Monticello Moments
Virginia Archaeology Month Open House
- Included with Every Ticket
- Outdoor
- Not Accessible
Join us as Monticello’s Archaeology Department hosts its annual open house, featuring displays, exhibits on recent discoveries, engaging activities for all ages, and walking tours.
Parking is free at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center
Come celebrate Virginia Archaeology Month! Monticello’s Archaeology Department will host its annual open house this October, featuring displays, exhibits on recent discoveries in the field and the lab, engaging activities for all ages, and walking tours of the ornamental mountaintop landscape.
Archaeology staff members will be on hand to answer questions.
Free for UVA and PVCC students and Monticello members
About the Event
Displays and exhibits will be in the North Yard area of the historic mountaintop, near the Mountaintop Activity Center, showcasing our ongoing work here at Monticello as well as current projects undertaken by the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS).
Complimentary Mountaintop Archaeology Walking Tours led by archaeology staff will leave the North Yard at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m. See what current excavations reveal about Jefferson’s changing designs for the ornamental landscape, the sources he drew on, and the labor required to carry them out.
Walking Tours will follow the paths around Mulberry Row and the Monticello house. Sturdy shoes and a water bottle are recommended.
Lightning talks will be held at 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 2:30 p.m. in the North Yard area. Hear the latest from “Cracking the Colonoware Code,” an NSF-funded collaboration led by the department’s Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS). The project explores the cultural dynamics behind colonoware, a locally made earthenware found at Monticello and across the Chesapeake and other slavery-based societies of the Southeast. To learn about the DAACS research that inspired it, read our recent open-access article in American Antiquity.
The pop-up exhibits and activities in the North Yard as well as the Mountaintop Archaeology Walking Tour are included with any ticketed tour admission; no reservations needed.
Monticello Members can enjoy this event for free by presenting their membership card or information at the ticket office and receiving a Grounds Ticket for the day.
This event is weather-dependent. If rain is forecast, a cancellation notification will post on this webpage by 5 p.m. on October 9.
Walking tours on the historic mountaintop will include a look at open excavations and recent discoveries.