Featured Fragment Blog
Uncovering African American Lives in Civil War Records
Figure 1: A U.S. Army impressment labor roll for enslaved workers at Camp Nelson, a military base in central Kentucky (NARA 1864). By Cameron Boutin The Civil War is an extensively documented conflict, with a wide range of reports, letters, diaries, and other records...
More than Scratching the Surface: Scratch-Blue Stoneware in Delaware
Photo 1: Scratch Blue Teaware Fragments Recovered from the Top of a Well. By Colleen Betti Over the past month, archaeologists from Dovetail Cultural Resource Group (Dovetail), a Mead & Hunt company, have been working on a data recovery project in Sussex County,...
A Day in The Life of an Artifact
Figure 1: Artifacts from the field are brought to the lab and placed in a crate to be checked in. By Sammy Lovette and Kat Baganski Have you ever thought about the journey artifacts take after they have been discovered by archaeologists in the field? Once they get to...
Sleigh Bells Ring, Are You Listening?
Figure 1: Horse-Drawn Sleigh Showing a Strap of Bells (Nowell 1906). By Sammy Lovette The prominent mention of bells, particularly sleigh bells, in popular Christmas movies and music is astounding. Due to their close association with Christmas and winter, the horse...
Worth a Pretty (Half) Penny
By Kat Baganski In 2006, in advance of construction of a new Marriott hotel in downtown Fredericksburg, Virginia, Dovetail Cultural Resource Group completed cultural resources investigations prior to construction and uncovered traces of a much earlier hotel, the...
Are Horseshoes Truly a Symbol of Good Luck? Analysis of Horseshoes on Battlefields from Virginia
Civil War battlefields are quite common across Central Virginia. With population growth and associated developments in the region, local groups are striving to protect former battlefield grounds for future generations. Dovetail Cultural Resource Group (Dovetail), a...
Enduring Wet Weather in the Civil War
By Cameron Boutin This blog is by Dovetail Historian Cameron Boutin, who is sharing just some of his fascinating dissertation research on soldiers during the Civil War. United States (U.S.) and Confederate soldiers in the Civil War experienced the pressures of weather...
Milk, Medicines, and Mammoth Cave? Let’s Talk About 20th Century Glass Bottles
Photo 1: Sprite Bottle Base Featuring Mammoth Cave National Park Embossing.By Cameron Boutin This blog is by Dovetail Historian Cameron Boutin, who is sharing just some of his fascinating dissertation research on soldiers during the Civil War. United States...
“Hens’ Teeth” Found in Delaware: North Devon Gravel-Tempered Ware in Delaware By Lee Priddy and Bill Liebeknecht
Photo 1: North Devon Gravel-Tempered Milkpan Rim Sherd from the Chesapeake Region.By Lee Priddy and Bill Liebeknecht One of the more common types of ceramic found on early historic American archaeological sites is a ware called North Devon gravel-tempered earthenware...
Celebrating Virginia Archaeology: The City is Digging the New Archaeological Ordinance!
By Adriana Moss Fredericksburg has a wonderfully rich occupation spanning thousands of years. However, when it comes to historic tourism, efforts have commonly focused on the city’s prominence during the Civil War, maybe a little bit of our role in early colonial...
Elkton Historic District’s NRHP Nomination: Celebrating the Architecture of Early Shenandoah Settlement
By Sarah Rodriguez, Isabella Gordineer, and Adriana Moss Nestled in between Massanutten, Hanse, Dean, and Hasselback Mountains in the Shenandoah Valley is a well-preserved historic mountain town called Elkton. Located in Rockingham County, Virginia, Elkton’s historic...
Jelly Juice Jars in Public Schools
By Colleen Betti When you think about artifacts associated with schoolhouses, slate pencils, writing slates, ink bottles, and marbles come to mind. But when I excavated at three 1880s–1950s African American schoolhouse sites in Gloucester County, Virginia for my...