaeology programs to our field schools ().
It must have been a beautiful home when it was built can you post more pictures of the buildings and what you are doing?
In the section, Archeology of a Slave & Work Area, there is mention of “The 19th century where James Madison Jr. constructed high-quality slave duplexes and fundamentally changed the structure of the landscape.” Can you define the term ‘high-quality slave-duplexes” ? More specifically I would like to know if evidence was found that the interior of the slave duplex was plastered? Your answer would be helpful in my ongoing research of a structure I am investigating. Thank you