hen a relevant artifact is discovered in a archeological setting it is almost always subjected to intense scrutiny and evaluation. In the consideration of a particular trade artifacts provide crucial evidence. Equally important is the study of any known surviving product of the shop in question if one is to have a basic understanding of the business. But for most of the trades now being portrayed in Colonial Williamsburg, very few products documentable to a specific shop seem to exist. However, more original products survive from the printing trade in eighteenth-century Williamsburg than from all the other trades practiced in the city combined. Roughly 12,000 items exist in the libraries and collections of the world, steadfastly cared for and protected for the past 200 years - a veritable mountain of incredibly relevant evidence that has never been tapped.

The detailed analysis of a single imprint from the Williamsburg shop can add information on how any book or other printed material was produced. Each piece can be likened to a fingerprint. As a fingerprint can scientifically indicate many specific characteristics about the person who made it, an imprint provides concrete facts about the shop that produced it.

Thus the most revealing source of information about printing in Williamsburg between the arrival of the craft in 1730 and the end of the American Revolution is the printed output itself: about 500 books, 2700 newspaper issues, and a considerable body of ephemera (items usually consisting of a single-leaf such as licenses and other government forms, lottery tickets, newspapers, receipts, and other imprints originally designed to have a limited life-span).

Given the importance of the colony of Virginia to the American enterprise, and the extent to which English and European books have been scrutinized for their historical and bibliographical information, it is surprising the same scholarship has not yet been applied to Williamsburg. ¹

Other than the previously-mentioned work carried out by Colonial Williamsburg's research department, two other projects have focused on Williamsburg's printing activities. One of these is Bookbinding in Colonial Virginia. This informative study was based on the examination of decorative tooling found on surviving bindings and on archival information discovered in several collections around the country over the past four decades.

The second project is Susan Berg's excellent but incomplete Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Imprints² (Berg), a checklist, provides only partial information about the titles it includes. It was published too early to take advantage of important recent developments such as the online Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), and it excludes non-book imprints such as broadsides and other ephemera, which are indispensable to a full knowledge of printing in 18th c. Williamsburg. The WIP is a bibliographical project focuses on all the output of Williamsburg's printers and binders. The scope of products being considered, the background of its coordinator, and the level of descriptive detail pursued, combine to make up a new direction for historical studies in Williamsburg.