ICJS’s programs have not only supported the work of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. They have influenced and supported the work of staff at other historic sites, members of the scholarly community, and members of the general public. The work of ICJS departments is continually fueling new scholarship and discoveries, providing more and richer resources to understand Monticello and our shared history.
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Educational Programs - Training - Fellowships
Monticello’s Archaeology Department is also home to the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS – http://www.daacs.org), an ambitious initiative that uses digital technologies to foster archaeological data sharing and collaboration among scholars, helping to advance our understanding of the evolution of slave societies in the early modern Atlantic.
Over the last 24 years, thanks to funding from organizations such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, DAACS has grown into the largest and longest-running archive of downloadable, comparable archaeological data for any specific region or period.
A critical component of this work is training and supporting a large network of archaeologists and historians who use material culture to conduct research on the experiences of enslaved communities and their descendants in the Southeastern United States and the Caribbean.
Under Saunders Director Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy (2003-2022), the ICJS’s international reach experienced a major expansion. To date, the ICJS has hosted over 500 domestic and international scholars from the United States, and 32 countries around the world. Our fellowships have supported not only academic historians and graduate students, but novelists, archaeologists, artists, librarians, journalists, musicians, and more. This map shows the geographic origins of all of ICJS’s fellows, illustrating the worldwide reach of our fellowship programs.
