Mount Vernon's Archaeology
Department has just launched a new web resource (www.mountvernonmidden.org)
devoted to artifacts excavated from a rich, pre-Revolutionary War domestic
deposit associated with the Washington households and the enslaved individuals
who lived and worked around the mansion. This website (designed by Mark Freeman of Stories Past) was created to
digitize, showcase, and contextualize artifacts excavated from the South Grove
Midden site. The heart of this website is a searchable database of over 700
objects – complete with photographs, detailed summaries, and catalogue
information – connected to a rich body of documentary and thematic
material.
On the Archaeology section, you can learn more about the history of the
archaeological site and see images of the excavations. Under History, the
timeline provides access to important primary documents. Additionally, two
historical databases, George Washington’s invoices and orders and Alexander
Henderson’s schemes of goods, are located in this section and allow for
extensive exploration of the consumer revolution. These two databases allow users to compare the
consumer goods available to and necessary for the success of a large-scale
plantation like Mount Vernon with the types of merchandise available at the
local store to small-scale planters, tradesmen, and enslaved individuals. Links under Context provide specific
studies of artifact sub-assemblages like fans, buttons, and dairying artifacts
that integrate the documentary evidence from the two databases. Theme
pages allow visitors to explore how archaeological material culture contributes
to our understanding of significant topics in colonial American including: gentility;
slavery; gender; and consumerism. The About sections gives a photographic
project history and provides links to publications and reports.
If you use the website, we’d appreciate your feedback, especially as we
prepare for our second phase of the Archaeological Collections Online initiative! Thanks, Eleanor
Eleanor Breen, MA, RPA
Deputy Director for
Archaeology
Historic Mount Vernon
PO Box 110
Mount Vernon, VA 22121
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