On opening each issue of your Jamestowne Society magazine, you’ll see inside the front cover Merry Abbitt Outlaw’s feature, Secrets from the Vault. With each issue, she’s been describing some of the interesting artifacts that the Jamestowne Rediscovery team has recovered from their world-renowned archeological excavations for the past 28 years. As David Givens (Jamestowne Rediscovery’s Director of Archeology) puts it, “It’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.” Each of these finds tells us more of our ancestors’ lives, living conditions, and ways. You’ll soon have the chance to hear directly from Merry, as she will be our featured speaker at our 2022 Winter Meeting at 11 AM on Saturday, February 26. This will be another virtual meeting using the Zoom program.
Merry Abbitt Outlaw with some of her artifacts
Merry is a specialist in the identification of colonial material culture. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in fine arts. After graduation, she worked as a Research Assistant for the Department of Archaeology at Colonial Williamsburg under one of the fathers of historical archaeology in America, Ivor Noel Hume. She then served for 13 years as Curator of Collections for the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology, an arm of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources. During the first decade of the 21st century, Merry was the editor of “New Discoveries” for the scholarly journal Ceramics in America, published by the Chipstone Foundation. Merry has worked as a curator for Jamestown Rediscovery for 10 years now and currently serves as the Senior Curator.
For more information, an invitation, and Zoom instructions, please contact our Lieutenant Governor, Norma Keating at normakeating@earthlink.net
