On Wednesday, Stephen Potter struck pay dirt on the Monocacy National Battlefield's Best Farm along the same north-south axis where the remnants of five other slave dwellings were discovered this summer.
"There you go, mortar, whole bed of it," Potter shouted to his colleagues, his shovel clinking against the likely stone foundation of a late 18th century to early 19th century hearth.
Potter, the National Capital Region archaeologist for the National Park Service, said of the more than 88,000 acres of national park land he has studied in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, the slave village at Best Farm is unique.
On other sites, individual slave dwellings have been found, but never an intact village like the one that existed in sight of the manor house on what was a 748-acre plantation called L'Hermitage, Potter said.
"This is truly extraordinary," he said.
Archaeologists made their initial discovery at the site in 2003, but research stalled until this summer when funding from the U.S. Department of Interior arrived, said Joy Beasley project director and cultural resources manager for the National Park Service at the battlefield.
The funding source, the Youth Intake Program, has also allowed the National Park Service to hire six students from Hood College, American University, University of Maryland College Park and Howard University to help with the excavation.
On Wednesday, more in-house personnel at the National Park Services' George Washington Memorial Parkway lent the local team its surface-penetrating radar equipment, along with their expertise, to the project.
"Normally this is pretty expensive," Beasley said. "We wouldn't have had the budget to support that."
Potter said the equipment can be imagined as an advanced and powerful type of metal detector that has the ability to detail anomalies, such as stone structures, in both recorded and real time from 4 feet to 16 feet below the surface.
Through other advanced remote sensing surveys, as well as labor-intensive shovel work completed since June, the excavation team had identified four chimney foundations, and what appears to be the outline of gardens or animal pens surrounding the village, Beasley said.
In a matter of hours, the surface penetrating radar pointed the way to two more, while researchers used an old-fashioned shovel test to prove the case. Both Beasley and Potter said more dwellings may exist, buried beneath the surface.
Knowing the size of the dwellings as well as cataloging and analyzing the artifacts in and around them will help the archaeologists determine how many enslaved people lived there and what their daily lives were like.
"That's why we're excited about this, in spite of the adversity, they made lives for themselves," he said.
Beasley said researchers have already recovered a large number of formal and casual vessels, some stemware and glassware, buttons, tobacco pipe fragments, pad locks, nails, spikes and coins, she said.
Food remains are also among archeologists' inventory, including cow and pig bones and oyster shells.
"We're just really excited to be bringing this site back to life," she said.
Potter said he hopes more excavation funding will come through for 2011 to build upon what has been found.
After the field work wraps up this fall, the team will focus on cataloging, analyzing and interpreting their findings in a report they plan to publish by next fall, Beasley said.
"It's a great resource, and it's also important and special for Frederick County."
Author: Nicholas C. Stern | Source: Frederick News Post [August 19, 2010]
