Blacksmith shops in Catawba Valley, Virginia

"The Roanoke Regional Preservation Office of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources conducted a thematic investigation of blacksmiths and their shops in the rural Catawba Valley of northwest Roanoke County, Virginia. Archaeological and historical investigations were conducted on a sample of seven blacksmith shops. The sites represented commercial and farm shops which operated from circa 1850 through circa 1950. These investigations were undertaken to develop a better understanding of the material similarity and variability between blacksmith shops and to chart the diachronic changes in the shops as blacksmithing was transformed during the process of industrialization."--Abstract, page i.