Clifts Plantation (44WM33) (Site Name Keyword)
26-36 (36 Records)
In 2003, a consortium of researchers at various institutions undertook the project, ‘A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture,’ funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. This project is designed to document and interpret the interactions between the multiple groups that made up the Chesapeake society by comparing material culture recovered from various colonial sites in Maryland and Virginia. The...
Digital Technology in Comparative Studies (2005)
Conducting comparative archaeological studies is a trend that has developed over the past few decades, and with each project the concept and methodologies become more and more robust. In doing such comparative projects, digital technologies are essential for a successful study. Due to a comprehensive database set and the ability to spatially map the material culture recovered at the sites, the project “A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture” is proving to be a powerful...
An Enigmatic Monarch: The Biography of a Headless, Mold-made, White Pipe Clay Pipe King Recovered in 17th Century Maryland (2007)
This article follows a diminutive, headless, seventeenth century pipe clay figurine of a king from its conception in post-medieval Europe through its use, interment, and rebirth three centuries later in southern Maryland, USA. It is not so much the monarch it represents or the historical figure who owned it, but the meanings embodied by the artifact and our role in that process that this biography develops. This battered 300 year old figurine beckons us with its props and its demeanor. ...
Field Archaeology of the Clifts Plantation Site, Westmoreland County, Virginia (1980)
Between 1976 and 1979, archaeological investigations were undertaken at The Clifts Plantation Site (.44 WM 33), located at Stratford, Westmoreland County Virginia. The excavation were funded by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. to the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, and overseen by the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission and the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology. The following report is intended as a foundation for the work that is still to be done. It presents an...
The Importance of Plow Zone Archaeology (2004)
In the last 25 years, a number of studies have emerged demonstrating that, while vertical stratigraphy is indeed destroyed by plowing, the horizontal or spatial distribution of materials is affected only minimally. Artifacts recovered from plow zone contexts are usually found close to where they were both used and discarded, with important implications for examining the spatial layout of archaeological sites. Distributions of plow zone artifacts and soil chemicals have been used to identify room...
Locally-Made Tobacco Pipes in the Colonial Chesapeake (2005)
Tobacco pipes made in the colonial Chesapeake are often referred to as “terra-cotta” pipes. Made of local clays, they often exhibit a brown, reddish, earthen color, though they also come in a fascinating array of colors from orange to pink to almost pure white. These New World products have been fascinating Tidewater archaeologists for decades. Who in colonial society most likely produced and used terra-cotta pipes has been an ongoing discussion for over three decades. Theories have...
The "Manner House" Before Stratford (Discovering the Clifts Plantation) (1980)
Stratford Hall, located in Westmoreland County, Virginia, was built about 1730 by Thomas Lee, scion of a family which has produced some of the most illustrious individuals in our nation's history. It stands today as one of the most famous mansions of the Colonial period. In contrast, The Clifts Plantation, located a little more than half a mile from the Lees' great brick house, was, until recent archaeological excavations uncovered it, known only to the farmers who for the last two hundred and...
Measuring the Advent of Gentility (2005)
My own long-term interest has been to trace the process by which English cultural norms were adapted to New World conditions, to provide insight into why that adaptation occurred, and to assess the role of material culture in effecting that change. As such these are the kinds of questions that have been in the air at least since the 1970s, but which require a rich corpus of comparative and regionally representative evidence in order for archaeologists to have any hope of success in answering...
Midden Analysis Charts from Clifts Plantation (2004)
Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project
Notions of Comfort in the Early Colonial Chesapeake (2005)
In previous papers we have sought to use archaeological data to rethink some of the reigning assumptions about life in colonial Chesapeake, and move toward a new vision of an early colonial Virginia “frontier.” Our work has focused principally on a few sites in the Virginia tidewater and along the upper reaches of the Rappahannock spanning the years between 1640 and 1760. Last year, for example, we used the artifactual and architectural data from a circa 1690 Rappahannock plantation to argue...
On Living and Dying in the Colonial Chesapeake (2005)
A group of scholars interested in the daily lives and social and cultural relationships of the inhabitants of the Colonial Chesapeake developed the project A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Beginning in the fall of 2003 we began collecting information from 18 rural 17th to 18th century archaeological sites in Maryland and Virginia into digital form....