Digging Ravenscroft - Archaeology Magazine Archive

Williamsburg archaeologist Andrew Edwards discusses ongoing excavations

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Students from the College of William & Mary excavating at the Ravenscroft site. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

Colonial Williamsburg is a living museum rebuilt and thriving as if it were the year 1776. Along with reenactment and buildings, history here is being unearthed and brought to life thanks to ongoing excavations and analysis. The College of William & Mary and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation have been running a field school in Williamsburg for 25 years. This season's excavations are centered on the Ravenscroft lot in the north east of the colonial village. The Ravenscroft site includes the buried remains of structures dating from the 1720s to the early 20th century. The site is named for Thomas Ravenscroft, one of its earliest owners and was occupied by numerous and varied inhabitants. This season's work is focused on part of the main house, the outbuilding behind it, and another, smaller outbuilding. ARCHAEOLOGY's Morgan Moroney spoke with Colonial Williamsburg Foundation staff archaeologist Andrew Edwards about excavations, students, dirt, and the joys of being an archaeologist in Williamsburg.

What is your archaeological background?

I began working for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 1982, but I actually started my career in 1968 working in the archaeology lab at William & Mary, but that was as a student. I received my bachelor's and master's degrees from William & Mary and I started full-time archaeology in 1973. I was first more interested in cultural anthropology but a professor of mine told me to go volunteer at an excavation in Yorktown and he said if I enjoyed it, I'd have a job [as a field archeologist for the College of William & Mary]. I volunteered and I've dug it ever since!

Video featuring students from the College of William & Mary and archaeologists of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation excavating at the Ravenscroft site (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

How long have you been excavating at Ravenscroft and what have you uncovered so far?

This is our fourth season at Ravenscroft, our first being in 2006, and this is our fourth run with the field school at the site as well. We began June 1 and the school lasts through June, July, and part of August. We've spent three years working on an odd little store-like building with a cellar. It's a 14x16 foot cellar with a large hearth attached and an interior hearth. In 1954 the building was excavated by Colonial Williamsburg architects but we had a lot of questions about the building including its function. Our excavations there were finished in 2006. The building was probably a bake house until the late 18th century then eventually went out of use. It served as a coal bin for a neighbor for the rest of the 18th century.

What is the focus of the 2009 excavations?

This year we moved to another lot across the street to investigate the kitchen of the main house that straddles Botetourt Street. It was a large 18th-century house that the architecture team excavated part of in the 1950s. The Frenchman's map depicts a kitchen behind the house that was not excavated in 1954 and we decided to try to locate it. And after the first few weeks we discovered that he kitchen was probably in the middle of the street—the Frenchman's map had it placed where Botetourt Street now runs, but hopefully we'll find some midden to excavate and find more out about who lived in the house.

This area of Williamsburg was also the center of an early 20th century of a black community. On just the Ravenscroft lot there was a black church, a pool hall, barbershop, boarding house, and a garage—all in view of Botetourt Street. We wanted to see what we could find of that community, and we also looked to see what would be remembered by those still alive and so we did oral histories about the area.

What is the "Frenchman's map"? How helpful is the map in the survey and dating of Ravenscroft, how accurate is it, and what are the limitations of using such a document?

It is a map of the City of Williamsburg. A number of similar maps were done after the Revolution. They were made by Lafayette's army. His cartographers did a number of different cities also Yorktown, Fredericksburg. It was meant for billeting troops through the city to eventually be sent home. They're fairly accurate, although most of the maps are in French. The Frenchman's map was made by a French man whose name we don't know, and it's a wonderful map of Williamsburg. It has virtually all the main buildings, although no all the out buildings. It is useful, especially overlaid on top a real topographical map using geo referencing. It is less accurate north of Duke Gloucester Street where we are working of course, which is why we decided to see if Botetourt Street really runs through the middle of the house, which it seems to do.

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College of William & Mary student John Loudwig doing public archaeology at Ravenscroft (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

Why did you choose to focus on these areas and what do you hope to learn from the 2009 excavations?

There are actually two residences on the site, the main house straddling Botetourt and a smaller one just to the east and we want to know how these two were related. The Davenports lived on lot 269 and 270 [Davenport House] on Williamsburg's "back street" (called Nicholson Street) and the Royals (among others) lived just to the west on lots 267 and 268 [Royal House]. We're excavating on lots 268 and 269.

Thomas Ravenscoft was the second owner and the house he probably built was later occupied by the Holt and Royal families both of whom were printers of the Virginia Gazette. We wanted to learn about the kitchen behind the Davenport House, the smaller house next door to the Royals which was excavated in 1954. The architects who excavated the Ravenscroft site were not very interested in artifacts and they dumped them back in after excavation. We can learn a lot from these artifacts, even if they're a little out of context.

We have found a lot of 18th-century ceramics and Colono Ware, a ware often associated with African Americans. We know the family had slaves and we know the names of those slaves. We also found very fine tea ware used by the family. We are engaged at looking at the 18th-century African-American community and the 20th century too. A 20th-century black training school was on the site from 1924 to 1940 and we hope to learn about that as well.

Have the archaeobotanical samples from Structure A (the cellar building) excavated in the 2006-2008 seasons been tested? Have any new conclusions been made about the structure?

We have not received the coal samples from the bake house back yet—I wanted to see if it was local or English coal. The archaeobotanical remains didn't prove to be helpful, which can often happen.

How many students participate in the field school and what is its focus?

There are 25 people working at the site, which is a lot. Normally it's between 10 and 15. We have 17 students, three interns, three staff, two teaching assistants and Dr. Marley Brown. The school is taught by Dr. Brown, who is a professor of anthropology at William & Mary (and formerly the Director of Archaeological Research for Colonial Williamsburg). We have been working with the field school for 25 years, longer than most of the students have been alive.

The focus of the field school is archaeological method and teaching the importance of public archaeology. We often engage the public and it's nice to give the students the opportunity to interest people and tell curious onlookers about what they are working on. People get enthusiastic about seeing archaeology and although not all the students are completely "interested," if we can interest them in what they are doing and make them realize it's important, they are learning and having fun. They also have lectures, conservation, archaeobotanical remains, faunal analysis, and artifact identification in addition to midterms, finals and 25 assigned readings like Small Things Forgotten [by James Deetz].

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The map shows the current excavations. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

Did the students working on the site last summer have the opportunity to continue to work with the collected and recorded materials and the GPS data during the school year?

Unfortunately, no. They were able to the year before last and couple years before that when a visiting professor taught a course in the fall. The students recorded, analyzed, and used the data collected. We are not able to do this with the field school but we try to get the students in the lab during the field school as often as possible to deal with clean artifacts, to follow a sliver of glass all the way through from excavation to cleaning to labeling.

What types of guests and volunteers tend to visit the site and what sorts of activities do you do with them?

Hands-on archaeology. We have activities three days a week, mostly for children. Meredith Pool, another staff archaeologist, developed a number of programs. We do things such as look at a pig skeleton, a modern one, and a life-size poster of a pig and the kids can see what the bones look like and understand the types of meat they were eating in colonial times. They also pick out seeds and we talk to them about archaeobotanical remains, let them screen. It's a lot of fun!

What are your most interesting or unexpected finds so far this season?

We searched for the 18th-century kitchen of the Royal House that burned in 1896, but we didn't find the building, which means it's probably in the road. Of 19th-century material, which we expected to find, very little was found. The biggest surprise was finding so many damned utilities! The utility company marked one, we found six more, like a 1920s electric line. But we have a lot of students and it's good for them to excavate and screen. We are treating them like features. They are not as exciting, of course, but they are good teaching tools.

The fact that there was more 18th-century material, and the great variety of material, than we anticipated was a surprise, and putting that together will give us a good picture of the Royal and Davenport lots and an opportunity to compare them to previous excavations. Which neighbor had what (or didn't). Maybe we'll find a fence between?

What are your future plans for the Ravenscroft site: further excavations or perhaps eventually building a replica of it as a museum?

We are not building a replica at this point, and there is currently no museum that displays the artifacts of Williamsburg. We are working on a virtual reconstruction of the entire town. There are also plans to re-create the town itself to exactly how it was in 1776, which would mean some buildings go away, some new ones appear. The Capitol Building is now built like the [original 1705] one that was destroyed in a fire and then rebuilt in 1747, so the capitol would have to be changed to show the building as it was during the American Revolution. Next summer's field school venue is uncertain; we may re-investigate the Davenport House remains. There are a lot of questions from the 1954 excavations.

Why is the excavation of Ravenscroft important for the history of Colonial Williamsburg and America?

The site really covers and spans a great deal of time. Ravenscroft reaches back to folks involved in the Virginia Gazette, publishing, and it helped shape some of history especially going into looking into the approaching [American] Revolution. It's important to look at enslaved Americans and also the archaeological record of the early 20th-century black Americans and have visitors relate with colonial Williamsburg and how it all works together. What we have found from the 18th century is pre-revolution and we can study the build up and the formation of America—we can look at how all these all relate to us becoming Americans. Part of why the whole research there is important is that we have a lot of people visiting and they can learn and appreciate the site. Archaeology makes history dirty and tangible and fun!