WheatLand Foundation

The Governor’s Land Archaeological District (GLAD) was placed on the Virginia Landmarks Register And the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. This designation was followed by the detailed survey (inventory) of sites in the 2,000 acres in 1975, led by Alain C. Outlaw and funded by the National Park Service. Subsequently, two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants funded background research, fieldwork, laboratory processing and analysis, and summary reports from 1976 to 1981 for these sites, including the Drummond/Harris Site (44JC0043). The two earliest sites were published by the University Press of Virginia in 1990. Aside from numerous articles, research reports, and manuscripts, however, the site as a whole remains unpublished.
This funding request is for a larger project component to curate and document all excavated sites on the Governor’s Land. Nevertheless, it is a stand-alone piece that, over a three-year period, will document the 32 structures, three craft areas, eight wells, one icehouse, nine refuse pits, 16 lengths of fences, seven ditches, a roadway, garden enclosures, and 21 graves, and approximately 500 to 700 representative artifacts recovered from the plow zone and subsurface cultural deposits at the Drummond/Harris Site (44JC0043). The description of the plow zone and subsurface features and artifacts is planned to take place concurrently.
With NEH support, field records and maps were compiled, soil chemistry was analyzed, artifact catalogs were prepared, artifacts were conserved, and numerous photos and drawings of the artifacts were completed. This endeavor further advances the documentation and completes the site report.
The work will be undertaken at the Wheatland Foundation, Inc. office and laboratory at Christopher Newport University (CNU), where the Principal Investigator has been Adjunct Professor in the History Department for 25 years. Ongoing artifact analysis will also continue at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation storage facility in York County, where the Governor’s Land collection is stored.
As Principal Investigator on numerous projects at Governor’s Land, Alain C. Outlaw is particularly well suited to undertake this project. He brings decades of practical archaeological experience to this project. He has published a book, contributed to technical journal articles, and prepared popular articles on Governor’s Land. Curator Merry A. Outlaw has published numerous articles using the Drummond/Harris artifact collection, and has extensive knowledge of the material culture of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.