Can See to Can’t See: Surprises at Montpelier’s Home Quarter

Summary

In 2012, archaeologists returned to the ‘Tobacco Barn Quarter’ as part of an NEH-funded study of larger enslaved community at James Madison’s Montpelier. Initial survey had revealed what were thought to be armored work surfaces, possible chimney falls, and borrow pit filled in with domestic trash. Archaeologists returned to the site in 2012 as part of an NEH-funded study of the larger enslaved community expecting to find evidence for sub-floor pits and hearths under collapsed stick-and-mud chimneys. This was not to be the case. Rather than two log homes, a complex and surprising multi-phase site was revealed: (1) a fire-curing tobacco barn consistent of two 17&215;17’ bays with charred wood ‘smoking trenches’ around the interior perimeter; (2) evidence for the use of the structure as a domestic space for enslaved field laborers; and (3) a wheat-threshing barn with a foundation feature that cut through the earlier smoking trenches. Other than the main house, no one site has communicated so much about the operations of the plantation farm at Montpelier, nor the work and domestic conditions of the enslaved field laborers. We didn’t see that coming.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Good Questions Met by Archaeological Revelations   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-35,14