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Abstract

The Doak House Museum is housed in an impressive brick structure located on the campus of Tusculum College in Greene County, Tennessee. Built about 1829-30, this large two-story mansion was owned until the mid-1970s by descendents of the Samuel W. Doak family, the original occupants. Doak was a minister and pioneer educator in east Tennessee who, with his father, established Tusculum Academy (later College) in 1818 (Fuhrmann 1986:43). Samuel W. Doak built a second academy adjacent to his residence in 1835; oral tradition has it that this restored wooden building sits on its original limestone foundations (George Collins: personal communication) approximately 41 m south of the house. A restored springhouse about 60.5 m east of the academy building is the third extant structure associated with the antebellum Doak occupation; its construction date is unknown. The Tusculum College Department of Museum Program and Studies operates the Doak House Museum. Current plans by the College call for extensive modifications to the grounds surrounding the Doak House, including new parking lots, roadways, landscaping, and additional utilities. As part of the planning process, George Collins, the Department’s Director, felt it would be useful to have an archaeological survey undertaken prior to any alterations to the property. The goals of the survey were to identify historic fence lines, roadways, outbuildings, and other landscape elements on the property in order to avoid destroying significant archaeological resources and to guide future restoration efforts. Collins contacted the Jeffrey L. Brown Institute of Archaeology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and it was agreed that the UTC summer archaeological field school would be held at the site during the spring of 2003. Through outside grants and the support of Tusculum College, the Doak House Museum provided housing and a modest stipend for the field school students. Fieldwork occurred from May 7 through June 5, 2003, with a crew of eight students supervised by Dr. Nicholas Honerkamp, Director of the Institute of Archaeology. This 21-day project generated 15 pages of typed field notes, several plan view maps, over 300 digital field photos (including several dozen provided by the Doak House Museum), and 87 bags of artifacts. Cleaning, classification and analysis of the 8848 artifacts generated by this project occurred during June, July, and August at the UTC Institute of Archaeology laboratory under the direct supervision of the author. Report preparation was undertaken in August and September of 2003 and involved approximately 200 person-hours. Besides the present report, a PowerPoint presentation on the results of the archaeological research was given by the author at Tusculum College on September 29, 2003.

Department

Dept. of Social, Cultural, and Justice Studies

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Date

9-1-2003

Subject

Archaeology -- Tennessee -- Greene County; Antiquities; Archaeology

Location

Greeneville (Tenn.); Greene County (Tenn.); Greene County (Tenn.) -- Antiquities

Document Type

reports

Extent

42 leaves

Language

English

Call Number

F443.G75 H66 2003

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Landscape archaeology at the Doak House

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