Hi,

Please check out this Internet site relating to
an historical archaeological project focusing on
a Dutch-American farmhouse in Brooklyn, NY.

Thanks,
Chris Ricciardi

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Presenting Archaeology Magazine's first online dig:

At Brooklyn's eighteenth-century Lott House, uncover the buried
past of a Dutch family living on the fringes of the burgeoning city
that would become New York.

1720. The Age of Reason.Wigs are the rage.Women's necklines
dip scandalously. There is no Declaration of Independence, no
Constitution. No Thomas Jefferson. No Brooklyn Bridge. Bluebeard
sails the stormy seas. And more than one tree grows in Brooklyn.
There, in the Flatlands area, a well-to-do Dutch family by the name
of Lott builds a modest home on their new farm. In 300 years, that
modest home grows into a 22-room manse, and all the time the
same family calls the place home. In the 1980s, only one resident
remains. When she dies, the ancestral home is empty for the first
time since before World War I, before the Civil War, before the
American Revolution. In eight years, the house that withstood 300
years of use is crumbling, and the property on which it stood has
become a jungle. The land remains an archaeological gold mine,
a microcosm of change over three centuries.

Join our interactive dig and help Brooklyn College's team of
archaeologists unearth:

Servant Quarters:
If the Lotts were in the avant-garde of the abolitionist movement (they
released their slaves years before the Emancipation Proclamation), did
their philosophy affect the treatment of their servants and slaves?

A Tennis Court:
Images of the Great Gatsby come into focus as you help locate the Lotts'
tennis court.

An Old Well:
Are either of two circular depressions on the property the site of a former
well?

On Archaeology's virtual dig:

* Keep up-to-the-minute on excavation with total access to field notes.
Coming in June.

* Argue for an additional trench by the back shed. Explain why you don't
think a strange clay tube from the trench by the porch is a pipe stem after
all. Question methodology. Propose new lines of inquiry. When you
contribute to our on-line bulletin board, you are in direct contact with
the excavators.

* Meet an expert in faunal analysis who will discuss what animals the Lotts
ate, what animals they raised, and how to tell the difference.

* Listen to oral histories recalling the old days at the Lott House. Coming
soon.

* Play detective as you search family wills, probates, deeds, and other
sources to discover clues about the family's way of life.

* Interpret these mystery objects. We can only guess what these artifacts
may once have been used for.

* Learn to handle the tools of the trade.

* Grab your trowel and enter our simulated test pit. Follow along with our
trench side stratigraphy lesson as the stone kitchen emerges.

www.archaeology.org

for more information, contact Elizabeth Himelfarb at 212-732-5154, x.12
Archaeology Magazine * 135 William Street * New York, NY 10038