Twenty-first century technology recently visited the ruins of the 17th century Fairfield Plantation in Gloucester. Dr. Bernard K. Means of the Virtual Curation Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University brought his laser scanner to the site to make three-dimensional image recordings.

What is left of the circa 1694 manor house lies on the south side of Carter Creek across from the Rosewell ruins. Archaeologists Thane Harpole and David Brown, co-directors of the Fairfield Foundation, have been exploring the ruins for over a decade, and are now undertaking some work to restore and stabilize them.

“We’re changing the foundation walls by stabilizing them, so we’ve been mapping and photographing them to have a record of what they looked like pre-restoration. This is another method of recording them as we found them,” Harpole explained.

Using a handheld laser scanner connected to a laptop computer to monitor the scan, Means moved slowly along the brickwork recor...