Archaeology Lunch and LEARN
LEARN WITH ARCHAEOLOGISTS!
On any Montpelier excavation, lunch time is when the real work gets done. Its when the whole team sits together, shares a meal, and talks about archaeology. Lunch and LEARNs are Montpelier’s effort to keep this tradition going: bringing a weekly, casual conversation or lecture about archaeology, from the comfort of your own home.
All lectures are by Montpelier staff or colleagues, and topics range from discussing our research, methodology, changes we are making with our programs, or how to identify different artifacts. They are all free.
The lectures happen monthly on Wednesdays. Get notified of upcoming Lunch and Learns by subscribing to our email list, or registering on the calendar of events below.
Upcoming Lunch and LEARNs
Lunch and Learn- The Carnelian Ring: Reclaiming an African Identity on An American Plantation
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Listen to graduate student researcher, Sara Thiam and author/Montpelier Descendants Committee member Bettye Kearse in their discussion of the carnelian ring located during archaeological excavations in the South Yard of Montpelier.
“In Africa, jewelry was a significant mark of cultural and social identity…” (Yentsch 1995), the carnelian ring found at Montpelier holds an uncanny similarity comparable and nearly identical to a style of red carnelian rings traditionally worn in West Africa. This specific type of jewelry adornment can further be associated with Sudo-Sahelian ethnic groups and carnelian mines in present day Mali and Algeria. The carnelian ring is a unique cultural belonging that exists as a key component in the reconstruction of a formerly enslaved woman’s identity. The carnelian ring was the unknown woman’s sole possession continually connecting her to a familial name, a social class, a people, a nation, and a liberated space that up to now had been considered erased from historic documentation; yet preserved through this very important cultural artifact. The carnelian ring carries the voice of ancestral memory. It echoes the freedom and sense of liberation, the enslaved woman clung to across the Atlantic and throughout her time at Montpelier. This current research analysis applies an African-centered archaeological view, offering a description of the significance, cultural context, use, and gendered value of the carnelian ring. Join us on this Lunch and Learn, as we will delve deep into African meanings, African memory, and African identity on an American plantation
Lunch and Learn- Blacksmithing at Montpelier
Wednesday, December 13, 2025
We heard more about the extensive network of customers that Moses and his fellow smiths managed through the Blacksmith Shop at Montpelier and how we are using an interdisciplinary approach to understand the site. Volunteer Ron Downes will discuss how he is using county deeds to map customer names from the 1780s ledger books and what this says about the customer base. We will then hear from heritage blacksmith Paul Fitz about what we can learn from the slag and scrap iron at the site regarding the work Moses and the other smiths carried out at the site. We will round out the discussion about what we hope to learn from archaeology at the site based on current surveys and hear from you about what questions you feel we should address during our research..
Lunch and Learn- update on Memorialization
Wednesday, Nov 19, 2025
On Wednesday, November 19, join Henry Anglin, chair of the Memorialization Committee, Allison James, Project Director for Memorialization, and Archaeology’s Chris Pasch to discuss the final results of archaeology at the memorial site and current plans for the design of the memorial. Chris will cover the finds from the 2024 excavation season and how these met the goals of the Memorialization Committee (to find a location for the memorial outside of the burial ground). Allison James and Henry Anglin will discuss the current community engagement surrounding the design process for the memorial and the timeline for what to expect next for this important addition to the Montpelier landscape To learn more about the surveys we conducted prior to the 2024 season, see:
https://arcg.is/1iGq0C
Lunch and Learn- Three Rs of architecture at Montpelier
Wednesday, October 17, 2025
Director of Archaeology Matt Reeves is joined by Mark Stoner (Graham Gund Architect with the National Trust for Historic Preservation) to talk about Restoration, Reconstruction, and Renovation of buildings at Montpelier over the past 25 years. With over 100 buildings on the property, we are making an effort to ensure the preservation of historic architecture from all time periods at Montpelier. This talk will feature how we are using GIS as a preservation tool to archive information on each structure. We will begin this Lunch and Learn with Mark’s discussion on adaptive reuse.
To learn more about the buildings at Montpelier using GIS maps, see: https://arcg.is/qCKXH
For a 3D model of the property, see: https://arcg.is/1aCOLW
To visit the model of the main house, see:
https://www.montpelier.org/projects/m…
Lunch and Learn- Home Farm Wrap Up
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Montpelier’s archaeology staff present a wrap-up for the Home Farm excavations that span from 2021-2022. The finds of each of the four sites excavated as presented.
Lunch and Learn- Intern Research Round-Up!
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Montpelier’s staff interns Emily Ingram, Nathaniel Glasgow, Jennifer McGee, Rebecca Davis, and Lizzie Prow will be presenting brief summaries of the research they conducted about the recent work at the Home Farm for the Mid-Atlantic Archaeology Conference.
Lunch and Learn-Looking for Enslaved Women in the Sites of Labor in the Home Farm
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
Mary Furlong Minkoff talks about finding evidence for enslaved women activities as sites of enslavement at Montpelier’s Home Farm site complex. She reviews this past season’s excavations for intersectional evidence for women in the daily work life at these sites.
Lunch and Learn-Digitizing the Excavations at the North Kitchen and Dolley’s Midden
Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Matt Reeves talks about excavations carried out in the late 2000s at the North Kitchen and Dolleys Midden and volunteer opportunities available through the newly created Montpelier Archaeology Archive Project (MAAP) for virtual citizen science
Lunch and Learn--As Me (Mary and Matt) Anything
September 22nd, 2021
This Lunch and Learn featured Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology, and Dr. Mary Furlong Minkoff, Assistant Director of Archaeology to kick off the Fall season of Lunch and Learns! The session gave participants to ask questions about a wide array of topics ranging from how we came to work at Montpelier to our work with the Montpelier Descendant Committee.
Archaeology at the Field Quarter-A retrospective based on current finds
Live at the Blacksmith Shop!
May 12th, 2021
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology
Dr. Terry P. Brock, Assistant Director of Archaeology
Join us for a discussion of the surveys of the Blacksmith Shop, the site we are excavating right now, from Metal detector to GPR to our current excavations. Matt will start with a discussion of the results of the metal detector survey and Terry will talk about shovel test pits, ground penetrating radar, and initial findings from the units!
Summary of the Overseer's House Site
April 7th, 2021
Dr. Terry P. Brock, Assistant Director of Archaeology
Christopher Pasch, MA, Archaeology Crew Chief
Join us for an overview of the results from our excavations at the Overseer’s Site, our excavations from 2019 and 2020. We will look at the different clues that we discovered in the field work and archaeological survey that have led us to a likely location for the building, and gives us clues as to what architectural components may have been present.
Do You Know What This Is?: Glass, Glass, and More Glass!
March 10th, 2021
Dr. Mary Furlong-Minkoff
Curator of Archaeological Collections
The Montpelier Foundation
Mary Furlong Minkoff shows how to identify and date glass artifacts including bottles, drinking glasses, windows, and lighting fixtures. We promise watching this won’t cause a (window) pane in your (bottle) neck!
Archaeological Excavations at Belle Grove Plantation - Sister Site to Montpelier
March 10th, 2021
Matthew Greer, MA
Phd Candidate at Syracuse University
Fellow at Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies
University of Virginia
Matt Greer will discuss his research on Belle Grove Plantation’s enslaved community. Belle Grove was owned by James Madison’s brother-in-law Isaac Hite, husband of his sister, Nelly Madison Hite, and there are numerous connections between the enslaved communities at the two sites. Many of you may remember Matt from your expeditions as he worked on the team from 2011 to 2015.
Matt is a Ph.D. candidate at Syracuse University and is currently a fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at UVA, where he is writing his dissertation. We are doubly excited to hear about Matt’s work give the connections between Montpelier and Belle Grove.
Discovering the 1820s Formal Landscape at Montpelier
February 3rd, 2021
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology
The Montpelier Foundation
The Montpelier Dig team discovered evidence for the front carriage road, dooryard fence, and gravel path leading to the front portico through extensive excavation between 2005 and 2007, part of the project to restore the main house to its Madison-era appearance. These 1820s landscape features were buried below a layer of clay fill deposited by enslaved workers in the late 1840s, after Dolley Madison sold Montpelier.
Join Montpelier’s Director of Archaeology, Matt Reeves, as he details the finds from this project and explains what they reveal about Montpelier’s formal picturesque landscape and the enslaved labor required to create it. Note: This project has a special relevance currently as our remote volunteer team is entering all the records from these excavations.
Looking into the Unit: Using Online Forms to Make Excavation Data Public
January 13th, 2021
Dr. Terry P. Brock, Assistant Director of Archaeology
The Montpelier Foundation
The transition to digitally-collected records using ArcGIS mobile collection tools has helped Montpelier archaeologists more easily gather, study, and analyze excavation results. Additionally, it has enabled us to make archaeological data accessible, in context and in real-time, to the public. Dr. Terry Brock will present our most recent survey work and excavations at the Overseer’s House to show how ArcGIS Online streamlines our work. He will be seeking ideas for what you, the expedition participants, would want to see in a dashboard. See examples from the STP surveys here.
Digital Crowd-Sourcing at Montpelier's Archaeology Department
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration
The Montpelier Foundation
Citizen science (in-person data collection by amatuer scientists) has been a critical facet of Montpelier’s expedition programs from the beginning. More recently, we have experimented with digital crowd-sourcing, working with our virtual DigMontpelier family of citizen scientists to conduct data entry on a remote basis. Dr. Matt Reeves will talk about some of our past projects, our current work, and projects we are looking at for the future. We would love to get input from participants on projects you all would like to see.
Do You Know What This Is? More Than Just a Rock
Dr. Mary Furlong-Minkoff, Curator of Archaeological Collections
The Montpelier Foundation
Dr. Mary Furlong Minkoff, Montpelier’s Curator of Archaeological Collections, will provide an overview of the rocks we encounter while excavating at Montpelier. She will explain why rocks appear at particular sites and why we collect them. She will be joined by Dr. Matthew Reeves who will go over the geological origins of Montpelier’s rocks.
Archaeology of a Female Planter in mid-18th century Piedmont Virginia
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration
The Montpelier Foundation
Records for females in 18th-century society are often scarce. Such is the case for our investigations into President James Madison’s Grandmother Frances Taylor Madison. Widowed in 1732, she ran the Montpelier plantation for the first thirty years of its existence. Using a combination of archaeological evidence, a scattering of court records, and information on her oldest son (James Madison, Sr.), we build a case for intersectionality between gender, sexuality, generational deference, and race within a paternalistic society.
The Archaeology of Women at Montpelier
Dr. Mary Furlong-Minkoff, Curator of Archaeological Collections
The Montpelier Foundation
How does archaeology help us explore the lives of women at Montpelier? This talk discusses the way we can use the artifacts we discover at Montpelier to tell us about the lives of enslaved African American women, Dolley Madison, and the other women who lived and worked at Montpelier.
The Materiality of African American Households in Western Orange County
October 14, 2020
Stefan Woehlke, PhD Candidate
University of Maryland
African American households in Western Orange County faced many challenges throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Generations of Black families struggled against a white-supremacist social structure where the intersections of rural capitalism, racism, and sexism exposed Black people to the risk of anti-black and sexual violence, economic exploitation, and undereducation. The history and archaeology of Black households around Montpelier demonstrate the multitude of ways in which Black people endured these burdens and tried to persevere over a period lasting 300 years. During this week’s lunch and learn, Stefan Woehlke will use the archaeology and history of Black households from the last decades of slavery through the twentieth century to learn from the material remains of this struggle.
Metal Detecting at Montpelier
September 30, 2020
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration
The Montpelier Foundation
Join Matt Reeves for a lively discussion of how metal detecting has changed what we know about Montpelier and how we think about the larger landscape. In today’s Lunch and Learn he will take you out to the site where Dennis is conducting survey to locate the 1820s blacksmith shop at Montpelier.
Do You Know What This Is? Rusty Metal Things
Dr. Mary Furlong-Minkoff, Curator of Archaeological Collections
The Montpelier Foundation
Part of the “Do You Know What this is?” Series, Dr. Minkoff talks about metal objects, from nails to hinges to cookpots. How do we identify them? What do they tell us?
Live at the Overseer's Site!
Dr. Matt Reeves, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration
The Montpelier Foundation
Join us live at the overseers site during our September expedition where we will not only give a tour of the amazing features we are finding at our current archaeology dig, but how we do socially distanced archaeology—both in the excavation units and at the field lab!
Do You Know What This Is? Beads, Buttons, and Other Small Finds with Big Stories
Dr. Mary Furlong-Minkoff, Curator of Archaeological Collections
The Montpelier Foundation
Part of the “Do You Know What this is?” Series, Dr. Minkoff Mary Furlong Minkoff brings us through an examination of some of our favorite items—personal items that we find in the archaeological record—buttons, beads, clothing fasteners, tobacco pipes and other finds that bring the past to life.
Foodways Of Pre- And Post-Emancipation African Americans At James Madison’s Montpelier: A Zooarchaeological Analysis Of Food Preference And Food Access
September 2, 2020
Heather Lash, Master’s Candidate
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Former Montpelier intern Heather Lash will present her recently completed master’s thesis research on the zooarchaeological analysis completed on faunal remains from the Field Quarters and Gilmore Farm sites. She will detail how these assemblages from different time periods showed clear differences in pre- and post-emancipation preference and access to foodstuffs.
Do You Know What This Is? Cups, Plates, and Other Ceramics
Dr. Mary Furlong-Minkoff, Curator of Archaeological Collections
The Montpelier Foundation
Part of the “Do You Know What this is?” Series, Dr. Minkoff Mary Furlong Minkoff goes through some of the tips and tricks for identifying archaeological artifacts. This talk focuses on archaeologists’ favorite artifact: Ceramics!
Update on the Digitization of the Main House Restoration
August 5, 2020
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration
The Montpelier Foundation
Montpelier’s archaeology and architectural department received a grant from the Institute for Museum Library Services to digitize the investigations at the Montpelier main house that led to the restoration of the Madison home. These six years of investigations resulted in a gold mine of information that has remained archived and inaccessible. We are working with the University of Arkansas to develop a 3-D model for the main house that will allow for a virtual exploration of these restored spaces. Join Matthew Reeves as he showcases this model in GIS to illustrate how this digital database will work!
The Temple, Part 2
June 5, 2020
Christopher Pasch, Archaeology Crew Chief
The Montpelier Foundation
Chris Pasch, Archaeology Crew Chief, discusses his Master’s Thesis about the Temple and icehouse at Montpelier.
Outliers: Looking at Human Behavior Patterns through Vesselization and GIS
July 8, 2020
Hannah James, Archaeology Technician
The Montpelier Foundation
Geographic Information Systems have been critical in our efforts to explore and analyze the Montpelier landscape. But it is also a useful tool as we conduct vesselization of ceramics across the historic core at Montpelier. In this presentation, Hannah James shows how this tool helps with this process.
Unruly Bodies, Holistic Healing: Balancing the Understanding of the Health and Healing Practices of the Enslaved at James Madison's Montpelier
July 8, 2020
Taylor Brown, Archaeology Technician
The Montpelier Foundation
Medicine is rarely neutral or objective. This was especially true in the 19th century, as physicians worked to encode slavery in the very biology of the Black body. The accounting logs of President Madison’s physician paint a one-sided picture of the health and healing practices of the enslaved community at Montpelier. These logs argue that the Black body was unruly and needed to be monitored and controlled by an outside force. To provide a more holistic picture of medical treatment, this study examines pharmaceutical and water tonic bottles, floral and faunal remains, and personal adornment items that speak to the day-to-day practices enslaved individuals employed to care for their own bodies. Overall, this perspective serves to draw important connections between past and present by challenging the idea that medicine was only practiced by white physicians and deconstructing the myth of the unruly Black body that persists in medicalized racism today.
Paperless Archaeology
June 25, 2020
Dr. Terry P. Brock, Assistant Director of Archaeology
The Montpelier Foundation
Assistant Director of Archaeology Terry Brock talks with the Lunch and Learn crowd about our implementation of paperless recording in the field: what some of the drawbacks of paper recording are, why paperless can help address those challenges, and then what some of the new challenges we’ve faced in getting a new paperless system on board has been.
The Temple, Part 1
June 5, 2020
Christopher Pasch, Archaeology Crew Chief
The Montpelier Foundation
Chris Pasch describes his thesis research for Montpelier Archaeology’s weekly Virtual Lunches! A brief presentation that summarized the research within Chris Pasch’s M.A. thesis: Enslaved Below the Temple of Liberty. Specifically, this presentation will cover the previously hidden and poorly understood story of the enslaved community’s experience in conducting ice house labor; from the creation of the landscape infrastructure to harvesting the ice itself. We will also discuss how we can use multiple lines of historical and archaeological evidence to explore the ways those enslaved individuals and groups likely perceived the Temple and ice house. Using the Temple Landscape as an example, this will provide an opportunity to critically reflect on the appearance of all spaces around us, how they are presented, and the importance of memory and place.
The Portico
May 20, 2020
Dr. Matthew Reeves, Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration
The Montpelier Foundation
Digging the Portico– May 20th: Matt Reeves will give a presentation on the excavations under the Front Portico that we conducted in 2004-2006. We found thousands of pounds of brick rubble from the columns being trimmed and evidence for the Madison-era grade. There was critical information here for restoring the front landscape and Portico. Those of you helping us with our digital paperwork project, this will help give you the bigger picture of your work!
