New Acquistions

As the only national non-profit organization that acquires endangered archaeological sites, The Archaeological Conservancy has preserved more than 325 sites across the country. Below are some of the Conservancy's most recent projects.

Kippax Plantation (Virginia)

Not far from the banks of the Appomattox River, in what is today the city of Hopewell in southeast Virginia, lies Kippax Plantation, a well-preserved site that is also well documented. Beginning in 1980, archaeologist Donald W. Linebaugh began an investigation of Kippax with a group of fellow graduate students from the College of William and Mary, in nearby Williamsburg. Linebaugh found the remains of at least four separate structures spanning the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. These structures have the potential to answer important research questions regarding the history of early trade between Europeans and Native Americans, the lives of the African American slaves who lived there, and the cultural interaction between these groups.

Fairmont Butte (California)

For thousands of years, prehistoric peoples have utilized the area north of today's Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve in the western Mojave Desert of southeastern California. A great diversity of natural resources attracted people to the Antelope Valley as early as 11,000 years ago, particularly a reliable source of water that forms an unusual wetland area, and extensive outcroppings of rhyolite, a type of rock prized for tool-making. Since the mid-1960s, researchers have described this area of Los Angeles County as containing the highest density and diversity of natural and cultural resources in the Mojave.

Glass Mounds (Mississippi)

Shortly before his death in 1542 in present day Arkansas, a weary Hernando de Soto encountered Indians from the powerful empire of Quigualtum located across the river in what is now the state of Mississippi. The Quigualtum likely occupied the Conservancy's latest acquisition in the Lower Mississippi Valley, the Glass Mound site. Situated between high bluffs on the east and the Mississippi River on the west, this site was once an important mound center that was utilized intermittently long before Soto's expedition.

Broken K Pueblo (Arizona)

Broken K Pueblo, located along Hay Hollow wash some 10 miles outside of Snowflake, was once a major crossroads for prehistoric travelers through eastern Arizona. Broken K, ancestral to both the Hopi and Zuni peoples, is a roughly 100-room rectangular, single-story pueblo that was occupied from approximately A.D. 1150-1280. This pueblo is the largest, and the last to be occupied, in the Hay Hollow Valley.