Community as Client: A Descendant-Based Archaeological Research Approach at a Presidential Plantation Site

The Clientage Model, as defined by Dr. Michael Blakey, is one in which archaeologists give descendants connected with a heritage site primacy in defining the research and interpretive agenda directed toward their ancestral material record. We have descendants guide our approach to the archaeological record at the site of the Montpelier plantation in Virginia, once owned by President James Madison. Descendants of enslaved Americans have raised questions regarding how the archaeological record reflects their ancestors’ intellectual contributions. This has helped us rethink our approach to interpreting the archaeological record and moved us toward an archaeology of intellectual labor across the landscape. Here we explore the insights gleaned from this perspective and how this has changed our collective understanding of the plantation landscape. From this work, descendants have termed the larger archaeological record an ancestral memory device and have become a primary partner in preserving this resource.