The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation will open the Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center in 2026, allowing visitors to see firsthand the archaeological process in the lab. The new center will also offer a never-before-seen view of the most significant artifacts discovered since archaeologists broke ground in Williamsburg nearly 100 years ago.
Director of Archaeology at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Jack Gary ’00 emphasized the uniqueness of the center in what it offers to the public and contains as a functioning archaeological laboratory.
“The building is literally transparent. There’s windows into our labs,” Gary said.
This aspect of the center differentiates it from a typical museum, as it encourages visitors to view and engage with laboratory processes. These include x-rays, cleaning and analyzing found artifacts.
“Whereas a museum, yes, people work there, but they’re behind the scenes,” Gary said. “Ours is the actual workspace. You will see people in the lab.”
The new lab inside of the center will offer many changes to the storage and display of artifacts excavated from Colonial Williamsburg.
After excavation, artifacts may start to degrade and oxidize. Iron artifacts are particularly susceptible to this process. The new laboratory in the archaeology center will feature a low-humidity room dedicated to storing metal artifacts so that they do not degrade.
The heart of the center will be the study collection, containing the most significant artifacts from the past 100 years of excavation.
“It’s the materials that really help us to recreate and understand Colonial Williamsburg,” Gary said. “And they will be in a central room, all glass. You’ll be able to see these things in the exhibit space all along it. So, yeah, we’re showing off.”
The new center will not limit visitors to only viewing artifacts and the lab process; the public will be able to engage in archaeology themselves through hands-on activities.
One of these hands-on experiences could potentially be washing and cleaning small artifacts, like animal teeth, that have newly arrived at the lab.
“The first step in the process for this thing when it comes to the lab is to be washed,” Gary said. “We may start inviting people to do those simple processes.”
The center will also offer a new educational experience for visitors to Colonial Williamsburg.
However, for current students at the College of William and Mary, there are currently multiple other ways to become involved with archaeology in Williamsburg.
The college offers the National Institute of American History and Democracy certificate program in Public History and Material Culture. The program works with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to offer both field work experiences and internships.
“We currently teach three classes in the anthropology department for William and Mary,” Gary said. “And we do a summer field school, so you can come, and you can dig alongside us for six credits.”
One of the active dig sites is the Peter Scott site. Peter Scott was a prominent cabinet and furniture maker in 18th-century Williamsburg, and his finished works appear in the Colonial Williamsburg Art Museum. First excavated in 1958, archaeologists returned to the site in January 2025 to further understand unanswered questions that the 1958 team left.
One of those new focuses is the role of enslaved laborers at the Peter Scott site.
“We do have to recognize that Peter Scott enslaved two men, we know that, who were helping him in his furniture making business,” Gary said. “When we find things that are related to him making furniture, whether it’s artifacts, maybe it’s tools, maybe some of the hardware that might have been used on the furniture, we have to recognize that it’s not just Peter Scott in those spaces.” In a way, you can almost say that all this stuff informs us about the labor and I’d say probably the skill too of these enslaved men.”
The return to the site also entails the arrival of archaeological technology that did not exist 60 years ago. Although the systematic style of digging has continued, many of the tools used to find and analyze artifacts have evolved.
“We can go down to the microscopic level, and we do analysis on plant remains,” Gary said. “So we can get pollen grains that are trapped in the soil, extract them, and see what kind of plants are in an area to help us reconstruct the environment that was here. It’s changed the basics of excavating, gritting things out, separating layers.”
Archaeology field technician Atticus Woodruff spoke on how simple artifacts, like pottery or glass shards, can reveal many things about 18th-century life.
“Based on the way that they’re manufactured and decorated, we’re able to date the layer that it came from,” Woodruff said. “We’re able to understand how these layers interact with each other and how the site was used.”
The site is in the beginning stages of a minimum 12-month project, and much of the early archaeological process is looking for indicators of significant dig locations. Cheyenne Johnson, another archaeology field technician, remarked on key signs the team has pinpointed at the site, such as bricks and soil marks of a foundation.
“Who put them here? Why are they here? Those are good indicators for us that something is continuing to happen here and to investigate,” Johnson said.
Over 5,000 people have visited the Peter Scott site since its opening to the public March 1. The site is located directly across from the Bruton Parish Church.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has over 60 million artifacts in its collection, offering an invaluable resource for scholars interested in 17th through early 19th-century history and material culture.
“We treat the collection as a resource, not just for ourselves, but for others,” Gary said. “So outside scholars can come look at it, William and Mary students, it is there as a resource for anybody. If they’ve got research questions that can be answered by our collection, we welcome research into it.”
