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 ------ 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