Join Montpelier archaeologists as they dig at the Blacksmith site

ORANGE COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) -James Madison’s Montpelier is gearing up for its spring archaeology dig.

Director of Archaeology Mathew Reeves says this year they are going to concentrate on the blacksmith shop site, located near the field quarters on the historic property. They have spent the past three years doing gridded metal detector survey of the area to locate buildings, roads, and everything that would have been part of the farm landscape.

“The craft and the ingenuity and the skill is immediately evident, and it just makes this blacksmith shop such a special place to do archaeology and work with descendants on figuring out what steps are going to be doing with the research and the interpretation,” Reeves said.

Reeves says they will start excavating next week.

If you would like to work side-by-side with the Montpelier staff of archaeologists to excavate, sift, and preserve the past on the property they offer one weeklong sessions to the public beginning in late March through November.

More info can be found at https://www.montpelier.org/archaeology.

Copyright 2021 WVIR. All rights reserved.