Monticello's South Yard: A Case Study in Evaluating Time Averaged Deposits

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plantation Archaeology as Slow Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Between 1979 and 2016, Monticello’s Department of Archaeology conducted excavations in the South Wing, South Pavilion, and adjacent yard areas with diverse research goals, methods, and collection strategies. These spaces underwent significant modifications over the course of Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime. Several paths and roadways passed through the yards, and extensive refuse accumulated from the two successive kitchens, workspaces, and domestic rooms in the South Wing. The area’s dynamic nature resulted in complex stratigraphy, which includes large features, sheet middens, plowzone, and a myriad of other variably time averaged deposits. Our analysis seeks to synthesize research into a cohesive story of the South Yard’s complex archaeological composition. We will generate a comprehensive chronology of deposits by employing ceramic-based correspondence analysis and seriation. This iterative methodology highlights deposits with both high and low levels of time averaging and provides a backbone for identifying the Yard’s changes in layout and function through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Plantation Archaeology as Slow Archaeology

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 733