We are pleased to announce that artifactual, contextual, and spatial data from the Jessups and New River Estates on Nevis and The Spring Estate on St. Kitts are now available through DAACS.   Data were generated from shovel-test-pit surveys of the Jessups I and Jessups II villages and New River I and New River II villages on Nevis.  The results of preliminary shovel-test-pit excavations from the village at The Spring Estate on St. Kitts are also available.  To access background, chronology, and image information from these sites, begin browsing at http://www.daacs.org/resources/sites/. To begin querying the data, start with the DAACS query pages: http://www.daacs.org/querydatabase/.

The archaeological surveys of the villages at The Jessups Estate, The New River Estate, and The Spring were conducted as part of the St. Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative (SKNDAI). Initial fieldwork began in 2006 and was expanded in 2008.  The 2008 archaeological and archival research, and the subsequent web site development, was made possible by through a Transatlantic Digitization Grant sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (US) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England of the United Kingdom acting through the Joint Information Systems Committee.

The St. Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative (SKNDAI) is a collaborative project designed to further scholarship on slavery through the development of an integrated digital archive of diverse archaeological and historical data related to the experiences of the enslaved men and women who labored on 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century sugar plantations in the Caribbean. An international team of scholars from The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia (http://www.daacs.org), the University of Southampton’s Nevis Heritage Project (http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/Nevis/Nevis.html), and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool (http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/) have worked together to digitize and deliver on the web information from five 18th-century plantations and their slave villages located on Nevis and St. Kitts. The result will be a first-of-its-kind digital collection of fully searchable archaeological and historical data from multiple slave village sites in the Caribbean.

We are pleased to announce that artifactual, contextual, and spatial data from the Pope site in Virginia and the Navair site in Maryland are now available through the DAACS website.

The Pope Site, from the Holladay/Ridley Tract in southern Virginia, was excavated by Theodore Reinhart and students from the College of William and Mary in the late 1980s.  The Pope Site consists of the remains of four post-in-ground structures and numerous fence lines and other landscape features.  DAACS identified three main occupation phases which date from the 1760s through 1790s.  The site is notable for, among other things, its exceptional assemblage of colonoware.

The Navair site in Maryland was excavated by Tidewater Atlantic Research, Inc. in the early 1990s .  Navair is likely a slave quarter site associated with the Mattanpany Plantation.  The site  dates to the last half of the 18th century and is defined by a subfloor pit and chimney base.

To access background, chronology, and image information from these sites, begin browsing at http://www.daacs.org/resources/sites/. To begin querying the data, start with the DAACS query pages: http://www.daacs.org/querydatabase/.

Short-Term Fellowships and Travel Grants for the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Thomas Jefferson’s historic home at Monticello, is pleased to announce a program of short-term residential fellowships and travel grants at its International Center for Jefferson Studies open to all scholars working on Jefferson projects.   Several of these fellowships are reserved for archaeologists whose work focuses on issues of slavery in the greater Chesapeake region, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean and whose work would benefit from the use of the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery.   For more information on the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, please see http://www.daacs.org.  Foreign nationals are particularly encouraged to apply.

Short-term fellowships are awarded for periods of up to four months to doctoral candidates and postdoctoral scholars from any country.  Awards carry a stipend of $1,500 a month for United States and Canadian fellows plus pre-approved round-trip airfare, and $2,000 a months for overseas fellows plus airfare.  Residential accommodation may be available on a limited basis.  Fellows are expected to be in residence at the Center during the course of the fellowship, and no awards are made for work carried on elsewhere.  Fellows have access to Monticello’s expert staff and research holdings as well as to the extensive resources of the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia.  ICJS/DAACS fellows will be provided with workspace as well as access to computers and Archive staff.   Applicants should submit four copies of (1) a succinct description of the research project, including how Archive data will be used (500-words), and (2) a curriculum vitae.   In addition, please arrange for three references to be sent directly to the Center at the address below.

Deadline for Applications: November 1, 2011

Applications and references should be addressed to the Fellowship Committee, International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello, Post Office Box 316, Charlottesville, Virginia 22902, USA, Attention: Jillian Galle.  Announcement of awards will be made no later than December 15, 2011.

Application questions should be addressed to Jillian Galle, Project Manager, The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, 434-984-9873.

The fellowship and grants program is underwritten by endowments established for this purpose by the Batten Foundation and First Union National Bank of Virginia, and by a generous grant from the Coca-Cola Foundation.