Spinning Fiber, Spinning World: Ensuring World Renewal by Making Fiber Maureen Meyers New South Associates, Inc. At the Mississippian Carter Robinson site in Lee County, Virginia archaeologists uncovered evidence of fabric production during the thirteenth century (Meyers 2011, 2017, 2025; Ritchison et al. 2025). This includes weaving (standing loom posts; heddle remnant); dying (large pots; blackberry remains); sewing (bone …
Curator’s Curio: “A China Boxe”: Ming Porcelain, Indigenous Diplomacy, and Global Exchange in Early Virginia
“A China Boxe”: Ming Porcelain, Indigenous Diplomacy, and Global Exchange in Early Virginia Merry Abbitt Outlaw, Senior Curator, Jamestown Rediscovery Bly Straube, Senior Curator, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Ming Chinese porcelain sherds representing over 135 discrete vessels have been recovered at James Fort (1607-1624) by Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists. Most are blue and white kraak porcelain made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, China, …
Curator’s Curio: A Purr-plexing Find: Domestic Cat Remains in the Cellar at George Washington’s Mount Vernon
Mariana Zechini, Archaeology Lab Analyst, George Washington’s Mount Vernon During recent excavations of Mount Vernon’s cellar, archaeologists discovered 94 bones belonging to a cat. Some of the cat’s bones exhibited an interesting pathology, telling us more about one of this cat’s nine lives! Domestic cats were common on 18th century sites as ratters and mousers, so the skeleton itself is …
Cemetery Guidance now available
New draft guidelines are now available. Visit the new Cemetery Committee webpage or find them below. Cemetery Remote Sensing Guidelines Cemetery Delineation Guidelines
Curator’s Curio: Hunting Big Game in Virginia
Sarah Janesko, Senior Archaeologist, New South Associates, Inc. In a recent excavation in Stafford County, VA, archaeologists with New South Associates (NSA) uncovered a Clovis projectile point. People of the Clovis culture are known to have lived in this region since about 13,000 years ago, or about 11,000 BCE1. The Clovis culture is well known by archaeologists for their style …
Curator’s Curio: “Scratch that – it’s Pearlware”
Sean Devlin, Senior Curator of Archaeology, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation sdevlin@cwf.org Excavations in the 2022 season at Williamsburg’s colonial magazine brought to light a sprig-molded medallion bearing the letters “GR.” While this decoration is commonly associated with Westerwald or white salt-glazed stoneware decoration, the magazine medallion was pearlware. While these specific medallions on pearlware are rare, they were part of …
Curator’s Curio: Civil War-Era Washington, D.C.: A Druggist Beyond the Lines?
Chrissy Ames, D.C. Historic Preservation Office Archaeological investigations in the 1980’s by Engineering Science, Inc. of the Halcyon House at 3400 Prospect St, NW, in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. uncovered multiple complete glass pharmaceutical bottles embossed with “J.L. Kidwell”. (Baumgartner-Wagner and Dinnel 1989) (Figure 1). Halcyon House was built in 1787 by Benjamin Stoddert, the first Secretary of the Navy (Jones …
Curator’s Curio: 17th-Century Metallic Thread Buttons
J.H. Ogborne, Curator of Collections, Historic St. Mary’s City Janene Johnston, Associate Curator, Jamestown Rediscovery Recent excavations at the St. Mary’s Fort (1634-c.1642) at Historic St. Mary’s City in Maryland yielded multiple fragments of metallic thread and a woven metallic thread button. These objects originated from an early to mid-17th-century midden located within the fort’s boundaries. This little button consists …
Curator’s Curio: A Pipe and a Coat of Arms
Lily Carhart, Curator of Preservation Collections, George Washington’s Mount Vernon In 2019 while cataloguing and photographing artifacts from recent excavations at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the area south of the Kitchen outbuilding, a member of the archaeology team identified a tobacco pipe stem stamped with an elaborate coat of arms. This discovery started a multiyear journey into studying the …
Curator’s Curio: Cooking with the Trammel
Karen McIlvoy, Archaeology Laboratory Supervisor for Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest The technology to safely cook over an open flame is very old. Cooking pots and utensils with long handles, Dutch ovens, trivets, tongs, and other tools were all used to ensure that cooks were able to prepare food without hurting themselves. One of the tools used that we rarely hear …