Archaeologists are getting ready to start excavation at the site of the Lumpkin's slave jail in the Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond.

About 100 people gathered today at the site -- a city-owned parking lot behind Main Street Station -- to celebrate the start of a $200,000 project to search for artifacts related to the holding pen for slaves who were waiting to be auctioned.

"I'm hoping what we will find will give us insight in how they lived not only as slaves but slave owners, so we can educate the public of how people lived in a hostile environment," said City Councilwoman Delores L. McQuinn, chairwoman of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission.

The James River Institute for Archaeology of Williamsburg expects start work later this month and continue through the summer. The project will follow a preliminary survey in 2006 that uncovered hundreds of pre-Civil War artifacts but no evidence of the jail. Project officials are hoping a more-thorough search will unearth the foundation to the jail building.

-- Will Jones