Dig Mitchelville is the official, publicly accessible digital archive of
archaeological and historical research at Historic Mitchelville
Freedom Park.
Funded in part by Alice L. Walton Foundation
At Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, archaeology connects today’s communities with the remarkable history of this sacred ground – the first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States. Currently, our park has three active archaeological projects that are working to document the lives of past people while efforts to expand Park facilities are underway. Learn more about each project below.
Before our Ghost Structure Exhibit could be built, we needed to know where Mitchelville buildings were in the past, and were there any clues left behind to help us learn about Mitchelville residents?
The first building we are erecting in the Park is our Archaeological Research Facility and Auditorium. But before laying its foundations, we had to examine the ground beneath it for evidence of past people.
The Interpretive Center will be the heart of Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park. welcoming in our visitors and helping tell the story of our past. But it may have been the heart of another community in the past too. Our archaeologists are working to learn more.
For over four decades, archaeologists have been uncovering the stories buried beneath Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park—the first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States. From the pioneering work of the 1980s to recent community-engaged excavations, each project has added crucial pieces to our understanding of this sacred ground where freedom, democracy, citizenship, and opportunity first took root for Gullah Islanders.
In the 1980s the Chicora Foundation did the first archaeology in what would become our Park. This project was the first to document the archaeology of Mitchelville and the researcher's findings changed the way we understood American history. Read this Collection to learn more.
In 2018 the Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park began the process of building a Master Plan for park development. One of the early goals was trying to locate the first Church or Praise House erected in Mitchelville. Read this Collection to learn more.
Archaeologists returned to our Park in 2019 to pick up their research where they had left off the last season. using evidence they found over the winter, they opened up more excavations. Read this Collection to learn more.
