The W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite is now a National Historic Landmark, but little besides an abandoned cellar hole remains to be seen today in the woods along the roadside. This archaeological site has been intensively investigated, however, by University of Massachusetts Department of Anthropology Summer Field Schools in Archaeology during 1983, 1984, and 2003 under the direction of Dr. Robert Paynter.

Photo by R. Fletcher Documents and oral accounts were used along with the archaeology to piece together the story of "The House of the Black Burghardts," the modest house of Du Bois' mother's family, on a 0.2 acre lot far smaller than the 5.15 acre Landmark today. Tax records show possible improvements in the mid 1840s, early 1900s, and around 1930 under Du Bois’ ownership. The house then declined, disappearing from the City Directory after 1940, finally demolished and pushed to the back of the lot after Du Bois sold it in 1954.

Photo by R. Fletcher The Field Schools made geophysical surveys, including resistivity and magnetometry, and phosphate tests of the soil for evidence of human activity. Forty excavation units and 216 surface collection units amassed over 12,000 artifacts, many of which were analyzed in 2003 at a summer field laboratory at Great Barrington's Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church, where Du Bois himself once spoke. Two middens revealed debris from daily life including food remains, dish and lamp fragments, toys, heating byproducts, nails from renovations, and even old shoe parts. Interestingly, 1795 and 1810 deed records list W.E.B. Du Bois' great grandfather Jackson Burghardt as a shoemaker.

Sketch of porcelain marble One especially interesting artifact is a porcelain marble decorated with three sets of four lines in red, black or dark green, and brown or yellow. This type was made in Germany by 1800. The meaning here, though, involves, the "special resonance this sphere may have had for an African American family", according to Professor Paynter. He explains in the archaeological site report that spheres and marbles have had magical significance for people of both English and African traditions, with one found near the hip in a grave at the African Burial Ground in New York City. The special regard may derive from the encircled cross pattern that appears when the ball is viewed as a disc, resembling a Bakongo minkisi symbol. This is not necessarily to imply spiritual practice, but suggest African American parents may have chosen a toy with particular associations to balance the pink-toned doll whose shreds were also found nearby. Objects can be multivalent; they have more than one meaning.

Button
Polished stone Another example of the importance of context came from excavations near the southeastern corner of the cellar hole. Three artifacts found were a button with a six-pointed star, a young bear's tooth, and a polished stone that, although probably not shaped by anyone, looks noticeably like an animal effigy. The archaeologists might have thought the items were randomly discarded, except that there is increasing evidence showing that certain combinations of objects have been used for African spiritual practices in Hoodoo bundles and as symbols of the universe (cosmograms). Du Bois probably did not participate in these practices, but other people living at the homesite such as earlier Burghardt family members could have. Such bundles have been found archaeologically in Maryland and Connecticut (New Salem Plantation, by Warren Perry). Hoodoo activities were documented in Deerfield and discussed further, for New England, in Pierson's Black Yankees.

Besides studying specific artifacts, archaeological research has allowed the creation of a Homesite history with hypothetical landscapes:

Period 1, 1820-1873, dating from house construction to Du Bois’s grandfather Othello's death, has Du Bois’ mother’s parents and grandparents, making a landscape of work areas near the house and plowed fields, with the use of additional Burghardt land nearby. Men actively farmed or worked at trades, while women worked as housewives and cooked, cleaned, and did laundry for boarders. W.E.B. Du Bois lived here as a two year old in 1870.

Period 2, 1873-1928, encompasses ownership of the property by Du Bois’ cousins’ families, the Pipers and the Woosters, and ends Du Bois receives it as a 60th birthday gift. Agriculture seems to have lessened, with men working as laborers, women as servants and still keeping boarders. A possible barn seems used for storage, since many artifacts from its midden date from this period. Du Bois did not live here.

Period 3, 1928-1954, is Du Bois's ownership of the property, which he planned to use as a country retreat, rather than farming. (See the blueprints and learn more about his ties to the house by clicking on the cellar hole on the virtual tour.) The cellar and chimney base were quite visible in 2003, offering landmarks to relate blueprints and photos to ground features. In addition, the presence of an eastern chimney foundation meant that some renovations had been accomplished. Yet by the late 1940s the site was abandoned.

Period 4, 1954-present. Abandonment landscape Period 4, 1954 to 1968, includes the abandoned farmstead, used otherwise only when occasional visitors came seeking to honor Du Bois.

Important commemoration began in 1969, when the site was dedicated as a park amid much political controversy. Before the ceremony a 10-ton boulder was moved onto the site with plans to place a plaque on it. The boulder was seen during the 1980s field work but by 2003 it had become so overgrown that it took much effort in 2003 to locate and clear the important monument.

In 1979 the site became a National Historic Landmark. (Click on the Rock and Sign on the virtual tour to learn more about the landscapes of commemoration.) Finally, of course, more recently the Boyhood Homesite was the site of archaeological research.