Archaeological research at Pleasant Hill documented the location of many buildings that are no longer visible and provided construction details for several standing structures. Buildings investigated included an early nineteenth-century post office, the first two Centre Family dwellings, the 1810 Meeting House, an outdoor workshop area, a portion of a boys’ dormitory, a log office, a smoke or meat house, a wash house, three barns, several unidentified building foundations, a brick kiln, and a grist mill. Many landscaping features also were documented, such as post holes from wooden fences, the base of stone fences, and buried sidewalk stones.
Most of the Pleasant Hill artifacts look very similar to those found on non-Shaker sites, but two plain smoking pipes retained fragments of lettering that said “Pleasant Hill, Ky.” The recovery of these pipes and a review of Shaker journal entries supports the suggestion that pipes made to sell also were used by Shakers themselves.
Many other artifacts, such as the large quantity of glass jar fragments from the site, are related to the Shakers’ production of patent medicines and preserves. Bone button blanks found at the site of the 1810 Meeting House - later turned into a workshop - represented one of the items residents made in the workshop.