Early Settlement and Cemetery

Early Settlement and Cemetery. Freedom Park. Archaeologists discovered a large domestic complex at Freedom Park that reveals important physical evidence about colonial Virginia's transformation. The site, which evolved between c.1680 and c.1745 shows how a society based upon African-American slave labor developed between the late seventeenth century and the mid-eighteenth century rise of Williamsburg. , In the first half of the eighteenth century, the site was an outlying slave quarter of the Ludwell family's Green Spring plantation, located four miles to the south. Even though this site was unoccupied by about 1750, the cemetery remained an important central burial place until the early nineteenth century., Detailed archaeological investigations led to the discovery of surprisingly well preserved artifacts even though the area was used for logging in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Fieldwork recovered thousands of artifacts and eight domestic structures (c.1680 to c.1745) as well as fences, ditches and refuse pits. The presence of at least 160 graves was recorded (c.1680 to c.1745 and c.1770 to c.1810)., The graves of several individuals were excavated by archaeologists to permit their study by human osteologists, specialists in the study of bones. Before they were reburied in their original graves, important data was collected on gender, age at death, stature, trauma, disease, and other features that would increase understanding about the population., (caption) , Above: Map detailing late 17th-century dwellings and early-18th-century slave quarters. Left: Pearlware bowl and fragment. Below (left and right): Excavation in progress. Courtesy Alain C. Outlaw