Town and Gown Archaeology in Williamsburg, Virginia

Summary

Recent campus-based archaeological investigations at the Brafferton Indian School and the Bray African American School have shed new light on the intertwined histories of the College of William and Mary and the wider Williamsburg community in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While fragments of pottery, glass and bone at the two school sites reveal the ordinary details of the everyday life of students, faculty and staff in patterns distinct from household assemblages excavated elsewhere in town; evidence of diachronic landscape change inferred from changing patterns of postholes likely reflects broader social, cultural, and ideological trends. This paper considers the potential of the excavation results to influence future research and interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Discovering what Counts in Archaeology and Reconstruction: Lessons from Colonial Williamsburg   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-9,11