Field Season Ends...

The field school ended July 9th and was a very successful field investigation - although extremely hot. In comparison to last year the artifact count was low, however unlike the previous season the shards of glass and ceramic were much more diagnostic forming a very tight date range between 1850 and 1890. The date range spans the Connor family tenancy and the time of the rowhouse built in 1854 and burnt, abandoned, and demolished by 1896. The artifacts were mostly domestic and included teacups, plates, soup tureens, chamber pots, buttons, and toys. The data provide a keen insight into the daily lives of the Connor family.

Unfortunately, the artifacts do not provide any clues as to the use of the structure. It has been assumed that the 12 ft. X 12 ft. structure was used as the family shop. The widow Conner (1870s) was listed as owning a shop on the property, however it is unclear if she did so in this outbuilding. The material culture is similar to many other non-commercial, domestic sites and does not provide any insights into the use of the structure. There are no indications (other than domestic items) that the building was a residence. It has been suggested that it could have been a worker's barracks, but the presence of women and children in the assemblage suggest otherwise. It is because of this I contend that the material most likely belongs to the Conner family and was dumped in the structure (most artifacts found along the bottom of the feature) after the fire and abandonment of the house - and subsequently the outbuilding. After 1896 the house was razed and the lot remained vacant until the present time. Thus for now the our structure remains somewhat of a mystery...

The next phase of the project is laboratory work. The artifacts were washed in the field, but now every piece needs to be labeled and cataloged before I begin the analysis. I look forward to this part as it allows the time to really sit and think about the materials and their implications for daily life amongst Irish immigrant and Irish-American laborers.

I hope people continue to follow the project as it moves through what can be one of the most exciting phases. I plan to post weekly blogs in terms of new findings, photographs, and of course the completed site report.

I want to thank the fantastic crew working this summer - none of this could have been possible without them. I hope they read this and stay connected to the project.

Post by:
Stephen A. Brighton

Week 6 continues...

During the last week of the dig our focus has been on wrapping up loose ends and lots of mapping! Yesterday and today paperwork for the remaining open excavation units (EU) was completed, officially closing the units, while the artifacts they yielded were washed and bagged. Closing the units has involved taking soil samples for identification with a Munsell chart, describing the unit, and plenty of mapping. Today Danny, Paul, and Beverly worked to map the western wall of EU 3, following in the footsteps of Kristen and Dan who mapped the unit’s southern wall yesterday. Similarly the walls of EU 8 were mapped today by Tahitia, Erin, Tim, and Charlotte, after they completed digging a window in the north half of the unit.

My lot in life has been no different for the past two days as I’ve created my magnum opus for the field season: a plan view of EUs 1 and 2 with Features A and B. In this post I’ve included an early version of the map (as you can see, nothing escapes getting dirty at the site) along with a digitally colored one that I hope gives readers a better understanding of how the units are arranged. That’s all the news for now, Emily.

Week 6

Both groups are in the field this week as we approach the end of our field school. Working in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees, the students are focused on completing the remaining units before the site must be filled. Some of us took turns excavating the bottom of Unit 8 (first picture above), as well as hauling buckets of dirt, mapping the site, and washing artifacts. We worked as a solid team to accomplish all that must be done.

Unit 3 (second picture above) had a breakthrough yesterday (July 6th) as Paul was able to dig a box inside and locate the bottom of the foundation along the north wall. After uncovering the bottom of the wall and cleaning up the rest of the unit, Kristen and I were able to begin the arduous task of profiling the massive south wall of the unit today (July 7th). Students will again be working feverishly in the high heat and humidity because there is still much to do and very little time. In the next two days, we expect to finish mapping, take photographs of the site, and refill the gaping pits that have been dug around the site.

-Dan Powers, 2010 Field School Student

Charlotte's view of the lab...

The powerhouse College Park crew met in the lab today (Thursday, July 1st) to begin the final push of cataloging and labeling the artifacts from 2009 before the field school ends. Paul was the sole person labeling while the rest of us (Tahitia, Charlotte, Tim, and Danny) catalogued lots 55 through 63. We counted, described, and discarded a few fragments of black plastic, a plastic soda cap, and a gray paint chip. Most of the glass shards were from brown alcohol bottles manufactured by Duraglas and Temperglas. There were also glass pieces from a bottle containing Colden’s Beef. This brand of medicine and bottle type was manufactured between 1890 and 1915, an appropriate range for last year's site. Other interesting finds included such things as an ice skate blade that would have been tied onto a shoe.

By
Charlotte Aldebron

Paul on being in the field...

Tuesday (June 30th) was an eventful day for the Texas field school excavation. Beverly, Danny and I continued working in unit 8, which had a large tree in the center of it. The combination of tree roots, large limestone rocks, and hard soil made the process slow and tedious. We were forced to the tree. We then opened up a new context (15) to account for the pedestal that contained the tree’s roots and base. This context spanned through three different contexts including 2, 8 & 13. We dislodged the earth from the root system using pick axes and screening the dirt was a little difficult. We encountered a large concentration of rocks within the unit and seemed purposefully laid out, however, it seems to have just been the method in which we removed other rocks in the unit as we excavated that resulted in our own visible pattern. We uncovered a strange and interesting iron artifact. Its level of oxidation made it hard to identify but appears to be a chain with iron bolts or eye pins. The artifact was cleaned up in situ and photographed. This marked the ending of our day and the whole crew cleaned up the loose ends and called it a day. All in all a successful day, providing us with more questions to ponder about the time, space, place, and reason for this strange feature.

By
Paul Flynn

A very excited and energetic Paul Flynn digging through wall fall...

A child's presence was also seen perhaps more intimately through the recovery of the porcelain doll's head.

This week's work revealed the presence of children at the site with the presence of clay marbles.

A sample of the artifacts recovered from the inside of Feature A during the 5th week of the field school.

Tim Vettel holds up his find of the day - large fragments of a an undecorated whiteware chamber pot.

Typical stratigraphy within the larger structure known as Feature A.