I want to thank them. [applause] thank you. , americank artifacts visits museums and historic basis. In southcentral virginia, near lynchburg, green hill was a plantation operated by a slave owner. We visited it with jobie hill and a team of preservationists. They documented several buildings associated with slavery. She was introducing the team to green hill when we arrived. This program is about 50 minutes. Ok. Goodness. [dog barking] here are the Auction Blocks. That is the brick dependency. That is a duck house. This is the wash house. This one has a neat feature on the backside. It has a drain in the wall where they would yes, dump the water out. This is the slave house. My name is jobie hill. We are at green hill plantation. It is in campbell county, virginia. m here with a company they are here for me for my independent project called saving slave houses, which is doing documentation of all the known slave houses in the United States. When i was in school, for my masters thesis, i started doing research with the Historic American Buildings survey collection. It is a w. P. A. Program that started in 1936 to get architects back to work. 1000 architects were hired to go out and document Historic Structures across the United States. Part of that documentation was slave houses. Not necessarily intentionally, but they did document slave houses. Sometimes a lot of times, you got one photograph or you would see a slave house in the background of the picture behind the main house. For my masters thesis, i looked at the collection and identified all the sites that had a slave house in them. The survey has 485 sites that have a documented slave house. My fieldwork of going back and doing my own documentation i was a summer intern. I was interning for the summer with them. We went out and saw some of them. They helped me get started. Once i started, i could not stop. I kept going. Trimble is a company that makes the survey equipment i use. One of the pieces they make is 3d laser scanners. It is a piece of equipment i currently do not use for my surveys. It takes more set up and technical skill. And sometimes people. That is the one of the reasons i do not use it. I would like to start using it. Right now, it is the highest level of documentation out there who that you could do for buildings or objects for 3d scanning. They are here to document some buildings with me so i can have the highest level of documentation for a few of my favorite sites. Green hill plantation has the original slave owner here was very active in the slave trade. One of the things he decided to put in his yard is a slave Auction Block and a stand. In addition to that, there were also originally 30 outbuildings on the property. Historicallysite in history and material culture. When he first acquired the property in 1796, about 1800, the site was about 60 acres. He expanded it to 5000 acres. He was active in growing his plantation. In addition to farming, he was active in the slave trade. The plantation was large enough that it was divided into two separate towns. Upper town was the buildings by the main house. This is where we are standing. Down by the river, lower town. That was more where the enslaved people lived and worked. Earlier today, you walk ed through the area with the trimble team. What are the challenges they are facing today . One challenge is the size of the site. I was hoping to maybe be able to scan the walk from the river because slaves would have been brought to the site from the river and would have to walk up on the river to the Auction Block. I was hoping to capture it. It is quite a distance to capture. Because it is august and everything is in full bloom, a lot of the landscape is overgrown with trees and bushes. It is not a straight path. That was one of the challenges. We decided laser scanning is not the best way to show that. There is now other technology that can capture that walk. The time of year we are here, the overgrown bushes around the building has made it a challenge. It is not only a challenge for us, but also a challenge for the property owners. They recognize the historical significance of the buildings. When they bought the property, they had good intentions. They still do, of maintaining the buildings. Having the 30 outbuildings maintained and working fulltime you cannot do it. It takes a lot of of keep upkeep to take care of these buildings. When buildings are not being used, that is when they are start to disappear from the landscape. Also natural disasters happen. ,when we walked the site, we saw a giant tree that had fallen. A fallen tree can take out any building. Once it happens, you lose a building. Back there, this is where the other slave houses were. You can see the piles of stone. I think their were two that is a chimney of a slave house next to this one. I think there might have just been three. Is the chimney of the kitchen and that is all that survived. On other side, three fireplaces in it . Like, bread ovens pretty cool. We can look inside to see it might be full of stuff. Is it open . I do not know. It has stuff in it. Cellars also has the sel space under it. An attic . Yes, it has an interesting space to it. She has a thing that cuts it. A couple of buildings would be perfect for it. It would take a lot of brush in the front. I am richard. I work as a market manager. I have been involved in atlantic freetrade project, which is a philanthropic project we have been working on for three or four years now. As part of that project, jobie has asked us to come and help her documents and slave houses in the virginia area. When we laser skin, we run our scanner on a tripod and replace it with a camera that can take panoramic images. We can map the color from those images onto the laser scan and that provides a threedimensional point cloud from which we can pull models to pullr software measurements and other useful information out of it. The scanning when they are done, what is the product you will use . What are you going to see . The final product can be a variety of things. They are able to process the material or the data in many different ways. Really, it is a 3d model. The 3d model can be used in different applications. One of the applications is the can be put into drafting programs. I can use it to create drawings of the buildings. Floor plans, elevations. The 3d model can be used to view into the building. You have a 3d model and you can you can rotate it around and look inside it. You can play around with it to get a sense of the space. They can take the 3d models and make Virtual Reality models. You can do 3d printing of buildings and objects. The deliverables are kind of openended. It depends on what software or products you have. Im going to use it primarily to some peopleodel have an idea of what these buildings looked like in real time. Able to spin around and not just a lie on twodimensional views able to spin around and not just rely on twodimensional views but 3d models that help people relate better to the buildings and space. Before and after. [indiscernible] [laughter] i have invited some people from local organizations i have been working with and have supported my project. We have people from Virginia Preservation humanities. Preservation virginia. A local retailer of trimble equipment works with me. I will have people from williamsburg coming out. Architectural historians. That will be exciting because he was one of the first to document the site in the 1980s. It will be interesting to get his perspective to see what it looks like now from back in the 2017. Last time he was here was in 1980. The site was originally documented by the american Historical Survey in the 1960s. My name is ed chapel. Im an architectural historian and sometime archaeologist. Colonialr williamsburg, architectural research, architectural history. There 36 years and 2016 oned retired in of the principal things our generation did was to broaden the fishnet to look at regional buildings. We know buildings in williamsburg tell powerful stories. But they do not tell the whole story. Not everything survives. It was our responsibility to try to put that pieces to tell a theer story, particularly story of american African Americans in slavery. Went into towns and studied early buildings, particularly slave buildings. Slave houses, plantar houses in which enslaved people were domestic workers. And urbanplantation ensemble, if you will. Retired, i am continuing to do this kind of work. I love doing fieldwork in the countryside. There is amazing material in the countryside largely overlooked. It tells a powerful story. We are at green hill this morning in campbell county. It is a remarkable plantation. Green hill is probably the most or has been the most plantation intact plantation ensembles in virginia or maryland or South Carolina as well. We were here about 20 years ago when much more survived. To lookk with this team further and try to record more. It is one of many places that has this rich variety of buildings people worked and lived in, in the virginia countryside. It is worth coming back and working more. There were photographs before we came by the historic american links survey. There is good photographic reporting. We came back and did another layer of measured drawings of eight or 10 buildings, plans. Sections, elevations. A number of those buildings are now gone. Only a chimney standing. But today, we are using new technology. In some ways was a medieval system of measuring and drawing by hand. There is still a role for that. We are doing extraordinary digital scanning and recording that takes the textures of the buildings to a degree we were not able to 20 years ago using an oldfashioned paper and pencil. And a measuring stick. But we did an amazing amount of recording twentysomething years ago. We did drawings of all the buildings i described. Except for the main house. There is a professor, my thesis advisor from the university of oregon has , traveled to be here. He has been here all week. He has enjoyed it. I rick miner and i am am the senior archaeologist. I met jobie when she came to the university of oregon to take a degree in historic preservation. I teach a course called historic archaeology and preservation. She was a student in the course. She stood out because she came in with this great idea of beginning with an inventory of standing slave houses. She subsequently asked me to be on her masters committee. We maintained contact and a relationship ever since. I went out to visit her when she had a fellowship at williamsburg one time. Archaeologyorical and do historic archaeology in the west. The beginnings of historical archaeology were in the east. It helps to get out to see some. F these places you can read about them and talk about them, but to be here is special. She invited me here to participate in what she is doing. Africanamerican archaeology was stimulus for us studying the slavery period in the United States. It did not really get going until 1969. That was the first slave house excavation in florida. It was a real stimulus for looking at the whole slave experience. It was an important thing in the history of the United States and the history of archaeology to document what was going on. What are your impressions of the place where we are now, green hill . This is the most impressive and extensive site we have been at. This is the third. It just goes on and on. It must of had a sizable population. It is the most overgrown, but also there was Natural Sources of stone. A lot of the buildings were constructed of soandso they are really well preserved more so than the frame structures. There is a lot going on. Much of it is still under the brush. It will take a lot to reveal it. It will not be done on this trip. That is for sure. As a scholar in the field, how could you characterize the importance of her project, saving slave houses . I think it is an outstanding project in the sense it is bringing together a lot of the data. And she is taking a multistate approach. A lot of times, we tend to work on a statebystate basis. But she is trying to extend throughout the south. Right now, she is focusing on virginia. The other thing that is really cool kind of behind the scenes is bringing all of the people interested in the subject together. Not only the scholarly people, but also preservation people and the families. It gets everybody talking and of generates this energy. She is at the center of this right now. For me to have been one of her professors to come and see this happening, it is a really cool thing. I am pretty sure this is the front. I could have it backwards. It is the main house. That is not my area of specialty. What is interesting is the slave Auction Block and stand. The Auction Block is the taller one. The block is the higher one and the stand is the lower one. It is closer to the main house than it is to any of the enslaved buildings. It is in direct site of the slave buildings. If you see where the kitchen wouldve been, you can see the chimney back in the trees. It is almost in line with the kitchen. What im guessing is it is not in line with the kitchen in the slave house and is slightly off. You can actually see the Auction Block. Every day. Yes. If you come out of any of the buildings, you can see the Auction Block. A reminder of what could happen to you. Exactly. I am the director of africanamerican programs. We work quite a bit with her and her work across virginia. We recently received a grant to expand one of our projects, called the encyclopedia of virginia. We are increasing the slavery content but also traveling across the state and documenting slave dwellings with google software. We allowing virginians really, americans, anybody from around the world to access the sites from their living room. She has been a big part of the project. You can find it on google maps. If you go to encyclopedia virginias page, you can find it. You can see several of the Historic Sites the Virginia Foundation for humanities has already captured. If you search online, you can find it anywhere. What is your background . How did you get involved . My background is in public history and museums. I spent most of my career working with museums. I have worked with colonial williamsburg. About a year ago, i joined the Virginia Foundation for the humanities to help other Historic Sites build their capacity. One thing we do is provide grants. We are programming for research for capacity building. We do our own programs. We produce our own radio shows. My responsibility now is working with the general assembly. They commissioned us to document as many existing africanamerican Historic Sites as possible. Ll of this work feeds together with his new project, we are marrying all of the content together for something userfriendly for teachers or families or visitors, they can explore the underexplored sites that have such huge significance to us. I think it is a status symbol. He was a slave trader and it shows how good he was at his job. He is so good at moving slaves that he needed to have something right at his home. People were coming to him to buy slaves. They do not he did not need to travel to do this. He was getting so many, he had enough he could do it out of his home. The river is about one mile away. They would be delivered at the river. Bring them right up here and sell them. They had walked about a mile from the river just to get here to be sold. That must have been a horrific experience. Yes. The area by the house is called upper town. The group of buildings down by the river, lower town. Lower town was primarily enslaved buildings. It is where a lot of slaves lived and worked. Im guessing an overseer to control and manage that area. Up here, this was upper town. Does lower town exist . Yes, but not a lot. We will walk this way and i will point out the buildings that exist up here. More buildings exist in upper than lower town. There is a time of stone. A lot of it is hidden. I will point it out from where you can see it. There is a stone wall around. It is called a garden, but not a formal garden. We think of flowers and shrubs. But it is all made of stone. Originally, the site had over 30 outbuildings. That is a lot of outbuildings. It also showed off his wealth. The first building over here is a duck house. He built a house for ducks. You know what i mean . [laughter] i would not call it a necessary building. But he could do it. He had the material to do it, so he did it. Ok. I know. Better housing than the people did. Better housing for the animals than for the slaves. At any given time, how many slaves did he have on the property living and working . I do not know. I think it is tricky because he was a slave trader. He would be moving slaves, probably at least hundreds, maybe thousands, moving through here. I do not know enough about how many what shipments were and how many he kept on hand permanently. I know, for here, there would have been up here, there was a kitchen. There would have been slaves living in the kitchen. There is a wash house. There would have been slaves living in the wash house. There are at least three known slave houses. And there is a level too. And a space downstairs loft space. House with aaving loft space where slaves were living. Quite a few slaves were living up here and working. And there would have been slaves living and working in the main house probably. Few up here. I think lower town was literally like a town. It was a whole community of enslaved People Living and working. There was a mill down there. I have not found documentation of a list of his slaves yet. I have found a narrative from one of his slaves. Really . Yes. When i was doing research. Unfortunately, it does not describe any of the Living Conditions or anything. He is talking about some thing else, but it is one of the slaves. Wow. First, we know people were living upstairs because if you go inside, there is a stair that is to be right here. Here there is the header. It tells you there was a stair, that this is an opening. That is where a stair would have been. If you look at the fireplace, it is cool. The back of the wash house. And how we know it is a wash house and what makes it interesting because you do not find it often are the drains in the wall. That is what those stone basins are. When they are washing, t