From Kentucky to Monticello: A 400-Million-Year Journey

The annual Monticello-UVA Archaeological Field School is a reminder that research is always ongoing on the mountaintop. There is always another question to ask, another clue to uncover, and sometimes, a surprising discovery waiting just beneath the surface. Field School, held in partnership with UVA since the 1980s, is also a glimpse into the exciting future of archaeology, and the next generation of archaeologists who will help us better understand the past.  

A few months ago, staff and field school students were excavating west of Monticello's North Pavilion. There, student Avery Ross found a strange artifact. Later, during an on-site seminar, another student, Taylor Newton, identified it as a piece of tabulate coral—an ancient marine fossil. “How in the world did this get to Monticello?” Ross and Newton asked one another.  

Our archaeologists started digging for answers, but this time in the documentary record, not the earth. In Jefferson’s archive, archaeologists found a fascinating answer to their question.  

In Notes on the State of Virginia, written in response to French diplomat François Barbé Marbois’s “Queries” (1780), Jefferson wrote about fossils: "Near the eastern foot of the North mountain are immense bodies of Schist, containing impressions of shells in a variety of forms. I have received petrified shells of very different kinds from the first sources of the Kentucky, which bear no resemblance to any I have ever seen on the tide waters. It is said that shells are found in the Andes, in South America, fifteen thousand feet above the level of the ocean."  

So, Thomas Jefferson had “petrified shells,” or fossils, at Monticello. Someone had sent them to him, and that someone was George Rogers Clark. 

Throughout the Revolutionary War, Clark was based in Louisville, Kentucky. In December 1781, Jefferson, by then no longer governor, and deep in the writing of Notes, asked Clark "to procure for me some teeth of the great animal whose remains are found on the Ohio. Were it possible to get a tooth of each kind, that is to say a foretooth, grinder…" (Jefferson 1781). The "great animal" that Jefferson would later call a "mammoth" is the creature now known as the American mastodon. 

Clark replied from Louisville in February 1782 that he was working on procuring a "Thigh and Jaw Bone Grinders and Tusk." Then he added: "Their is very Curious Shells found in many parts of this Cuntry. I shall send you a few of them" (Clark 1782).

The next surviving link in the correspondence is Jefferson's thank-you note: "I received here about a week ago your obliging letter of Oct. 12. 1783. with the shells and seeds for which I return you many thanks. You are also so kind as to keep alive the hope of getting for me as many of the different species of bones, teeth and tusks of the Mammoth as can now be found" (Jefferson 1783). 

Sadly, Clark’s cover letter of October 12, 1783, which accompanied the shells, has vanished. With it went any more detailed account of where the specimens came from. All we have is his earlier remark that curious shells were to be found in “many parts of this Cuntry.” 

The most likely hypothesis is not that the Monticello specimen traveled from the headwaters of the Kentucky River, but that it came from the coral-rich limestones right on Clark's doorstep. Jefferson may have later simplified the story by saying the shells came from “the first sources of the Kentucky,” even if Clark never gave him a more exact location. 

If so, archaeologists at Monticello have solved the puzzle of how an ancient marine fossil reached the mountaintop. But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is how they did it. 

A small piece of fossilized coral found in the ground led researchers from the archaeology site to the archives and back again. The artifact provoked the question; Jefferson and Clark’s letters offered clues. Together, archaeology and the documentary record helped piece together a story that neither source could tell on its own. 

And that is some of the fun of research at Monticello. The past rarely gives us a complete story. Instead, it leaves behind fragments: an artifact in the soil, a letter in an archive, a missing document, or a curious reference tucked into a book. It takes archaeologists, historians, and researchers working across different methods and sources to put those pieces together. 

Sometimes, those pieces lead us to answers. And sometimes, they lead to even better questions. 

Either way, the next discovery is out there, waiting for our researchers. Perhaps in an archive, perhaps beneath our feet, or, as this summer’s field school learned, in the form of a very old piece of coral that somehow made its way to the top of a mountain. 

This article is based on the research conducted by the Monticello Archaeology department, as featured in this blog post.