Archaeological survey and excavation documented the location of many no-longer-standing buildings or provided new insights into construction details for standing structures. Main buildings investigated included an early nineteenth-century post office, the 1810 frame Meeting House, the 1841 Trustees House, the 1822 Little Brick House (and its cellar), an 1834 smoke and wash house, a possible blacksmith shop or machine shop, the 1828 Trustee’s Office and/or West Family Dwelling, a brick smokehouse and well, and the East Family Dwelling. Also investigated were outbuildings such as barns, an icehouse, a well house, a privy, and several stone quarries.
Most of the artifacts recovered during these investigations looked very similar to those found on non-Shaker sites. Similar molds used for making plain smoking pipes and bricks with a distinctive outer lip - often called a “frog” - to better hold the mortar between brick layers were found at the two Kentucky Shaker villages. These similarities indicated that some level of interaction occurred between these communities.
Geophysical survey of the South Union cemetery, which used ground-penetrating radar and a magnetometer, helped identify unmarked grave shafts and better define the limits of this Shaker community's cemetery.