Featured Fragment Blog
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...
Male Vanity: Just for Men in the 19th Century
By Lee Priddy and Bill Liebeknecht The start of the 19th century saw the transition from powdered wigs as the fashionable hair accessory to flawlessly groomed, short hairstyles for men. The popularity of neatly trimmed hair and facial hair, the preference for brown...
An Unusual Find from Northern New Jersey
,, By Bill Liebeknecht While conducting a controlled Phase I archaeological surface collection of a precontact site in northern New Jersey for a proposed development, an unusual find was discovered: a dense, polished, cylindrical-shaped piece of chiastolite....
Sometimes Ceramics Are More Helpful Than Coins!
By K. Lee Priddy "When does a specific artifact date from and how do you know?” is one of the most frequent questions that I receive when talking to the public. It allows me to discuss manufacturing dates of ceramics, bottles, and metals and the methods that we use to...
“ On a tree – shaded hill overlooking the Town of Orange … :” The Restoration of Berry Hill
By Casey Squyres, Architectural Historian Dovetailers love their history! Although our blogs usually focus on a neat find from one of our company projects, this post focuses on a passion project of one of our architectural historians, Casey. Kudos to Casey for her...
DIY Currency: It Just Makes Cents
By: Katie Rezendes With war comes shortages ¾ from food and supplies to even physical money. The American Civil War was no exception to this reality. By the second year of the war in 1862, government-issued currency was quickly disappearing as people began to hoard...
Anything But Boring: An African – American Boarding House in Fredericksburg
By Elyse Adams, Dovetail Lab Manager In March 2022, Dovetail Cultural Resource Group (Dovetail) conducted archival research and a two-day archaeological excavation at 1416 Princess Anne Street in downtown Fredericksburg, Virginia. These combined efforts shed light on...