THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604140092
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANDREW PETKOFSKY, RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: GLENNS, VA. LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
Skeletons from a once-forgotten graveyard in Gloucester County may provide new insights into rural life of the 18th and 19th centuries, says an archaeologist hired to dig up the remains.
``Here's a very discrete, definable population that can be studied,'' said Alain C. Outlaw, president and principal archaeologist of Williamsburg-based Cultural Resources Inc. ``It's going to give us a good perspective on . . . their relative quality of life.''
As Outlaw spoke recently, archaeologists working for his firm had painstakingly excavated 45 of the 61 graves in a once-forgotten cemetery found on the property of the recently opened Middle Peninsula Landfill & Recycling Facility in northern Gloucester.
The cemetery was discovered during a legally required series of archaeological surveys that preceded the landfill's June 30 opening. Cultural Resources participated in the surveys and then was hired by the landfill's operator, Waste Management of Virginia Inc., to remove the remains.
Working under a permit issued by the state Department of Historic Preservation, the archaeologists are removing the skeletons and other remains from the cemetery and studying them before they are reinterred at a new site on the property, outside the area that will be used as a landfill.
All the skeletal remains are being cataloged at the Cultural Resources facility in Williamsburg and then are being sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington for study.
With help from the Smithsonian's osteological experts, Outlaw said, researchers hope to get information about when the people buried in the cemetery lived, the ages at which they died and lots of insight into the health and lifestyle of the family or community whose members were buried there.
The researchers believe the burials occurred between about 1680 and the late 1800s, Outlaw said.
Jerome Traver, the supervising archaeologist, said some graves have contained remains of coffins whose tops were arched like violin cases in a style that dates to the 17th century. He said that notion was strengthened by the discovery of a 17th century trash pit nearby.
On a recent morning, however, field archaeologist Wyatt Vrooman was carefully scraping the earth from around a skeleton that appeared to be of a 6- or 8-year-old boy who may have died around the 1860s.
Working in mud, under a greenhouse structure enclosed in plastic, Vrooman said his estimate of the time of death was based on finding manufactured porcelain buttons that may have come from clothing in which the boy was buried.
Traver, peeking into the enclosure, said buttons seemed to go with the graves of boys and men, while women's and girls' graves often had pins that had fastened burial shrouds.
The archaeologists said all their conclusions and hunches are preliminary. Final conclusions will come in a formal report after the excavation is complete, the laboratory work has concluded and historical records have been researched.
In the meantime, the researchers are making detailed records of their work, including maps of the grave locations, inventories of each bone and artifact discovered, and drawings by Traver of each grave, showing how the skeletons and other remains were positioned.
Many graves contain at least partial skeletal remains, fragments of coffins and artifacts such as brass shroud pins, Outlaw said. But ``sometimes we find none, not even teeth.''
By the end of March, a dozen skeletons had been shipped to the Smithsonian, and others were being readied for shipping, Outlaw said.
Greg A. Enterline, Waste Management's division president and general manager of the landfill, said his company hopes to fashion a permanent exhibit about the cemetery and other archaeological sites examined in surveys of the 516-acre landfill property.
``I find it real interesting,'' he said.
He said Waste Management will spend more than $500,000 on the project, which is required by government regulations.
The research began in the summer of 1993, Enterline said, with the digging of one-cubic-foot shovel test pits throughout the acreage, which was slated to become a landfill. Soil from each pit was sifted through a sieve.
When that survey turned up seven areas of possible archaeological interest, the company redesigned the landfill to avoid three of the areas and made plans for further study of the other four. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS file
Field archaeologist Wyatt Vrooman shows off a porcelain button that
indicates the boy in the grave may have died around the 1860s. The
boy, possibly age 6 to 8, is buried near Gloucester County graves
that may date to 1680.
KEYWORDS: ARCHAEOLOGY
by CNB