Lead Test of the Corotoman Reuse Hypothesis for the Stone Floor of Colonial Christ Church (Irvington, VA)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Robert Carter began construction of historic Christ Church (Irvington, Virginia) in 1730. Much of the original church still remains to this day, with almost all of the original stone floor pavers still intact. There is a lack of natural stone in the surrounding area and historical documentation suggests that the stone used in Christ Church may have been reused from the nearby Corotoman mansion. We hypothesized that the stone pavers from Christ Church were scavenged from the Corotoman mansion, Robert Carter’s home which burned down one year before, in 1729. During excavation, historical archaeologists found evidence that the Corotoman mansion had lead gutters, windows, and flashing that would have left molten lead drops on the original stone floor after the fire. We compared the chemistry of the original stone paver artifacts recovered from the Corotoman mansion with those from Christ Church looking for traces of lead drops using a scanning electron microscope with an energy dispersive spectrometer. The relative weight percent lead on the samples from Christ Church and Corotoman support our hypothesis that the stone pavers used in the construction of Christ Church were likely reused from the Corotoman mansion.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32960