Darby O’Donnell
As a college freshman in 1994, Darby O’Donnell wasn’t sure what to major in — until he found the answer right in his own backyard. While helping his father build a deck at their Newport News house, they discovered an archaeological site.
“We were digging new post holes and found old ceramics and handblown glass,” O’Donnell recalls. “I’d worked as a historical interpreter in the Jamestown glasshouse, so I knew it was old stuff.”
O’Donnell began working toward a double major in archaeology and anthropology at the University of Virginia and was drawn back to his yard again and again to dig deeper into what they had discovered.
“When doing a few test pits, a certain kind of ceramic came up called colonoware, which is typically attributed to enslaved people,” he says. “My research determined our yard was once an 18th-century slave quarters associated with a plantation.”
O’Donnell submitted his findings in his senior thesis, then went on to get his master’s in anthropology with a specialization in historical archaeology from William & Mary. After working for a few cultural resource management firms, he started his own company in Richmond, Darby O’Donnell LLC. His clients include land developers, civil and environmental engineers, land use attorneys, and federal agencies that need an archaeological survey in order to obtain a permit.
The requirements were created in 1966 under the National Historic Preservation Act. Federal agencies work in concert with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) to take into consideration historic significance before development.
“The system is set up so we don’t lose anything,” O’Donnell explains. “When our interstate [highway] system was built, it wrecked a lot of things, and there was backlash to unbridled development.”
O’Donnell’s firm doesn’t stop development, but it helps redirect his clients around archaeological sites or mitigate any impacts through further archaeological excavations, if in fact a site is identified and deemed eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
“A road may have to be rerouted, or a future building planned in a slightly different area,” he says. “We follow DHR’s three phases of archaeology to triage each case.”
O’Donnell says only about 5% of projects make it to Phase 3, a full archaeological excavation, and actually become listed on the register.
While he’s found old coins, Civil War bullets and Native American spear points and arrowheads, O’Donnell says to an archaeologist, the real treasure is finding “sealed contexts,” detectable traces of events preserved in layers of soil in a vertical timeline.
“When the soil is sealed, as in under a plowed field, we might see artifacts from the 1850s in one layer, then beneath that might be from 1670, and so on.”
O’Donnell holds items he found around his parents’ house back in the 1990s that got him interested in archeological work.
O’Donnell jests he’s more garbage collector than treasure hunter and doesn’t want to be associated with Indiana Jones.
“It’s funny, everybody brings up Indiana Jones,” he says. “The literary comedy journal McSweeney’s did an article on how Indiana Jones got his tenure revoked because of his horrendous practices in archaeology: stealing artifacts, getting banished from countries, using terrible methodology.”
O’Donnell says that in reality, archaeologists aren’t finding ancient treasure troves, but they are finding value in the science.
“Most days it’s just a lot of broken glass and ceramics — or nothing at all,” he says, “but it’s the thrill of discovery that keeps you going.”
While working in Salem, O’Donnell unearthed a mid-19th-century cabin that you wouldn’t even know was there when walking past it. In Stafford County, he found winter camps belonging to Union and Confederate soldiers on the north and south sides of the Rappahannock River. Native American sites are also common, due to the mobility of Virginia’s tribes. Evidence of their activity dates back at least 12,000 years and possibly earlier. O’Donnell has personally identified a spear point from 7400 B.C., the time period verified by its unique style.
“Archaeology helps us get a better handle on how people lived in the past, who they were, and how they identified themselves beyond what was written about them,” he says.
O’Donnell says relic hunters, who pillage Native American sites and Civil War battlefields, are doing history a disservice.
“Some of Virginia’s significant sites have been horribly looted,” he says. “They’re tearing up the stratigraphy — that’s undisturbed archaeological layers of soil and artifacts deposited throughout history — and then items end up in a shoebox at somebody’s house, and that information is now lost.”
Leaving excavations to the experts ensures history is properly preserved. Even archaeologists try to disturb as little as possible, hence the meticulous, painstaking work.
“Preservation is paramount,” O’Donnell says. “If you can leave it alone, leave it alone. Artifacts are stable in the ground. You never know what kind of technology will come up in the future. Now we can conduct new soil samples, pull DNA off of tobacco pipe stems, stuff you wouldn’t have thought about 10 years ago.”
Not only is O’Donnell helping preserve archaeological sites for future study, he’s instilling a love of history in the next generation. He and his wife, Katherine, love exploring with their children, Norah and Henry.
“History is everywhere,” O’Donnell says. “We can walk around downtown, cross the river, see old bridge abutments and wonder, ‘What was that?’ There are so many echoes of the past sitting in plain sight. And there’s plenty more history you don’t even see that’s below the ground.”
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