ABSTRACT
Anthropologist Laura Nader's observation is a reminder of the need to continually improve our research concepts and methods. Archaeologists have used remains of the historic period as a laboratory for more general archaeological science to be perfected through ethnoarchaeology, archaeological study of living people and their material world and material culture studies. The Weir cemetery in northern Virginia, dating from the 1830s to 1907, was a very small family cemetery excavated at the request of family members because a housing development was about to surround it and they wanted the burials moved closer to the original family home. Understanding some of the language of material culture as we can decode it in the historic period with the benefit of documents and explicit cultural context can help us understand other options for decoding material culture in the past where we do not understand the culture quite so well.
