Most participants in the Jamestown 2007 project are at least passingly familiar with the Utopia site. Excavated by Dr. Bill Kelso in 1973-1974, the results of his findings at what he called "Utopia Cottage" and a dozen other sites on the Kingsmill property can be found in his 1984 book. In brief, Kelso turned up a large earthfast dwelling house, some 18 ft. by 29 ft. in size, with a 12 ft. by 15 ft. dry-laid brick half basement later added to one end of the structure. Surrounding the house on two sides was a post fence which ended at the corner of a well. A ditch paralleled the fence and emptied into a 13 ft. by 15 ft. square pit that may have been used to water stock (see attached map).

Twenty years after Kelso's work at Utopia, excavations were renewed at the site in 1993. Except for one small trash pit and the post pattern of a service building, several seasons of digging failed to uncover additional features related to the Utopia Cottage portion of the site. Many 18th-century components were encountered that related to later occupancy of the site. For the Jamestown 2007 project, however, our interest in Utopia is confined to its earliest occupation.

Based on all the data on hand in the 1970s, Kelso bracketed the date of the Utopia Cottage between ca. 1670 and 1710. Throughout most of this period the property was owned by Thomas Pettus II. Preliminary analysis of the faunal remains and ceramics tentatively suggested that the primary occupants of Utopia were English indentured servants or perhaps tenants (Outlaw et al. 1977, Miller 1978). However, the exact identity of the residents of the Utopia Cottage remains speculative. Regardless, the Utopia Cottage was the residence of common laborers and members of the lower classes of Chesapeake society.

As far as determining an intra-site chronology at the Utopia Cottage site, this exercise is limited by the small number of discrete features with enough representative artifacts. Only three features--the well (KM312), the half basement (KM300), and the small trash pit (KM93)--contain enough data to merit intensive study.


Back to list of sites