44PG64: The Stone Foundation House and Enclosed Compound

• Overview
• Ethnohistorical and Documentary Evidence
• Excavation Procedures and Methods
• Summary of Research and Analysis

Overview

Archaeological site map of 44PG64, created by DAACS staff from extant field records and maps generated during William and Mary’s and UC Berkeley’s field work.

44PG64 is a multi-component archaeological site that was once part of a 1000-acre plantation known as Flowerdew Hundred, located on the south side of the James River about 20 miles west of Jamestown. The land was used for hundreds of years by the Weyanoke indigenous community, and their ancestors prior to colonial English occupation in the second decade of the 1600s. While indigenous artifacts comprise 45% of 44PG64’s assemblage, archaeologists recorded few indigenous architectural features at the site. Their focus was on recovering evidence of one of the earliest English domestic complexes in the Chesapeake, one that included the earliest known example of “permanent” domestic construction in the British North America.

44PG64 was first excavated in the 1970s by Dr. Norman Barka of the College of William and Mary’s Southside Historical Sites, Inc. The focus of Southside’s work was the complete excavation of the large stone foundation, from which the site took its colloquial name “The Stone House Foundation Site” (Feature Group 01).  Southside’s archaeological teams also removed large swaths of plowzone around the Stone House foundation, exposing and sometimes drawing, but not excavating, features surrounding the house. Of particular interest was the exposure of Features 1000 and 1001, a paling fence trench and subfloor pit respectively, in an area west of the stone foundation dubbed the “animal enclosure”.

Stone House Foundation site with Norman Barka, Leverette Gregory, and David A. Harrison. Excavations conducted by the College of William and Mary and Southside Historical Sites, Inc. between 1971 and 1978.

Dr. James Deetz, students from the University of California, Berkeley, and staff from the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation returned to the site in the 1980s with the intent of investigating the landscape surrounding the stone foundation. The Berkeley team focused on the area around Features 1000 and 1001 between 1981-1985 excavating the features revealed by Southside in the 1970s. In 1989, the UCB team uncovered an impermanent structure with a cellar (F0002) to the east of the stone foundation (FG01). William and Mary’s and Berkeley’s excavations are discussed in greater detail below.

In 2018, The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project titled, The Origins of a Slave Society: Digitizing Flowerdew Hundred (PW-259091-18). The grant’s goals included the identification, analysis and cataloging of all the contexts, maps, and artifacts from four of the earliest sites at Flowerdew Hundred, 44PG64, 44PG65, 44PG64/65, and 44PG92. Between 2020 and 2022, DAACS staff analyzed over 25,000 artifacts recovered during William and Mary’s and Berkeley’s excavations at 44PG64. 45% of the assemblage is comprised of lithics and indigenous ceramics related to the Weyanoke and earlier, Woodland and Archaic indigenous occupations. The remaining 55% of the assemblage, consisting primarily of architectural and domestic artifacts, relates to the early 17^th-century English occupation.

Feature 0002, excavated by archaeologists associated with UC Berkeley and the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation. Overall of cellar feature, showing excavation of SE quadrant in 1985.

DAACS correspondence analysis of tobacco pipe bore diameters suggests three main English occupational phases Phase 1 and 2 include the stone-house foundation excavated by the College of William and Mary in the early 1970s (Barka 1976) and a cellar (Feature F0002) to the northeast of it, excavated by the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1990s. The third phase includes a small subfloor pit (Feature F1001) and a rectangular, 40-by-60-foot enclosure, marked by a paling ditch (Feature F1000), surrounding the pit, both excavated by Berkeley in the 1980s.

The English occupation of 44PG64 is culturally similar to occupations at the Fortified Compound (44PG65) and Windmill (44PG64/65), sites that were also analyzed by DAACS and are in the archive, however it may have been the first major English settlement at Flowerdew Hundred, with the Fortified Compound being constructed in response to the 1622 Indigenous Uprising, and subsequent Second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622-1632). The precontact indigenous occupation is also linked to temporally similar occupations at 44PG65. With both precontract indigenous occupation and early 17^th century colonial occupation, 44PG64 is one of the earliest sites in the DAACS Archive.

Ethnohistorical and Documentary Evidence

Middle Woodland and Late Woodland Projectile Points from 44PG64, 44PG65, and 44PG64/65.

The settlement of the triangular tract now known as Flowerdew Hundred began thousands of years before the arrival of English colonists at Jamestown. In the Late Woodland Period (AD 900-1600) and into the Early Colonial Period (1600-1650), the land was part of the territory occupied by the Weyanock, an Algonquian-speaking Indigenous community that was loosely affiliated with the larger political entity of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom (Barbour 1969). The 1607 John Smith map displays Weyanock settlements on both sides of the James River in the vicinity of what would be patented as Flowerdew Hundred roughly a decade later. Archaeologists, anthropologists and historians have noted that the Weyanock, like many other Powhatan communities, were living in dispersed riverside towns in the decades leading up to English colonists’ arrival (Binford 1965; Gallivan 2018; Rountree 1989, Turner and Opperman 1993).

In the early 1600s, the English began driving the Weyanock were from their home territory along the James River. Archaeological research indicates that English colonizers at Flowerdew exploited the same areas that the Weyanock had cultivated for hundreds of years, and many of the archaeological sites at Flowerdew contain abundant evidence of Indigenous occupations spanning thousands of years. A complete culture history of the Flowerdew Hundred tract is provided on the Flowerdew Hundred Plantation Page. Here we review what little is known from existing documentary sources about the earliest English occupation at Flowerdew Hundred, including 44PG64 and its related sites, 44PG65 and 44PG64/65.

Established in 1617, Flowerdew Hundred was one of the largest plantations granted through the Virginia Company. Only 7 of the thirty-five or so plantations in the region contained holdings of over 1000 acres (Ayers 1984). Two of these, Flowerdew Hundred and Weyanoke, together comprising over 3000 acres, were the property of Sir George Yeardley (Nugent 1934). Flowerdew Hundred, located on the southside of the James River, was comprised of a 1000-acre tract. Historical documents suggest that in 1618 Yeardley purchased the property from Stanley Flowerdew, his father-in-law, who had likely started a colonial settlement at the site as early as 1617.  When Yeardley returned from England to serve as the governor of the Virginia colony in 1619, he brought 15 men (whether indentured servants or tenants is uncertain) who were tasked with cultivating tobacco at Flowerdew (Kingsley (ed.) 1906-1935; Morgan 1975).

Close up of Flowerdew Hundred from the Fry Jefferson Map of Virginia (1751).

In late August 1619, the White Lion, an English war ship, docked at Point Comfort, Virginia. The privateer “brought not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes” (McCartney 2017). These Africans, enslaved Angolans raided from the Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista off the coast of Campeche, were the first Africans to set foot in English North America. Yeardley, and the colony’s Cape Merchant, Abraham Peirsey, purchased these men and women. At least 11 were taken to Flowerdew Hundred and their unfree labor contributed to the success of Yeardley’s economic enterprises. The successful harvesting and trading of tobacco funded Yeardley’s acquisition of more unfree laborers in 1620 and 21, which resulted in substantial tobacco exports to England and Holland.  By 1622 as many as 114 tenants, servants, and enslaved individuals may have been laboring for Yeardley’s profit, mostly at Flowerdew Hundred and Weyanoke.

While Yeardley was technically an absentee owner since he resided on the north side of the James River in Jamestown, his choice to remain in Virginia enabled him to keep tighter control over the plantation’s development and maximize his profits (Musselwhite 2019). He also invested in the development of the property in a variety of ways. A letter from the Council of Virginia to the Virginia Company of London acknowledges Yeardley’s “good example” of constructing a windmill in 1621.

That windmill can be tied to Flowerdew specifically by its presence on a deed of sale in 1624. We know it was constructed, as the remnants of this windmill were identified during archaeological investigations at 44PG64/65 by Dr. James Deetz and students from the University of California Berkeley in 1995. Additionally, documentary evidence in the form of reports and testimony submitted to the court of the Virginia Company (Kingsbury 1906 II:374–375, 383) also demonstrate that by spring of 1623 a palisaded fortification with six pieces of mounted ordinance had been erected at Flowerdew. The archaeological site 44PG65 represents the remnants of this fortified compound.

Multiple documents show that the second wealthiest man in the colony, Abraham Peirsey, a businessman and Cape [Head] Merchant, purchased Flowerdew Hundred and at least some of the indentured and enslaved laborers from Sir George Yeardley on October 5, 1624.  A fragment of the deed recording the sale (CITE), a court deposition from Temperance Yeardley (George Yeardley’s widow) attesting to the sale (1627) and a patent to the property granted to Abraham Peirsey’s eldest daughter Elizabeth (Peirsey) Stephens in 1636 (CITE) all confirm the transaction. While Peirsey kept his primary residence in James City, a muster taken in 1624/1625 (depending on the use of a Julian or Gregorian calendar) lists a total of 10 households, presumably tenants, on the Flowerdew property, known at the time as Peirsey’s Hundred. A total of 21 people composed these households. Peirsey also had 29 indentured servants and seven unnamed African individuals listed as laborers. Thus, out of the total of 57 people living on the property 36 were either indentured or enslaved laborers.  The plantation contained 10 dwellings, three store houses, four tobacco houses, and one windmill (Barka 1993; Deetz 1993:20-23).

Map of the 1000-acre Flowerdew Hundred Plantation with four sites included in the DAACS Project highlighted.

One major addition to Flowerdew that is likely not called out explicitly in the Muster is a sizeable dwelling house built upon an imported siltstone foundation. The archaeological site known as 44PG64 is the footprint of this structure and nearby features. The historical documentation of the house’s construction is scant. Unlike the windmill (44PG64/65), the dwelling house (44PG64) is not referenced explicitly in the 1624 deed of sale, although only the bottom fragment of the deed has been preserved. As a result, several hypotheses exist regarding whether Peirsey or Yeardley commissioned its construction, served as its primary occupants, and even its purpose within the plantation’s operations (Hodges et al. 2011:30-32).

Upon Peirsey’s death in January of 1628 property ownership passed to his widow, Frances (his second wife), and then to his daughter, Elizabeth Stephens when Frances died.  Eight years later, Elizabeth sold part of the property, which she had repatented as Flowerdew Hundred, to William Barker, a merchant and mariner. Archaeological data, reviewed below, suggests that the dwelling house, 44PG64, was likely abandoned by the 1640s. Upon William Barker’s death in 1655 the plantation passed to his son John Barker. When John Barker died in 1673, Flowerdew’s ownership was transferred to his two sisters, Elizabeth and Sarah.

Excavation Procedures and Methods

Introduction

44PG64: The “Stone House Foundation” site and associated features, excavated by the College of William and Mary and Southside Historical Sites, Inc. between 1971 and 1978 (exact photo date unknown). Photograph shows foundation partially exposed and crew in process of stripping overlying plowzone (facing south). Note the gaps in the stone foundation for timber framing.

44PG64 was first identified by Leverette B. Gregory in 1971. While walking the fields, Gregory discovered architectural stone associated with 17^th-century domestic artifacts (1975). Exploratory test units placed by Gregory and Barka located one wall of a stone foundation (FG01). Work around the stone foundation was expanded in 1972 under the direction of Dr. Norman Barka and the College of William and Mary’s Southside Archaeological Foundation (originally Southside Historical Sites Foundation). Gregory worked with Barka and directed field operations at Flowerdew through 1978, when Barka and William and Mary ended their work at Flowerdew Hundred.

In 1980, James F. Deetz, director of the Lowie Museum at UC Berkeley, was hired to direct the Flowerdew Foundation’s summer fieldwork for the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation, supported by the owner of Flowerdew Hundred at the time, David A. Harrison III. Deetz focused initially on five sites that spanned the three and a half centuries of English occupation at Flowerdew. 44PG64 was one of these sites. Len Winter directed excavations at 44PG64 between 1981 and 1985. Berkeley’s most substantive work at 44PG64 occurred in 1989, when excavations exposed the landscape around the stone foundation excavated by the Southside Archaeological Foundation. This work was directed by Ann Markell and Scott Speedie. They uncovered at least one structure within a palisade to the west of the foundation and another cellar, likely to a domestic structure, to the east of the foundation.

Two hundred and five quadrats were excavated by the Southside and Berkeley teams. Here DAACS provides the first comprehensive summary of archaeological work at 44PG64. It provides our best understanding of Barka’s and Deetz’s excavation methods, as compiled by DAACS staff during four years of work with extant field records, site maps, images, and through conversations with Len Winters, Ann Markell, and Charles Hodges. No final site reports were written by Southside, UC Berkeley, the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation, or associated excavators. Barka and the Southside Archaeological Foundation completed one interim report on 44PG64 (1976). While Deetz and the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation did not complete any interim or final reports or maps during their eight years of field work at the site, Deetz’s 1993 book interprets the site with broad brush strokes. The large-scale site maps compiled by Leslie Cooper and Catherine Garcia for DAACS show, for the first time, the extent of the units excavated across the site. Site images, maps, a detailed chronology, and Harris Matrix for the site, all developed by DAACS staff, can be found in corresponding website sections below.

Norman Barka and Southside Archaeological Foundation

The archaeological resources at Flowerdew Plantation were first uncovered in 1961 by Gilford Holland and Benjamin McCary, who noted a series of early English historic sites super-imposed over Late Woodland or Contact Period Native American towns or occupations based on small test pits and surface deposits (University of Virginia/VDHR Archives, WM Summary Archaeological Activity n.d.). Sustained archaeological research at Flowerdew Hundred formally began in the early 1970s. Archaeological investigations formally began in 1972 at what would soon be dubbed 44PG65, the Fortified Compound Site, after Leverette Gregory and State Archaeologist Edward Heite visited Flowerdew and conducted surface survey and testing that located early 17th century sites. Gregory successfully convinced the landowner David A. Harrison III to allow archaeological investigations, which resulted in the start of fieldwork at what was then designated as 44PG3 in 1972–1973 (Gregory 1975). In 1974, Mr. Harrison established an agreement with the College of William and Mary to fund Southside Associates , an organization charged with conducting field investigations under the direction of Dr. Norman Barka. The most intensive field seasons were conducted from 1974–1978 by small crews of three to seven field archaeologists. One or two laboratory and curatorial assistants washed, labeled, and bagged artifacts.

Between 1971 and 1976, the 1000 acres that comprised the Flowerdew Hundred plantation were surface surveyed by crews of archaeologists from Southside. The survey identified 54 sites that were recorded with the state. Students and Flowerdew Hundred staff walked transects through plowed fields. Artifacts encountered on the surface were collected and provenienced by site. There was no intra-site survey control for artifact provenience. By 1976, aerial photography, surface survey, and archaeological excavations had uncovered twelve sites that dated to the first half of the 17th century, including 44PG64 (Barka 1976, Gregory 1975).

The site designation 44PG3 originally used by William and Mary encompassed a large area that was later divided into three separate sites — 44PG64 (the Stone House Foundation Site), 44PG64/65 (The Windmill Site) and 44PG65 (the Fortified Compound Site). During the first few years of excavation, William and Mary established a single grid over the entirety of PG3. Once it was determined that there were at least two distinctive settlements within PG3, excavators shifted to using separate designations for the individual sites. The sites were also nominated for inclusion on the National Register and assigned separate labels using the Smithsonian’s trinomial numbering system. How about a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_trinomial

Hand drawn illustration of AGNU 40×60 foot grid block used in excavations of PG64, 65, and PG64/65.

William and Mary and Southside Associates excavators used an “AGNU” grid, which consisted of 40-by-60-foot grid blocks labeled with a three-digit number (e.g. 190, 191, 192 etc.). Each block was further divided into 24 10-by-10-foot excavation quadrats which were given letters in alphabetical order across rows, starting in the northwest corner of the block and ending in the southwest corner. The letters “I” and “O” were excluded to minimize confusion with the numbers 1 and 0.

Once PG3 was separated into three separate sites, excavators created a list of which 40-by-60-foot blocks should be assigned to each site. Vertical control was maintained by digging according to natural stratigraphy but at times arbitrary levels were also used within natural layers. Index numbers were assigned to each separate deposit or level designated by excavators. A combination of block number, quadrat letter, and index number was used as the provenience system for tracking artifacts. For example, artifacts labeled PG3/176T_01 are from 44PG64, block 176, quadrat T, and level index 1 (topsoil). Excavators recorded detailed information about each unit and level in the Level Book and captured plan views and profiles in drawn maps and photographic slides.

44PG64:  The “Stone House Foundation” site with Norman Barka, Leverette Gregory, and David A. Harrison. Excavations conducted by the College of William and Mary and Southside Historical Sites, Inc. between 1971 and 1978.

Over the course of five years, between 1972 and 1978, Barka and Southside’s team of archaeologists excavated over 146 10-x-10-foot units at PG64. The focus of their work was the discovery and complete excavation of what was quickly nicknamed the “Stone House Foundation”, the architectural remains of a larger dwelling that dates to late second, early third decade of the 17th- century (late 1610s-early 1620s) (Barka 1976). The center piece of a larger domestic complex that featured at least two other dwellings, the “Stone House Foundation” was a timber-framed house with a stone foundation (Carson et.al. 1981). Described by Barka (1975) as perhaps the first example of permanent architecture in North America, Carson et.al. discuss how the 14 gaps in the stone foundation are evidence of large timbers that supported an earthfast, framed structure constructed using a 10-, 8-, 10-, and 12- foot bay system (Carson et.al. 1981: 162).

The stone foundation, constructed of “roughly dressed” siltstone likely imported from England as ballast, measured 41-by-24 feet, with a 10-by-8-foot addition extending to the north (ibid.: 182). A large H-shaped chimney base, measuring 9-x-10-feet with large 5-foot fire boxes, divided the main living space into a traditional heated English hall and parlor, with unheated service rooms or bays. Small, later additions were added to north and east sides of the “Stone House Foundation” dwelling, as evidenced by postholes uncovered with William and Mary (Barka 1976).

PG64: The “Stone House Foundation” H-shaped chimney base (F285), excavated by the College of William and Mary and Southside Historical Sites, Inc. between 1971 and 1978 (exact photo date unknown). Photo facing north, showing feature unexcavated with bricks and cobbles exposed in situ.

DAACS staff members were unable to determine accurately how artifacts were recovered from contexts excavated by the Southside teams. We suspect that screens were used in some cases. But the circumstances under which screens were employed, which contexts were screened, and the mesh size used are not clear from the extant field records. As a result, the recovery method for artifacts is listed as “Not Recorded” in the DAACS data.

Southside removed the plowzone to subsoil in quadrats around the house, exposing numerous features that included postholes for later additions to the east and north of the house, fence lines surrounding the house, three human burials about 45 feet to the west of the house, and numerous other pit and post features.

Most of these features were mapped on the one extant 1978 blueprint map of the site, but field records do not exist, leading DAACS to conclude that they were not excavated by Southside. If you are accessing the context/field record data through DAACS, you will notice notes on many contexts indicating that they were identified by William and Mary but likely given context numbers and excavated by Berkeley in the 1980s.

Excavators continued to remove plowzone as they chased features to the west of the stone foundation. At 120 feet west of the foundation a trench was found, and plowzone removal was extended an additional forty feet west to fully exposed a large rectangular ditch feature (F1000). Nicknamed the “animal enclosure” by the Southside team and measuring around 60-x-30-feet, the trench feature had an approximately 8-foot “opening”, a break in the trench centered along the southern trench. A small nearly square pit feature (F1001) was exposed in the southeastern interior of the enclosure. Like other features outside of the main stone foundation, the trench and pit were not excavated by Southside. The Berkeley team would later recover evidence from the trench that identified it as a small palisade or paling fence enclosing a cellar for a small impermeant domestic structure.

44PG64: Overview of the “Stone House Foundation” and associated features, excavated by the College of William and Mary and Southside Historical Sites, Inc. between 1971 and 1978 (exact photo date unknown). Photo facing south, showing unexcavated eastern and northeastern additions.

Before the end of their work in 1978, William and Mary archaeologists excavated at least 146 quadrats and at least 102 features. We use the word “at least” because there are numerous quadrat levels and features that were excavated for which there are no surviving documents. As a result, we do not know who excavated these contexts. In addition, at least twenty of the 146 quadrats in which William and Mary archaeologists worked, had lower levels removed by Berkeley archaeologists in the 1980s.

James Deetz, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation

Like Barka and Southside, Deetz and his students left no surviving site reports that detail their excavations at 44PG64. DAACS, in collaboration with the University of Virginia’s Special Collections, spent a significant amount of time tracking down and talking with former excavators at the site, in the hopes that new records would come to light. As of this writing, only a two-page summary exists from the 1989 field season. An undated six-page document, likely the introduction to a grant proposal, provides a general overview of Berkeley’s work at five Flowerdew Hundred sites, with a two-paragraph summary dedicated to 44PG64 and 44PG65. As a result, the following details are derived from the sparse field records and maps created by UCB students that were archived with the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation, as well as through conversations that Elizabeth Bollwerk and Fraser Neiman conducted with Len Winters and Ann Markell.

44PG64: Palisade/paling fence ditch (Feature 1000) and associated subfloor pit (F1001). The features were exposed by William and Mary between 1972-1978. UC Berkeley reexposed and excavated the features.

The Berkeley team began work at 44PG64 in 1981. Len Winters served as field director for excavations at the site between 1981 and 1985. Charles (Charlie) Hodges also managed work onsite for the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation when Berkeley students were not on site. Winters, Hodges, and their crew focused on excavating Feature 1000, the palisade/paling fence ditch in units 315, 316, 385, and 386, which has been exposed by Southside but not excavated. Beginning in 1983, excavations focused on Feature 0002 in Quadrats A, B, G and H of Unit 320.

In 1989, Berkeley and Flowerdew Hundred Foundation staff returned to 44PG64, this time under the direction of Ann Markell and Scott Speedy. The apparent goal of the season was to expose and excavate large areas between the stone foundation (FG01) and Feature 1000 to the west and the Stone Foundation and Feature 0002 to the east.

Between 1981 and 1989, Berkeley-affiliated archaeologists excavated at least 75 quadrats and at least 103 features. We use the word “at least” because there are numerous quadrat levels and features that were excavated for which there are no surviving documents. As a result, we do not know who excavated these contexts. In addition, at least twenty of the 75 quadrats in which Berkeley archaeologists worked, had upper levels removed by William and Mary archaeologists in the 1970s.

Interpreting Sediment Assignments Across Seasons

DAACS staff translated William and Mary’s and Berkeley’s stratigraphic sequences into to the DAACS system of deposit types and stratigraphic groups (SG prefix) as follows:
• “Forest Humus” was entered with a deposit type of “Topsoil” as SG01
• “Plowzone” was entered as a deposit type of “Plowzone” as SG02
• There is no SG03 for PG64.
• “Artifact Bearing\Stratum” and ‘Occupation Stratum” were entered with a       deposit type of “Buried A” as SG04
• “Occupational Subsoil” was entered as a deposit type of “Transitional Subsoil” as SG05
• “Subsoil: was entered as a deposit type of “Subsoil: as SG06.
• Cellar, F0002 Level A, Feature Fill was entered as “Fill” as SG07.
• Cellar, F0002 Level B, Feature Fill was entered as “Fill” as SG08.
• Cellar, F0003 Level C, Feature Fill was entered as “Fill” as SG09.
• Cellar, F0003 Level D, Feature Fill was entered as “Fill” as SG10.

• Cellar, F0003 Level E, Feature Fill was entered as “Fill” as SG11.

Summary of Research and Analysis

Norman Barka and the College of William and Mary (1971-1978):

Norman Barka’s 1976 interim site report on 44PG64 is the only surviving archaeological site report from any excavation season at Flowerdew Hundred. While Barka mentions that the Stone House Foundation structure is at the core of a larger settlement that contains multiple structures, pit features, fence lines, and burials (not included in DAACS), most of the report focuses on the architectural features and artifacts from the Stone House Foundation structure. Chapter Two provides the most detailed breakdown of individual excavation levels and features, while Chapter Three provides an overview of artifacts from the dwelling.

Impermanent Architecture (1981):

Drawing by Shearon Vaughn and Cary Carson of the “Stone Foundation House” at 44PG64, Flowerdew Hundred, Prince George County, Virginia (Carson et. al. 1981).

Cary Carson, Norman F. Barka, William M. Kelso, Gary Wheeler Stone, and Dell Upton’s pioneering article “Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies” provides a model for using interdisciplinary methods to understand the past (1981). Their research takes the closest look at the impermanent architecture at Flowerdew Hundred, with a specific focus on the Stone House Foundation at PG64 and the Warehouse at PG65 and places these buildings in the context of impermanent architecture across early North America (1981).   

James Deetz (1981-1984, 1989):

In 1993, James Deetz published his monograph Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation 1619-1864. Over six succinct chapters, Deetz told his story of the plantation through documents and the archaeological remains of 16 sites dating between 1619 and 1864. The second chapter of Flowerdew Hundred focuses on the sites 44PG64, 44PG65, and44PG64/65, all of which are in DAACS. The chapter provides an easily accessible and engaging introduction to these sites and contextualizes them within the last three years of occupation at Flowerdew Hundred. Deetz introduced his thinking about Flowerdew Hundred in a 1988 Science article, American Historical Archaeology: Methods and Results. 

William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research (2010-2011):

In 2010, a team of archaeologists from the William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research (WMCAR), lead by Charlies Hodges, conducted archaeological work at Site 44PG65 and stabilization of exposed archaeological resources at Site 44PG64. Hodges worked at Flowerdew Hundred with both the William and Mary and Berkeley teams in the 1970s and 1980s. Although this 2011 mitigation work is not included in DAACS as part of the 2018 NEH grant, Hodges et. al.’s summary report on archaeological salvage work at Flowerdew Hundred in 2011 provides a concise overview of archaeological research at both sites, as well as the current environmental threats to the sites.

Collections History:

Archaeologists labelling artifacts from Flowerdew Hundred. Date of photography is unknown but thought to be taken during the William and Mary years.

Over the past fifty years, four different institutions have assumed responsibility for the curation of the Flowerdew collection. From 1971 to 2007, the archaeological assemblages were split between the Flowerdew Hundred Museum, located on the Flowerdew Hundred property, the College of William and Mary, and the Hearst (formerly Lowie) Museum at the University of California, Berkeley. It has only been in the last decade that most of the artifacts, field records, and sitemaps have been reunited at the University of Virginia. When the Harrison family sold Flowerdew Hundred in 2007, they donated the entire archaeological collection to the University of Virginia’s Harrison Institute-Small Special Collections Library. From 2007 to 2018, Ms. Karen Shriver, the collection’s curator and only permanent staff member, worked to reunite the archaeological assemblages with the smaller collections and field records held by William and Mary, UC Berkeley, and various PIs. The artifacts and field notes are in highly variable conditions. When housed at the Flowerdew Museum, a busy public program schedule, focus on field work, and general lack of funding for collections management meant that the limited staff processed the collections in a piecemeal fashion. The result is that a sizeable portion of the collection remains partially processed and cataloged. While a box inventory has been created, there is no systematized or complete itemized catalog for the entire collection. The collection’s current curator, Meg Kennedy, has been successful in locating additional archival materials at the College of William and Mary and is working to create a full inventory of the entire Flowerdew Hundred collection.

For three semesters, in 2019 and early 2020, University of Virginia students helped the DAACS team wash and rehouse artifacts, digitize maps, and enter field record information from the Flowerdew Hundred sites as part of DAACS’s Diversity Internship program.

DAACS (2018-2023):

In 2018, DAACS was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for our project titled, The Origins of a Slave Society: Digitizing Flowerdew Hundred (PW-259091-18). The grant’s goals included the identification, analysis and cataloging of all the contexts, maps, and artifacts from four of the earliest sites at Flowerdew Hundred, 44PG64, 44PG65, 44PG64/65, and 44PG92. Jillian Galle and Elizabeth Bollwerk were co-Principal Investigators on the grant, and Bollwerk directed the work based at the DAACS Lab at Monticello.

For 44PG64, and with the help of interns from the University of Virginia, DAACS staff rehoused, identified, analyzed, and cataloged 25,273 artifacts. They also analyzed and cataloged the 792 field records associated with William and Mary’s and UC Berkeley’s excavations at the site. DAACS Senior Archaeological Analyst Leslie Cooper compiled and digitized the numerous maps from all seasons of excavation, which are available through the images and maps section. Catherine Garcia finalized the 44PG65 maps. DAACS analysts responsible for identifying, photographing, cataloging and analysis of the artifacts from 44PG65 included Lily Carhart, Sarah Platt, Iris Puryear, Allison Mueller, Cate Garcia, and Elizabeth Bollwerk. Lindsay Bloch of Tempered Archaeological Services identified, analyzed, and cataloged the Indigenous ceramics from the site. We have relied on help of early 17th-century material culture specialists, Merry Outlaw and Bly Straube, coarse earthenware specialist Lindsay Bloch, small finds specialist Sara Rivers Cofield, and lithic specialists Dennis Blanton, Charles Cobb, and Christopher Egghart. DAACS Diversity Interns from UVA included Shaheen Alikhan, Emily Anderson, Cindy Gwana, Adrienne Preston, Brittany Ivy, Jenna Owens, and Macie Clerkley.

44PG92 F2, F3, F12, F15N, V17, V18, V31, V32
Handpainted blue delftware

This work was done in collaboration with the University of Virginia’s Special Collections Library, which curates the Flowerdew Collection, and we are grateful for the consistent and efficient help and continuing support of Meg Kennedy and Brenda Gunn. The site was launched on the DAACS website in December 2023. Detailed artifact and context data can be found in the Query the Database section of this website.  The physical collection (field records and artifacts) is curated at the Flowerdew Hundred Lab at the University of Virginia.

With the standardized archaeological data that resulted from this project, Fraser Neiman and DAACS staff developed a chronology for 44PG64, the detailed results of which can be found on the site’s Chronology page (link). Previous analyses of the site have assumed that all the features on it were contemporary (Deetz 1993:39). However, our analysis suggests there are at least three distinct phases of occupation. Phase 1, with a Binford Mean Pipe Stem date of 1617, and Phase 2, with a Binford Mean Pipe Stem date of 1633, includes the stone-house foundation excavated by the College of William and Mary in the early 1970s (Barka 1976) and a cellar (Feature F0002) to the northeast of it, excavated by the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1990s. The third phase, with a Binford Mean Pipe Stem date of 1655, includes a small subfloor pit (Feature F1001) and a rectangular, 40-by-60-foot enclosure, marked by a paling ditch (Feature F1000), surrounding the pit, both excavated by Berkeley in the 1980s. When read alongside DAACS chronologies for 44PG65, the Fortified Compound, and PG64/65, the Windmill, and considering scant primary sources, a suggestive new chronology emerges for the earliest settlements at Flowerdew Hundred.

The pipestem chronologies suggest that the Stone House Foundation cellar and the cellar to the east (F0002), outside the fenced/palisaded area surrounding the Stone House Foundation, date to the early 1620s, are among the earliest residences at Flowerdew Hundred, likely predating the Fortified Palisade, which has often been interpreted as the earlier settlement, and the one that deterred greater casualties during the 1622 uprising. Ongoing artifact analysis by DAACS staff is more fully exploring the English occupational phases at 44PG64, and linking them to precontact indigenous occupations at PG64, as well as to other early 17^th-century Flowerdew Hundred sites.