Frequently Asked Questions

What are you looking for?

We are trying to learn more about a house that stood here in the early eighteenth century. The cellar for this house was found in 1954, but a north-facing fireplace on the outside of the cellar strongly suggests that there is more of the building left to find. In addition, a 1785 Virginia Gazette advertisement of the property for sale describes the house as being accompanied by “every convenient outhouse,” so we are looking in the back yard (north of the house) to see if any of these outbuildings left physical evidence behind. We hope our excavations will help us to date the construction sequence of the house, and to map and date any additional outbuildings we find.

Who lived here?

During the Middle Plantation period, prior to the founding of Williamsburg in 1699, John Page owned this land, but we are not sure if anyone was resident on this property at that time. Previous excavations here uncovered a seventeenth-century boundary ditch and roof tiles from John Page’s kiln (dating to the 1660s), suggesting that the site may indeed have been occupied at that early date. Historical documents have given us a long list of people who have lived here since. The earliest of these was a man named Christopher Jackson, a surveyor, who bought the two colonial lots that make up the Ravenscroft site in 1713 after Williamsburg was partitioned into half-acre parcels of land. An ordinary-keeper named Robert Wills owned the property in the 1730s. Though we previously believed that Wills did not operate his ordinary (or tavern) on this site, we are now reevaluating that possibility, and searching the documentary record for evidence that a tavern did exist here. At several points in its history, Ravenscroft was leased out to tenants, but its most prominent residents were William Hunter and Joseph Royle, two printers of Williamsburg’s newspaper, the Virginia Gazette. Hunter and Royle lived here during the 1750s and 60s.

How did you know to dig here?

In 1954 the Ravenscroft Site was trenched in an effort to locate brick foundations of the buildings that Colonial Williamsburg hoped to reconstruct. Digging trenches one foot wide and five feet apart, excavators located two cellars and a well on this property. One of these cellars (to the east of where we are now digging) measures 50 by 24 feet and extends out into Botetourt Street. The other cellar (where we are now digging) is 14 by 16 feet in size. The well is to the north of our current excavations.

Why weren’t these two buildings rebuilt?

We really don’t know. We suspect excavators knew that they had only found part of the building that we are now excavating, and so a complete and accurate reconstruction would not have been possible. The other (larger) building lies partially under Botetourt Street. Rebuilding it would have required closing a road that was (and still is) an important route into and out of the Historic Area.

Will you rebuild the buildings this time?

Currently, there are no plans to rebuild either of the Ravenscroft buildings. We may undertake “virtual reconstruction,” modeling the buildings on computers as they evolved through time. Creating a 3D computer model will permit a more accurate portrayal of the site as it appeared at various points in Williamsburg’s history. In the virtual world, users will be able to explore the buildings and landscape and at the same to access a range of documentary materials about the property.

Have there been any other archaeological projects on this site?

In addition to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s initial 1954 trenching, there was another excavation in 1998. Colonial Williamsburg decided to place a tenant house here, reflecting the fact that we know the lot housed tenants for a while. To determine whether the placing of the tenant house would cause any damage to archaeological resources, archaeologists placed a 7 by 10 meter (23 by 33 foot) excavation unit in the area between the two cellars. Among other things, they found a large midden (or trash pit) built up along the east wall of the cellar we are investigating this summer, two postholes, and a boundary ditch that dates from the seventeenth century.

If this site was already dug, why are you digging it again?

We are using very different techniques. When the site excavation was led by James Knight in the 1950s, historical archaeology as we practice it today was unknown. Excavators were primarily interested in finding and mapping brick foundations for historic reconstructions, and so selected the most efficient means of finding those architectural remains: they dug narrow trenches, about five feet apart, and they did not screen the excavated soil for artifacts. Today we are opening up large areas (called “open-area excavation” in the trade) and searching between those trenches for soil stains and other features that will help us to understand what happened here in finer detail. Although excavators in 1998 used modern archaeological techniques, their excavation area was located east of where we are digging; we do not need to this area again. That project demonstrated that many features related to buildings and landscape use did survive the 1950s excavations intact.

How deep will you dig?

Archaeologists dig until they hit subsoil, a sterile clay layer (without artifacts and cultural features) that has not been disturbed by human occupation. In Williamsburg, we usually find subsoil 18 to 24 inches below the surface, though on the Ravenscroft site we have to dig over three feet before finding subsoil in some areas, due to a small ravine that used to run through the site and has since been filled.

Are those artifacts valuable?

No, not if you mean we could sell them for money. Most of the things we find were deliberately thrown away because they were broken. For an archaeologist, however, the entire assemblage of artifacts from a site, together with the information about where they were found, is of enormous research value. A site’s artifact assemblage can provide dates for specific construction and destruction events, tell us about the status of the sites residents, and help us to understand the activities that took place here.

What will you do with all of the artifacts that you find?

Each artifact is carefully recorded and catalogued. Artifacts are taken back to our lab to be cleaned and labeled with a catalog number that is linked to information about where the artifact was found, the soil layer or feature in which it was found, what it is, and when it was made. In some cases, pieces of artifacts from the same item are reassembled, like a puzzle, to better understand which features or areas of a site were deposited at the same moment in time. These reconstructed artifacts can also be used for display, so that the public can visualize what the entire artifact looked like and how it was used. Artifacts that are fragile or chemically unstable undergo conservation, treatment by specialists to restore an artifact’s appearance to a state that allows the public to understand its purpose, and to prevent further damage by bacteria, corrosion, or other environmental processes. After they have been catalogued and conserved, artifact collections may be stored in controlled environments for study by future researchers, or they may be displayed for public education at museums or historic reconstructions.

Why do archaeologists dig so carefully in such square holes?

An archaeological site can never be dug twice! Because in excavating a site, we actually destroy it, archaeologists must make meticulous records, photographs, and maps of everything that they excavate just as crime scene detectives are careful not to disturb anything from the scene of a crime before it has been photographed and recorded. Each square, or unit, is linked to a site grid in three dimensions that can be mapped to help site archaeologists, as well as other researchers, understand how all of the elements of physical evidence relate to each other. The flat walls and flat floors of square units also help archaeologists to see changes in soil color and texture that are traces of human activities on the site.