PETERSBURG, Va. | Archaeologists now have the Golden Ball Tavern’s complete floor plan, after a month of digging and uncovering thousands of artifacts from the historic site.
The Golden Ball, built in the 1760s by tobacco merchant Richard Hanson, stood on the corner of Old Street and Market Street. British soldiers are known to have frequented it during the Revolutionary War, and later it served as the first Petersburg City Hall and courthouse. It was demolished in 1944.
The first dig at the site took place in 2002. Last month, archaeologists and volunteers from Richard Bland College started a second, larger dig that concluded in the past few weeks.
Christopher Stevenson, of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, led the dig and calls the recent discoveries “a great success.”
His team of researchers worked in two trenches that stretched 40 feet across and in places were as deep as roughly 20 feet.
Mr. Stevenson said the oldest among the thousands of artifacts found were spearheads, tools and ceramics belonging to American Indians who lived on this site before it was populated by British settlers.
“The designs on the ceramics indicate that people lived here in the early 1600s,” he said.
To find the relics, the experts had to dig through layers of the building’s foundation much deeper into the ground.
The youngest finds - such as shoes, coins, empty bottles and pottery - date back to the 1930s.
Mr. Stevenson said the building stood empty in the decade before its demolition so “people from all over the neighborhood used it as their trash can.”
The most challenging discoveries were the foundation outlines of the Golden Ball.
“There were really two taverns,” Mr. Stevenson said. “One was built in the 1760s, with a brick foundation and a wooden frame.”
A look in the deepest part of the first trench reveals a quarter formed of brick - the fireplace of the original building. In the early 1800s, the structure was torn down and a new building was set atop the old foundation.
Mr. Stevenson said the second Golden Ball had brick interior walls.
He also said the most recent dig brought few artifacts of the 1700s and 1800s and that most artifacts found at any archaeological site today are “what people threw away back then.”
“It’s only logical that we find little on the actual building site,” Mr. Stevenson said.
He and his team will return in June 2009 to dig more trenches where the tavern’s garden once was.
“That’s when we’ll be finding more relics,” Mr. Stevenson said.
The project is a collaboration among the Historic Petersburg Foundation, the Prince George Historical Society, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and Richard Bland College. The $30,000 funding comes from the Cameron Foundation.
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