Since I started a bit of a trend by announcing my field school on
HISTARCH back in the Spring, I thought I'd try another trend
(actually following Jack's and Anita's lead with S.D. Presidio
project) and provide a synopsis of this summer's discoveries:
Curles Plantation Archaeology Project Update: Students digging
Virginia's oldest known brick plantation house make a double
discovery.
Students enrolled in VCU's summer field school in archaeology set out
this summer to complete the excavation of the oldest brick house yet
discovered in Virginia. The Thomas and Joane Harris House site is the
remains of the earliest of a series of manor houses constructed at
Curles Plantation in Henrico County. Last year's excavations had lead
me to realize that this house is unusually elaborate and quite large
for its period. It was built about 1635, a time period when most
Virginians built small, temporary, wooden houses on their tobacco
plantations. Even chimneys and foundations were built of wood. The
Harris house had a full basement with brick floor, a brick-and-stone
bread oven, and two large brick hearths (at least). Construction is
post-in-ground inside the basement, and the walls were brick nogged
clean to the plates. The end walls were apparently all brick (there
are no corner posts or king posts). In many places the brick nogging
has remained in situ, and in others, walls have fallen to the floor
but remain well articulated.
This year's work--our 11th season of excavation at Curles-- revealed
a double surprise. Not only was the Harris House constructed with
walls, chimneys, floor made of brick, but the house was actually
twice as large as we believed it to be based on earlier work. An
entire new wing was discovered towards the end of this season's
digging. What's more, discovery of this wing helped to solve a
lingering mystery. We had excavated the home of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr.
--leader of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676-- at Curles back in 1988 and
1989. Historical documents indicated that there was another building
attached to Bacon's house--one called the "old hall." This suggested
that the Harris House might have remained standing during Bacon's
tenure at Curles in the 1670s, but archaeological evidence did not
support this. Instead, the old brick house clearly appeared to have
burned down between 1655-60, long before Bacon arrived in Virginia.
Discovery of the new wing not only has expanded the interpretation of
the Harris House, it also has doubled the size of Bacon's, because
this wing appears to have remained standing during Bacon's time.
What's more, it was connected to Bacon's House by a tunnel beneath
the ground and, probably, by a covered walkway above the ground.
Among the zillions of interesting artifacts recovered this summer
were numerous iron tools, pieces of armor, elaborately decorated
hand-made tobacco pipes with Joane Harris's initials on them, and an
Elizabethan coin--a sixpence dated 1575!
The excavation was a real coup for another reason. Excavating the
Harris House cellar required leaving the massive brick foundations of
a ca. 1700-1710 plantation house/kitchen pedestalled in the earlier
cellar. The 18th century building was built on 1.5 m. of artifical
terrace fill laid over the cellar and rubble of the Harris House. So,
you can imagine the visual impact (and the excavation nightmare) of a
large brick foundation on a huge pedestal of fill standing almost
entirely within the cellar of an early 17th-c. brick house! Of course
we brought in the big cherry picker for the final pix, and they are
truly nifty.
Dan Mouer
[log in to unmask]
|
