Jefferson (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal L. Ptacek. Beatrix Arendt. Craig Kelley. Lauren Gryctko.

In 1808, enslaved African American laborers at Monticello dumped about 1,000 cubic feet of dirt to raise the floor to convert the Kitchen into a Wash House in preparation for Thomas Jefferson's retirement years. For the previous forty years, this Kitchen had been the space in which fine cuisine was prepared for Jefferson, his family, and guests. Archaeologists recently excavated nearly a third of this deposit, reidentifying the stew stoves, the original brick floor, and fireplace. Analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen E. McIlvoy.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Southern plantation owners sought to incorporate time consciousness into their production methods in a bid to enter the emerging industrial capitalist economy of the United States. However, mechanical time, regulated by the clock instead of nature, was at odds not only with the natural cycles of the sun, but also with the very institution running the plantation economy: slavery. History documents that plantation managers attempted to use clocks,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal L O'Connor. Fraser D Neiman.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of the Mid-Atlantic (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 1789 enslaved chef James Hemings prepared elite French cuisine at Monticello on one of the earliest stew stoves in Virginia. His owner, Thomas Jefferson, had taken Hemings to Paris five years earlier to be trained in preparing French cuisine. Recently archaeologists at Monticello excavated Monticello's first...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jack Gary.

Archaeological research at Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s retreat home in Bedford County Virginia, has revealed numerous transfer  printed pearlware patterns on ceramic vessels interpreted as being owned by Jefferson. Despite their mass produced nature, the imagery on these ceramics connects very closely to the aesthetics he tried to achieve in the design of the house and landscape. Did Jefferson or a member of his household, seek out specific patterns through specialized merchants or was the...