>> it is designed to ensure that members of the congress that are african-american can come together on issues that are plaguing the community at large, or come together to discuss legislative solutions and proposals to advance the causes of people that don't have a voice. next saturday, june 16, for an indepth look at the war of 1812. it's the bicentennial of this little known war, and we'll learn how it bolstered america's international credibility, fostered a new sense of patriotism, and gave us our national anthem. the war of 1812, saturday june 16, live from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. james madison, the fourth president of the united states,

often referred to as the father of the constitution, owned about 100 slaves at montpelier, his estate in orange county, virginia. american history tv traveled 90 miles south of the nation's capital to learn about an archaeological project investigating the enslaved communities of james madison's montpelier. the three-year archaeology project is jointly funded by the national endowment for the humanities and the montpelier foundation. >> i'm matthew reeves. where we're standing is what we call the south yard, the area where the house slaves for the madisons both lived and worked. what we're in the middle of is an archaeological investigation of this area. we first learned about the south yard through an insurance map that is dated to 1837. this is when dolly moves back to washington, d.c. she takes out an insurance policy on the house and part of

what they need for this insurance policy is a plat showing where all the out buildings are. this plat has been incredibly important for allowing us to locate the outbuildings. in the '90s, we located a chimney base that we were able to figure out from the archaeology was part of a duplex or a slave quarter that had a central chimney and a hearth on either side. we were able to line up the insurance plat with the rest of the grounds and able to start to explore this area further out. what we found is that the -- we've got three duplexes in this area, three homes for slave quarters and for of these buildings we've marked. two smoke houses that are on the insurance map, a kitchen that's decide the house, that's an 18th century kitchen we located through archaeology. and this other duplex, which is

one of three that we're going to be reconstructing. now, the timber frames that you see out here, these represent the size and the massings of these buildings to give visitors an idea where these buildings are and how large they are. the timber framing is authentic to the early 19th century. we had a historic architect who designed the frames based on a combination of the archaeology and contemporary timber frame technology of the time period. what we've done with these 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 archaeology in this area. the second point is, if we put a roof and siding on these buildings, they would have a wind load, we would have to tie them to the ground and put in

footers which would disturb the archaeological record. the archaeology that's below there can be excavated in the -- if we need to, we can take these buildings down and do the archaeology in the area. the reason why it's important we're doing this research and doing -- spending a year doing the archaeology on these particular quarters is we just recently restored the house. we spent about six to seven years doing the restoration of the madison home. one thing we're able to represent with a restored home is a space with james and dolly lived and able to show in the house the basement area, some of the surface area is where the slaves worked on a daily basis. but we don't have represented there where the slaves had their homes. this is where we're doing the excavations and it's

representing the spaces. this is -- the house is where they would have served the roles that were expected of them. it's here in these spaces where the slaving -- this is what they call home. so their roles as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers would have been played out in this area. and to talk about that with visitors, to bring humanity to the people that were enslaved we felt it was important to show their homes and represent their homes in a physical way. so many times when visitors come here, people would understand that madison had slaves but to be able to understand what the slave's life was like. we've got an archaeology team here at montpelier that works here full time.

we have students here during the summer. and during the fall and the spring, we have what's called expedition programs where people come out for a week and work side by side with the archaeologists. this is a 5 x 5 foot square. the reason why we excavate in 5 x 5 squares, we're able to see where artifacts are concentrating and we can -- all of these nails are mapped in with a laser transit. what you can see on the map right here that nicole has drawn is she's plotted in where all the artifacts are, and we also have drawings where teachers are, such as this post hole. what we'll do is we put all of these maps together at the end of the excavation and produce

overall site map of the entire project area. what we can do is relate that site map to the larger landscape, where the fence lines are, how far this is from the max and other archaeological features we found. >> that's nice. that's like a platter. >> it shows more of it, too. >> yeah, if you could put this stuff out. >> awesome. >> they were all found stacked on top of each other. >> really? holy cow. >> it was like this and that. >> so this is decorated on the interior. >> and the exterior. >> this has got to be -- this looks like a chamber pot from the size of the foot ring. >> that makes my day, in a really sick way. so it goes like this. >> actually, this pattern looks like a little bit later, like

1830s decoration, which is still neat. >> and this has got a little guy on it. >> oh, yeah. a little cherub tolding a torch. that's more of that floral pattern. yeah, this one is really neat. >> so it's real thick. and it's got this etching that's not painted. >> that looks like some sort of table glass. but it's definitely leaded table glass. this seems to be something that might have been broken in the house. in some cases, we found pieces of a gravy boat. might be that the handle broke off and miss dolly said okay, that needs to leave the house. so the slave decides do i slow this in the trash deposit or can i reuse this this so it might be reused. other cases it might be that

something broke and the household inventory happened the day before and time to secret it away and have plausible deniability when you have the next inventory. one thing we're looking for is patterning. for example, in some of these items, like this piece right here, this could be an item. we haven't seen this piece in our excavations of the trash deposit of the madisons. we haven't seen this pattern, so this could be a piece that the slaves bought at market. what we're interested in looking at is some of these broken madison household ceramics located in a different place than the ceramics we believe that the slaves purchased. if we are, that might support the case that these are items when they're broken, they're trying to keep these out of sight and mind. if they're all being deposited in the same place, maybe it's a factor of some items becoming chipped and no longer desirable

and being reused by the slaves. one thing that people are often surprised at is that slaves were part of the market economy. not only were they property, they were also selling small produce, small items to the madisons, and then using that cash or a barter system to buy their own household goods. we're thinking more and more that slaves are responsible for purchasing most of the items in their house through their own means. this is a way that we can see how different groups of slaves might have had different access to market goods, meaning they had more disposable income per se through marketing their open items or had different status within the community. and used their position within the labor structure to exhort authorities over other slaves.

these are the kind of relationships they're hoping to build from studying the trash and these are the folks that lived here are more than just property, they were human beings. they had families and they had relationships with each other. that's what we're trying to reconstruct here. but what we can see we're excavating here is we're in between these two buildings. you've got the corner of a building right here. you can see the corner that's right here. you go 16 feet over in this direction, you have another corner located right here. then on this other side, we found brick peers up in these locations, but it gives us evidence that this structure was 16 x 32 feet. now, this would have had brick footers, but this would have been a wooden building with wooden sills similar to the ones

we've reconstructed and then this is the base of the chimney stack. this stack would have been brick all the way up through the top of the roof and this little indent here is where the hearth would have been located. this hearth was probably built up off the ground. there's no evidence of burning, so this structure would have had a raised floor, which is different than the slave quarters of the time period. so it gives us an idea that the structures in the south yard were built to be seen by visitors. this is the second duplex structure. this one is a little bit different than this one in terms of how it was built. this one had a stone chimney base. so again, you would have had two households in this duplex.

one would have had a space here and would have had a hearth that was inside of this chimney. on the other side, there would be another hearth right here and a raised wooden floor. there would have been a 16 x 16 space for another household and probably anywhere from four to six people living in each of these spaces. so you've got maybe 10 to 12 people in one of these duplexes. you've got three of those, looking at maybe 25, 30 people in this area. alternatively, one of these duplexes could have been used when visitors come to see the madisons, they would have been bringing their personal slaves, their coachman, a number of folks serving them. they would have needed a place to stay. maybe that was servant guest housing. it's hard to say.

with the excavations, what you see here is the completed excavation of this site. we've excavated all the structural remains that had feature soil. we've excavated yard surfaces. what happens to all the artifacts is each one of these units, each of these 5 x 5 units are excavated separately. and all those artifacts are taken down to the lab for processing. here is a piece of -- oh, very cool. this is like -- it's a piece of glass, bottle glass but it's either melted or -- it looks like those molded flasks. that's really neat. but it's clear. i bet that's some of that flask-type glass.

the archaeology lab is a short walk down the hill from the mansion, and we have it open to the public. visitors come down to see artifacts we found at the site. previous ceramics we've restored. in the lab, we've got a working deck where we process and power wash all our rick and brick we recover from the site. 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 right here is she's washed down some of the soil through this window screen and you can see all the small art facts coming up, fish bone, egg shell, straight pins, smaller pieces of ceramics and glass.

so there's some groups of artifacts that we would never recover if we didn't go through this 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's what helen is water screening right now. but then the charred wood floats to the top and we skim that off. what we find with the charred wood, these smaller black flecks, these are also charred seeds. so we send this to a botanist who is able to identify some of the smaller seed specimens that can't be seen with the naked eye. so what we are able to get is more evidence of the slave's diet. not only the bones from the

animals they were eating but evidence of plant material. so what we try to do is recover every bit of information from the soil. and sometimes that's information that you can't see with just the naked eye and it takes further processing. thanks, helen. >> you have to put a code for that. >> i put r.o. for rounded because it's been -- once it gets wet -- >> as i mentioned, all these art facts come down to the lab and they're washed, sorted, and then

cataloged and eventually restored. and this is an example of some of the units that we've recovered from the south yard. these are actually units that we were working on just this past week and when we closed out that level, this is 1907, which is one of the 5 x 5 squares, which is the occupation layer, which has all the trash from the slave households. for example, you have ceramics here, this is a piece of transfer printed ware. these are the artifacts and their so-called native state still having the virginia clay soil on it. here is a wine bottle fragment. these can all be washed in water. we use a toothbrush to clean them. the iron is dry brushed. this if you submerge this in water, it's going to destabilize

the iron and corrode more rapidly. the items that are more diagnostic, we can serve this. this appears to be maybe a slade like for cutting grass. and this is the blade portion and it's just corroded away in this area. but if we didn't conserve these items, what would happen to them as being out of the ground, the rust would accelerate and it would fall apart. so we put them in these conservation tanks where we run electric current through a solution of baking soda and it sloughs all the iron rust off of it until you get down to the bare metal. the next step is to clean off the remaining rust, then they're washed in a solution of distilled water, boiled and distilled water, baked in the

oven to dry it and dipped in acetone and coated with a coating to keep the oxygen off the object. some of these iron objects potentially, if they're here on an 18th century site, were made here on the property. so we could have objects such as this hinge that were made by the slave named moses which headed up the black smith shop. so we want to protect these for the future. these are the artifacts after they've been washed. this is the results of excavations from four different units and you can see the nails after they've been dry brushed, the ceramics, now they're clean.

you can see the paste color. you can see the glaze and what occurs once they're cleaned is they're bagged by artifact. the ceramics are separated from the nail, the bone is put into another bag. all these go into the boxes over here where what we'll be doing this winter is cataloging these artifacts. we've got staff and volunteers and interns doing this right now. charlie and emma are cataloging all the rock and brick from the site. so you can see charlie is about to dump out one of the sample bags here. where is that from, charlie? >> the southwest yard. >> what emma is doing is separating the -- what we call architectural material by type. she's separating the brick and looking at how soft the brick is

by marking it on the paper. and what jessica is doing over here is she's taking the water screen sample after it's been washed and dried and it's been floated, she's doing what's called gradient sorting. putting it through a series of gradeuated screens, and all the material is cataloged like charlie and emma are doing. but then these remaining screens are separated. she measures the volume so we can get an idea of the constituent sediments in the soils. but then all these will be picked for artifacts. as you can see, little bits of ceramic here. also there's bits of window glass. but the real exciting part comes when, especially in the window

screen, is sometimes you'll identify small beads, straight pins. these are all items that if they were put through the quarter inch screen at the site, they would be gone. the next step is cataloging them. what pat and kim are cataloging are obviously ceramics. there's a neat one right there. this is probably part of a teapot lid. and that's a piece of glazed refined red ware. i've never seen a top with a hole in it. i don't know if they would have like a tea screen or a ball. that's gorgeous. they didn't have tea bags then. but what kim and pat are doing is they're separating these by

type. originally when these came out of the unit, these two pieces weren't together. but what they found is these three pieces actually mend. this is the same transfer print pattern that katie found out in the field yesterday. this is part of a plate, though. the back of the plate is undecorated but the front has this transfer print. they write these up on this catalog sheet and each unique occurrence gets its own line. in this case, this is the porcelain that they recovered, you know, found from one of the other bags. each is weighed on a scale in grams, measured and what happens to all this data is it gets

entered into a computer database. >> the tray you see here is the cream day la cream. this is part of a flask. you can see this grape design right here. this is a beautiful example of a piece of embossed glass bottled from the 18th century. part of an iron padlock. this is the body of the padlock and this is the bail. this is the hinge that would connect to there and the key you would enter right there.

and then we found four navy buttons. these two are officer's buttons. but where these date to the late 1820s, early 1830s, we're not sure why they're in the slave quarter. this is part of a pharmaceutical vile right here. most interestingly, recovered just this past week, we recovered what is a spanish coin that dates to 1801. and what is interesting about this coin is it's clipped. you can see this piece that's taken out here. that was an illegal practice done by some merchants and consumers to take a little bit of silver out of the coin. you collect enough of those and i guess you could make some of that or sell it. but the mint didn't like that. what's more important about this coin is it's some direct

evidence that slaves were engaged in marketing activities. they were selling items through the madisons to their guests to neighboring slave owners or community members to obtain cash or barter, to obtain some of the items you see right here. some of the other items, we've got evidence for the kind of food that the slaves were eating. this is a pig bone or a small cow bone, i'm not sure which this is. but it's been cracked for the marrow. might have been used for a soup. and this little guy, this is a figurine head. it seems to be a satyr. you can see the pointed ears like mr. spoch there. maybe when this broke, you know,

some child found the head interesting and brought it back to the quarter. it's hard to say. one of the last sets of analysis we do, with especially the ceramics and glass wares is take the shards and once they're labeled and cataloged, is to spread them out over a table and then mend them back together and restore them. this is an example of a piece of bamboo stone china that we recovered. this is the trash deposit from the madison's retirement years. and before we mend this, what we did is, we labeled each shard so we know exactly where it came from. this is the site number, 44, state of virginia, orange county, 249 is the mansion site and this is the inventory number, 10208. this catalog letter ax matches

up with the individual catalog lines and this has a back mark that allows us to know it's the davenport and it's stone china made in england. once this is mended, what we can toll about this ceramic is the diameter of the plate, and get a better idea of what the overall direction is. this tray over here, we've got a wine bottle sealed that we recovered this summer from the slave quarter, and you can see the j. there very nicely formed. this would have been one of the president's wine bottles that we used when entertaining the constant guests coming here to montpeli montpelier. just learning about the slaves and madison's view of slavery, which is incredibly important for understanding who mr. so