93-09-24:  Tracing Jeffersonian Roots, Symposium Digs Into 
                      Archaeology in Virginia


     What Indian burial mounds and broken teacups can tell us
about Virginia's past was discussed in a symposium at U.Va. Sept.
18 on Thomas Jefferson's legacy to the field of archaeology,
along with the new directions for modern-day historical
archaeology and Virginia's archaeological future. Co-sponsored
by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation and the University,
the event was part of the year-long celebration commemorating the
250th anniversary of Jefferson's birth and highlighted yet
another aspect of Mr. Jefferson's extraordinary intellectual
curiosity.

     Characterizing the symposium as "a summit of the best
minds," Daniel P. Jordan, executive director of the Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Foundation, introduced the "blue ribbon panel"
as representing "the most informed opinions on the state of
archaeology in Thomas Jefferson's day and today." 

     Long considered the father of American archaeology,
Jefferson's interest in native Indians and archaeology dates to
his youth, according to William Kelso, the Association for the
Preservation of Virginia Antiquities' director of archaeology.
As a boy of 8, Thomas Jefferson observed Indians passing near his
Shadwell home en route to the Blue Ridge mountains detouring to
visit a mound of earth. Noting their mournful expressions, the
memory stayed with him, Mr. Kelso said. "In his 20s Jefferson
organized an archaeological expedition to that mound, located
five miles north of Charlottesville on the banks of the south
Rivanna River. His field work there anticipated modern scientific
archaeology for a century," Mr. Kelso said.

     In Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, he speculated
about the origin of American Indians and explained his field work
at the mound. Finding a thousand or more skeletons in alternate
layers of stones, earth and bones, he concluded that it was a
communal burial mound for Indians in the Piedmont. Jefferson's
conclusions illustrate "his understanding of the
interrelationship of soil layer buildup to time and the
importance of the context of artifacts -- in this case human
bones," Mr. Kelso said. "Archaeology, which gives us the ability
to reach back across time and touch things last touched by people
long dead is the nearest thing to time travel there is," said Mr.
Kelso, who until recently was director of archaeology at
Monticello. "Archaeology fleshs out documentary evidence.
Fieldwork at Monticello over the last 10 years has yielded the
largest documented collection of slave articles and the most
documented slave quarters," he said. "The strata revealed the
domestic life once there. We have learned that despite the
tremendous handicap of captivity, black people created a
community at Monticello that was as vibrant as any other segment
of society in colonial America."

     In his remarks examining the "rationale" for Jefferson's
dig, Associate Professor of Anthropology Jeffrey Hantman said,
"Jefferson did not see it as a key to understanding American
Indians. He thought it [archaeology] a far too speculative domain
from which to write history. The purpose of the dig was not to
seek empirical facts from the ground to write a  history of the
Indians. I think it best to view the dig as a stunning attempt
to understand the structure of a manmade structure on the
landscape."

     But at the same time Mr. Hantman, who has spent the past
eight summers leading a dig at a Monacan Indian site on the James
River in Wingina, Va., credits Jefferson for "contextualizing"
his account of the burial mound he excavated, with references to
other mounds in Virginia, and "many others in other parts of the
country. He understood that it could only be understood in its
larger context; the recurring theme of the mounds is continuity
and shared culture." 

     "Jefferson was hardly alone in his interest in American
Indians," said Stephen Williams, Harvard University professor
emeritus, in discussing the work of Jefferson's archaeological
compatriots who investigated other mounds across the country
including those in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. "Their
passion to preserve already threatened monuments and artifacts
enabled true understanding of America's cultural heritage and
were consistent with Jefferson's practical idealism," said Mr.
Williams.