County May Appoint Staff Archaeologist

Job Would Be to Supervise Building Sites

For the past decade, developers have been erecting houses and office buildings on the sites of plantations, farms and historic houses in Prince William County without authoritative oversight from the county government.

On Tuesday, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors will decide whether to employ an archaeologist, a position that board Chairman Sean T. Connaughton (R) says is long overdue.

"Up to this point, we have had to depend on the applicants' archaeological studies instead of having an independent review," Connaughton said. "This is part of an ongoing effort of the county to ensure that we preserve as much of the county's past as possible."

Bob Bainbridge, a county planner, said that he has been trying to monitor the archaeological surveys and digs required of developers, but that he lacks the experience and time for the job. In his office at the McCoart Administrative Building, several archaeological surveys were strewn on his desk and on a table.

Three years ago, the county hired its first historic preservation manager to oversee the restoration of two sites: Ben Lomond Manor House, which served as a hospital during the Civil War, and Rippon Lodge, the county's oldest home, which the local government bought for $1.4 million in 2000 to turn into a museum.

The county also is refurbishing the Barnes House, a historic home of a prominent African American couple, and is overseeing a developer's restoration of the Lucasville School for Colored Children, a little red schoolhouse that opened in 1884 and closed in 1926.

The position is not new. It existed several years ago but was left vacant after an archaeologist resigned in the 1990s because of budget cuts, Bainbridge said.

The county archaeologist's job would be to inspect development sites and to determine whether archaeologists hired by developers should dig more extensively, Bainbridge said.

Bainbridge said Prince William wants to be at the forefront of historical preservation. He noted that Alexandria and Fairfax County employ archaeologists.

But a staff archaeologist is unusual, said Nick Luccketti, the principal archaeologist of the James River Institute for Archaeology in Williamsburg.

"Most localities don't have their own archaeologists," Luccketti said. "It's a credit to Prince William that they are taking this step."

Luccketti's firm has most recently completed surveys for developers building houses near Rippon Lodge.

There are some developments that are not required by law to conduct archaeological surveys, which could be a detriment to communities trying to preserve history, Luccketti said.

"For projects that fall through the loopholes, that's something an archaeologist could address," he said.

County records show the completion of 164 archaeology surveys since 1994. Archaeological firms hired by developers have found such items as tobacco pipes, kitchen utensils and pieces of ceramic bowls.

Bainbridge recalled that developers unearthed the foundation of a Colonial home in the Carterwood subdivision, near Haymarket.

What happened to it?

"It was destroyed," Bainbridge said.

But the county now knows a house existed in that area, and it has been recorded, he said. "We're trying to get this historic record before it's lost," Bainbridge said.

The private archaeological firms generally house the smaller artifacts, and the county is trying to recover all of them, he said.