James Wray's Carpentry Yard: archaeology of an early Williamsburg industrial craft site.

The archaeological work at the Wray Carpentry Yard in Williamsburg, Virginia offers a unique venue for the contextualization of 18th-century trades and tradesmen in the British colonies. James Wray's craftsmen, both enslaved and free, included carpenters, joiners, glaziers and cabinet-makers working in a growing urban centre, providing services to a town that was quite literally under construction. The story these workers tell through the archaeology of their buildings and possessions is distinct in the archaeology of 18th-century Britain and its colonies, as no comparably intensive contextual examination of an urban artisan complex has been undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]