Matt has been the Director of Archaeology since 2000 and leads the overall archaeological research at James Madison’s Montpelier. Dr. Reeves is the principal investigator for all archaeological projects on the property. Over the past two decades, Dr. Reeve’s research has focused on plantation life, Civil War encampments, and an overall focus on sites of the African Diaspora (both pre-and post-emancipation).

Prior to Montpelier, he directed projects at Manassas National Battlefield Park, Jefferson Patterson Park, and various New York DOT projects, and has worked on a wide variety of historic and pre-contact sites in Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Jamaica. His doctorate is from Syracuse University and focused on 19th-century settlements of the enslaved in Jamaica that he spent two years surveying and excavating.

Chris joined the Montpelier staff in 2017. Prior to Montpelier, Chris worked at Historic St. Mary’s City, in Southern Maryland, as a Field Supervisor and Assistant Lab Supervisor. He has over a decade of experience working in the Mid-Atlantic on pre-contact indigenous sites, 17th-18th century colonial settlements, 19th-century plantation landscapes, and early 20th-century sites.

Chris received his MA in Historical Archaeology from the University of Leicester and his BA in History and English Literature from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. His M.A. thesis used the Temple and icehouse at Montpelier to explore the experiences and knowledge of enslaved laborers conducting icehouse labor, and their readings and perspective on the Temple as a symbolic structure in the early American republic. Chris specializes in landscape archaeology, memory and heritage studies, public and community-based archaeology, the archaeology of identities, geographic information systems (GIS), and digital data collection.

Liz is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Maryland from Columbia, Maryland. She earned her BA in anthropology with minors in museum studies and African diaspora studies from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2015 and her Master’s in Applied Anthropology from the University of Maryland in 2020.

Liz was trained in historical archaeology while at St. Mary’s, conducting fieldwork in The Gambia, West Africa, Jamaica, and at plantation sites in southern Maryland. Following her undergraduate degree, Liz was employed at Montpelier as an archaeology intern, archaeology field technician, and archaeology crew chief until 2018 where she worked on excavations of domestic quarters of the enslaved community, smokehouses, trash middens, a kitchen and planters cottage, and the temple icehouse entrance.

Her research interests include public archaeology, plantation landscapes, racial capitalism, and multispecies entanglements. Liz’s ongoing dissertation research focuses on equestrian labor practices surrounding the horse industry at James Madison’s Montpelier. She returned to Montpelier as the archaeology lab manager in June of 2023. She enjoys farmers markets, linocut block printing, gardening, and Pokemon Go.