by gwffoundation | Sep 23, 2015 | Archaeology, Lives & Legacies, Natural History
In our age of weekly farmers’ markets, drive-thru smoothie shops, and 24/7 grocery stores, it can be hard to truly understand the importance of fruit to the average colonial Virginian. They, however, would have been well aware of how rare it was and of what it meant...
by gwffoundation | Aug 26, 2015 | Archaeology, Lives & Legacies
Fruit! It’s good for you, delicious, and often beautiful – but have you ever thought of fruit as a status symbol? In today’s world of relatively quick, inexpensive long-distance transportation, we enjoy fresh fruit from all over the world year-round. We...
by gwffoundation | Apr 24, 2015 | Archaeology, Lives & Legacies
Archaeologists sometimes recreate technology from the past to understand how people lived. This is called experimental archaeology. When archaeologists at George Washington’s Ferry Farm found glue residue on sherds of Mary Washington’s china, they...
by gwffoundation | Mar 18, 2015 | Archaeology, George Washington's Ferry Farm, Lives & Legacies
At George Washington’s Ferry Farm we’ve just wrapped up a ceramic mending project. We explain how and why we undertake these mending projects in this post. Our most recent effort focused on Westerwald stonewares owned by the Washington family. Stoneware is a...
by gwffoundation | Feb 25, 2015 | Archaeology, Lives & Legacies
What do archaeologists do with the broken ceramic and glass artifacts after these objects have been excavated, cleaned, and catalogued? They are cool to look at but what do these little pieces actually tell us about the past? How can we use them to understand the...