Beginning in 2018, AAHA has worked with a multidisciplinary team to investigate the Cloverfields plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Funded by the Cloverfields Preservation Foundation (CPF), excavations focused on a four-acre area around the plantation’s breathtaking 300-year-old house. The investigation incorporated a wide spectrum of archaeological techniques and has so far resulted in the identification of over 500 features and the recovery of over 100,000 artifacts. These, in turn, have informed the restoration of the house and service wing to its circa 1784 condition. As the restoration effort draws to a close in 2021, AAHA and the CPF are now embarking on a new phase of preservation tasks, including on-site maintenance of the archaeological collection, assisting outside researchers as they review the work completed to this point, monitoring of any future construction activities in the formal gardens and landscape, and future plans for the interpretive reconstruction of some period outbuildings such as the icehouse.
