insurance plat with the rest of the ground and able to start to explore the area for thur near outbuildings. what we found is that we got three duplexes, four buildings we marked. two smoke houses that are on the insurance map, a kitchen that is beside the house that is an 18th century kitchen we located through archeology, the other duplex one of three that we will be reconstructing. now, the timber frames that you see out here, these represent the size and massings of the buildings. gives visitors an idea of where the buildings are and how large they are. what we've done is timber framing is authentic to the early 19th century. we had a historic architect, willie graham from colonial

williamsburg who designed timber frame technology of the time period and what we've done with the timber frames, is outlined the buildings with the framing because if we put on the siding, we don't have enough information to put on the siding, put in the windows and doorways because we haven't done enough archeology in the area. the second point with not doing enough archeology in the area. if we put a roof and siding on the buildings, they would have a wind load, we would have to put in footers which would disturb the archeological record. the footers are on the ground surface, the archeology below there can be excavated in the -- if we need to, we tan take the buildings down, do the archeology in the area. the reason why it's important we're doing this research and going to spend a year doing the archeology on these particular quarters is that we just recently restored the house. we spent six to seven years doing the restoration of james and dolly madison's home.

and one thing that we're able to represent with restored home are the space where james and dolly is, some of the service places where the slaves worked. what we don't have represented is where the slaves have their homes this, what is we're doing with the excavation in the south yard and timber frame outlines you see right here, is representing -- the house is where they would have w would hs where they called home. and daily lives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles would have been played out. to talk about that with visitors to bring humanity to the people that were enslaved by the madisons we felt was important to show their hopes and represent their homes in a physical way. because so many times when when

visitors here before we had the timber frame, to be understand what slaves daily life was like and how they had -- they were part of a much larger community with very difficult to do without the structures either being investigated a logically or timber frames in place. we have an archeology team at montpelier that works full-time. students that work during the summer and during the fall and spring we have what is called expedition programs, people come out for a week and work side-by-side. this it is a five foot by five foot square. the reason why we excavate is we want to know where all the artifacts are coming from, from the site. so by ex-ka rating five foot by five foot squares, we can see where they are differentifacts .

all the nails are maped in with lasers and what you can see on the map right here that nicole has drawn is she plotted in where all the artifacts are, we have drawings where features are, and we put all the maps together at the end of the excavation and proves a site map of the entire project area. and then what we can do is relate that site map to the larger landscape where the febs lines are, how far this is from the mansion, how far from other features we found. >> that is like a platter. >> yes, put this stuff out. >> they were found stacked on

top of each other. >> this is decorated on the interior. and exterior. >> so this has got to be -- this looks like a chamber pot from the size of the foot ring and -- >> that makes my day. in a really sick way. >> but actually, this pattern looks like a little bit later, like 1830's transfer decoration. which is still -- it matches -- >> this has a little guy on it. >> oh, yeah. little cherub with a heart. >> this is more little. >> that is more of that floral pattern. this one is neat. >> real thick. and it's got the etching. >> that looks like table glass. but it's leaded table glass, but maybe a large pitcher.

this seems to be something that might have been broken in house, in some cases we found pieces of a gravy boat might be the handle broke off the gravy boat and ms. dolly says that needs to leave the house. so the slaves say do i throw it or reuse it, might be reeye kward -- reacquired or reuse. you know, one thing we're looking for is patterning, for example if some of the items, this piece right here, this could be an item, we haven't seen this piece in our excavations from the madisons on the other side of the temple, we haven't seen this pattern, this could be a piece of the slaves at market and what we're

interested in looking at are some of the broken madison household ceramic located in a different place than ceramics we believe the slaves purchased. if they are they might support the case these are items when they are broken they are trying to keep these out of sight, out of mind. if they are being deposited in the same fact, maybe some items are chipped, no longer desirable for the table and being reused by the slaves. so these kind of larger stories we're interested in building to understand not only somehow slaves are obtaining their household items. one thing people are surprised at is slaves are part of the market economy. not only were they chattel property, they were selling small items to the madison's neighboring planters and using that cash or barter system to buy their own household goods. we're thinking more and more slaps are responsible for purchasing most of the items in their house through their own

means. this is a way how different groups of slaves might have different access through market goods, more disposable income per se through marketing their own items or had different status within the community. and used their position within the labor structure to exert authority over other slaves. these are the kind of relationships we're hoping to build from studying the trash we're finding and build a larger complete picture what the slave community was like. the folks that lived here are more than just property. they were human beings, they had family and relationships with each other, that is what we're trying to reconstruct. what we can see, we're excavating, we're in between two buildings. you have a corner of a building right here. you can see the corner right

here. 16 feet over in this direction, you have another brick corner, on the other side we found brick up in these locations but they give evidence the structure was 16 by 32 feet. now this would have been -- would have had brick footers but the structure would have been a wooden building with wooden build, similar to the reconstructed other structures, and this is the base of the chimney stack. this stack would have been brick all wait up through the top of the roof, and this little indent here is where the hearth would have bep len located. we don't have evidence of a hearth or where the slaves did their cooking. this hearth was built up off the ground because there is no evidence of burning. this structure would have had a raise wooden floor, much different than early 19th

century slave quarters of the type period. it gives us the idea the structures in the south yard were actually built to be seen by visitors. they were a little more resources put in these structures than we're finding in slave quarters in other areas of the property. this is the second duplex structure, this is different than that one in terms of h it was built. this one had a stone chimney base, two households in this duplex, one a space of 16 by 16 foot, and would have had a hearth that was inside this chimney. on the other side there would be another hearth right here, and you would have had a raised wooden floor and 16 by 16 space for another household and probably would have been anywhere from four to six people living in each one of these spaces. so total you've got maybe 10 to 12 people in one of these duplexes. three of those, looking at 25,

30 people in this area. alternativity one of the duplexes would have been used by when visitors would come to see the madisons, they would have bringing personal slaves, their coachmen, a number of folks that would have been serving them, they would have needed a place to stay, maybe that was servant guest housing, it's hard to say, it was seen at other plantations in the time period. with the excavations, what you see here is the completed excavation of this site. we've excavated all the structural remains that were -- that had feature soil, we excavated the yard surfaces, and what happens to all the artifacts is that each one of these units, each of the 5 by 5 unit is separate, all the artifacts are taken down to the lab for processing.

here is a piece of -- oh, very cool. this is like a piece of glass, bottle glass, but it's either melted or like it looks like it molded glass, very thin glass. that is really neat. haven't seen one these in a long time but it's clear. i bet that is some of the flask-type glass. archeology lab is a short walk from the house. previous ceramics were restored. in the lab what we have is two different areas, a working deck where we process and power wash all our rock and brick that we recover from the site. and what we also have is a water screening station, where we take the soil samples that we bring back here and instead of putting

them to the quarter inch screen like we do at the site, we wash it through window screen, and what you can see helen doing is she's washed down some of the soil through the window screen and you can see the small artifacts coming out. fish bone, egg shell, straight pins, smaller pieces of ceramic and glass that would be lost at the site. there is some element, some groups of artifacts we would never recover if we didn't go through the process. what we do is we soak the soil in these buckets of water and what happens is all the sediment sinks to the bottom, that is what helen is water screening right now, but then the charred wood floats to the top and we've skimmed the charred wood off because what we find with the charred wood, and this sample has a few specs of charred wood, you can see right here and

smaller black flecks which are not just charred wood but charred -- we dry it, and send it over to a paleobotonist who can identified the specimens that can't be seen. what we're able to get from this is more evidence about in this case the slaves diet. not only the bones from the animals he they were eating but evidence cha kind of plant materials we are were -- what kind of plant materials. sometimes that is information you can't see with the naked eye and it takes further processing. >> thanks, ellen.

>> you have to put a -- >> i put ro for rounded, because the top is eroding. >> as i mentioned all the artifacts come down to the lab and they are washed, sorted, and then cataloged and restored. and this is an example of some of the units that we recovered from the south yard. these are actually units that we were working on just this past week, and when we close out that level, this is 1907, one of the five foot by five foot squares, layer c, the occupation layer, which has all the trash remains from the household. you have ceramic, this is a piece of transfer printed

willowware, you can identify the pattern from the edge and the pattern there, these are the artifacts and in their native state, the virginia clay soil on them. here is a wine bottle fragment. the glass wears, ceramics can be washed in water. iron dry brushed, if you sub merge this in water it will destablize the iron and corrode at a more rapid rate. the items more diagnostic, we actually conserve. this appears to be part of a maybe a five blade for cutting glass, and this is the blade portion and corroded away in this area. if we didn't conserve these items what would happen to being in the ground they -- the rust would axler rails and they would foul apart.

we put them in conservation tanks, run electric current through a solution of baking soda and sloughs all the rust off it. until you get to the bare metal. next is to use a drummel tool to clean up the remaining rust and washed in a solution of disstilled water, boiled and disstilled water, bike in the oven to dry it and dipped in acetone, then coated with a conservation coating to keep the objection he general off the object. some of the iron objects potentially here on an 18th century site were made here on the property. we could have objects such as a hinge made by a slave name moses. these were objects that tell

much larger story about what they were but about the plantation society that was here and everything from how it was used to how it was made to -- we want to protect these for the future. >> these are the artifacts after they were washed. >> this is the result of excavations from four strata, you can see the nails after they were dry brushed, ser rat micks are clean, the waste color, you can see the dpa lglaze and they bagged by artifact type. ceramics are separated from the nails and glass are put in another bag, the bone is put in another one. all these go over in the boxes that were here where what we will be doing this winter is cataloging all these artifacts. we've got staff and volunteers and interns doing this right

now. charlie and emma are cataloguing the rock and brick. charlie is together to dump out a sample bag. >> southwest yard. >> 1891. the unit, and what emma is doing is separating the what we call architectural material by type. separating the brick and looking at the how soft the brick is, and see what jessica doing over here, is she is taking the water screen sample after it's been washed and dried and been float sod light fracture separated it from the heavy fraction, she is doing putting it through a series of gradiated screens, all the half inch stuff is

cataloged. then these remaining screens are separated, she measuresed the volume to get an idea of constituent sediments in the soils, but all these will be picked for artifacts. limit bits of ceramic here. bits of window glass but real exciting part cops when especially in this -- in this window screen, sometimes you identify small beads, straight pens, these items pu there screen, we would never be able to recover. we wouldn't know they were there. the next step is cataloging them. what pat and kim are are cataloging are ceramics. this is a neat one. probably part of a tea pot lid. and that is a piece of glazed

refined redware. i don't know if they would have a ball, to be put through here. >> oh, yeah. >> that is gorgeous. maybe steam or they didn't have tea bags then. what they are doing is separating ceramics by type. originally when they came out of the unit these two pieces weren't together, it was three pieces here what they found is the three pieces actually mend so these will be cataloged on one line. this is that same transfer print pattern that was found in the field yesterday, this brown transfer print. this is part of a plate, though, what she found looked to be part of a larger pot, maybe a chamber pot, the black of the plate is undecorated but the front has

the transfer print. that is beautiful. they write these up on this cat a hog sheet, each unique occurrence gets their own line. porcelain, they recovered they found from one of the bags. each shirt is weighed on a scale, the data gets entered into a database to analyze how much -- where all the brown transfer se ram mick traceramict is total weight of the ceramics from the southwest slave quarter as compared to the southeast slave quarter. this is nice. >> flowers.

>> the creme de la creme, great design right here, this is a beautiful example of peaches em bossed glass, bottled from the 18th century. pardon of an iron padlock with this is the body of the padlock, this is the bale, the hinge that would connect and it would spring back and forth and the key would enter. we found four maybe buttons, these are officers buttons, but we're -- the dates to the late 1820's, early 1830's, not sure why they are in the slave quarter, a mystery needs to be solved. this is part of a pharmaceutical vial right here and most interesting, you recovered this past week, career covered what is a real, spanish coin to 1801.

and is interesting about this point is it is clipped. you can see the piece taken out here, that was an illegal practice done by sommer chants and come sconsumers to take something out of the coin. what is important about the coin is some direct evidence that slaves were engaged in marketing activity. they were selling items during the madisons, or neighboring community members to obtain cash or barter to obtain some of the items you see right here. some of the other items we have evidence for the kint of food the shaves were eating. this is a -- a pick bone or a small cow bone, not sure which it is, but it has been cracked, might have been used for a soup,

and this little guy, this is a figurine head and this one has an interesting history. researching right now seeps to be a sadyr, the pointed ears like mr. spock, looks to be a figurine from greek mythology, maybe when this broke some child found a little head interesting and brought it back to the quarter, hard to say, numb per of stories you can figure from these. one of the last sets of analysis we do with this, especially the glass wear, it takes shirt appeared once they are hey belad cataloged, you restore them. this is an example of a piece of bamboo and peony china, this is

trash deposit for the madison retirement year, the downslope from the temple. before we mend this what we d was labelled each shirt, site number 44, 249 is the mansion site, this is the inventory numb per 10208, that is how we if i out what unit it came from. this catalog unit matches up with one of the catalog lines you saw kim and pat writing up previously. allows us to know it's the davenport, stone china, made in england. once this is mended the diameter of the plate, what form it took and get a better idea what the tech or ration is.

decoration. the j is nicely formed, this is one of the bottles that the resident would have used. attached to a side of a wine bottle. madison's views of slavery which is incredibly important for understanding who mr. madison was. we know him his role as a politician, fourth president of the united states, his role as political was designing the virginia plan, the constitution. his role as entertainer with dolly and the house, but very important role was as a slave owner, how did this blend all these together, the entertaining he was doing, how he had house slaves interaking with slaves and the guests. we're trying to put all this back together and the documents don't tell us everything we need

we're trying to fill in the gaps with the archeology. >> you can view more american history tv programs at our website cspan.org/history. follow us on facebook. facebook.com/cspan. the richard nixon library scholars focus on the viet nam war, discussed the partnership the president's approach as commander in chief and pentagon papers and administration respons response. welcome back. to understanding richard nixon.

i'm ken hughes, a researcher with the presidential recordings program with the miller center. co-sponsor of the first scholarly conference at richard m. nixon library and museum. returning now to nixon and viet nam. tragically timely subject when america finds herself embroiled in an inconclusive war or two. editor of foreign affairs in the pages of the new york times has suggested president obama model his exit from afghanistan on president nixon's exit from viet nam. we have some amazing good scholars to discuss the subject with you. i'll introduce right before he or