The proposed study is designed as a stand-alone research and publication project that will substantially advance understanding of Chesapeake material culture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It will complement the published report on Governor’s Land archaeological sites dating to the first half of the seventeenth century (Outlaw 1990), thereby providing a documented archaeological continuum spanning approximately 200 years.
Analysis of the Drummond/Harris collections and archaeological data will address several central research questions:
- How was the property used and how did its function and landscape change over the approximately 170-year occupation?
- How does the material culture reflect the diversity of people who lived and worked on the property?
- How were social and economic status expressed through ceramic choices and other consumer goods?
- Can plow-zone soil chemistry, artifact distributions, and analysis of artifacts from subsurface features help identify the locations of former above-ground architectural elements and activity areas, including doorways, windows, rooms, paths, and work spaces that are not readily identifiable through subsurface evidence alone?
The integration of these data will also help establish the chronology and spatial distribution of documented craft activities. Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of a smoking-pipe kiln, toy production, and metalworking at a bloomery, all of which produced artifacts on site. Virginia-made ceramics dating from approximately 1648 to 1820 will be particularly important in identifying and dating archaeological features. These assemblages will be examined alongside ceramics imported from England, New England, and Pennsylvania (see Appendix A for a map of regional sources).
The ceramic assemblages also provide an opportunity to examine changing patterns of consumption, social identity, and economic status across successive generations of the Drummond and Harris families. The late seventeenth-century ceramic choices of Sarah Drummond, an elite Virginia woman, will be illustrated through assemblages associated with the period following her petition to the king for restitution of the property seized by Governor Berkeley during Bacon’s Rebellion.
Although the Drummond heirs on the Governor’s Land were less politically prominent during the eighteenth century, their material possessions suggest that they continued to participate in contemporary expressions of status and fashionable consumption. Their ceramic assemblages include important collections of Chinese porcelain tea wares, plates, and punch bowls, as well as matching sets of delftware, creamware, and pearlware tablewares reflecting the latest fashions. These objects offer an unusually rich opportunity to trace changing consumer preferences and the material expression of social aspirations in colonial Virginia.
