Garden Archaeology

Dumbarton Oaks has been involved with garden archaeology since 1982 when it awarded a grant to Wilhelmina Jashemski, whose ground-breaking work The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius set the stage for garden archeology investigations into diverse questions, from studies of natural history, hydraulics, and rural economy to retrieval of ancient garden layouts.

In 1984, Elizabeth Blair MacDougall (Dumbarton Oaks) and Wilhelmina Jashemski's (University of Maryland) presented recent archeological findings at the Garden and Landscape Studies symposium. This was published in 1987 as Ancient Roman Villa Gardens, number ten in the Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture series.

Dumbarton Oaks continues to support this field through project grants and with the development and upcoming publication of a technical guide of garden archaeology, written for archaeologists and jointly sponsored by the three programs of studies. This resource will explore and document the methods and challenges specific to excavating gardens, and include twenty-six brief field studies of gardens from South America to China.

In 2001, Dumbarton Oaks provided a grant for a two-week field study, directed by former Dumbarton Oaks fellow Leigh-Ann Bedal and Larry Conyers (Denver University) and Kathryn Gleason (Cornell University) to test some of the non-destructive methods described in the guide. It is presented in the Petra Garden Feasibility Study.

Steering Committee

Dumbarton Oaks also provided support to the formation of a steering committee for the International Association for Garden Archaeology. Members are Antonio Almagro (Spain), Paul Everson (England), Kathryn Gleason (United States), Gerardo Gutierrez (Mexico), Kenkichi Ono (Japan), Yang Hong Xun (China), and Anne Yentsch (United States). Questions about garden archaeology may be directed to Kathryn Gleason at mail@gardenarchaeology.org.