We had a great time on the dig with Kim, learned a lot, and now have visions of STPs dancing in our heads. We look forward to continuing next summer when we hope to hit the jackpot of the privy! Some other photos of the last day are here:
http://quartz.syr.edu/gallery/Last-Day
Well, it’s all finally up to date – sorry for the delay in getting up the summaries of work done in the last week. The final week of the project was predictably very busy, and since I’ve been home I’ve been hosting my mom, sister, and her boyfriend visiting here in CA. Classes start up again on Monday – I can’t believe summer’s over already!
Since we are now done with fieldwork until next summer, I’d like to thank everyone who made the work we got done possible. Without the Gage Foundation’s permission, this wouldn’t have been possible, and I’d especially like to thank Sally Roesch Wagner, Executive Director, for her personal support, and Lynn Bergan, Foundation Office Manager, who kept us well hydrated and fed, and who nothing would run successfully without. Beth Crawford, of Crawford and Stearns Architects and Preservation Planners, was a great help for learning and understanding the evolution of the house structure and the property overall. Blythe Bennett both helped in the field and created this great weblog – thanks! Gordon and Barbara DeAngelo of the New York State Archaeological Association Beauchamp Chapter kindly fed me, loaded me up with past issues of the NYSAA Journal, loaned me the probes used in our survey, offered the use of their private in-house lab for artifact processing and research, and offered to produce a site map for the property – I’m overwhelmed! Thank you! Thanks to Doug Armstrong at SU for allowing me to borrow his equipment from the Harriet Tubman House.
And finally – of course – thanks to every single person who helped in the field, whether for half a day or almost every day. As I’ve said again and again, just me standing in the middle of the yard with a shovel doesn’t get too much done; I wouldn’t have been able to get half as much done without your help, and you were all a joy to work with. I can’t wait until next year!
Over the course of the year, I plan to post periodically as I process artifacts in the UC Berkeley Historical Archaeology Lab and continue my historical research. Please feel free to post questions and comments here, or email me directly at kchristensen@berkeley.edu.
The last public day of digging for the season… Barb and her daughter Ashley and son Andy joined me for the morning, while Blythe and Hannah came a bit later. Ralph, a new volunteer, also joined us for the day.
Barb, Ashley, and Andy started on STP 30, near the pine tree in the back yard. This STP also corresponded to a soft spot identified by the probe, and a visible, but very slight, depression in the landscape. In the meantime, Blythe and Ralph started on STP 30, and later worked on STP 35 as well, both located near the southern end of the yard, just before the driveway and garage that form the south property line. These three STPs were needed to complete the 5 meter interval testing pattern of the back yard area. All produced artifacts, but no evidence of any of the still-missing structures we know were in the back yard area historically were found.
The highlight of the day had to be the cake that Hannah made to commemorate the end of the season… check out today’s pictures here.
Just me for most of the morning, so I focused on drawing profiles and planviews of the STPs containing the woodshed stoop/stone feature, and taking photos. Later in the day, two new volunteers – Craig Polhamus and daughter Rachel – joined me, and we began doing an informal probe survey of the back yard area. The probe is basically a slender metal rod with a t-handle at the top, and is pushed down into the soil to locate harder and softer spots – which can indicate foundations or loose fill that are of interest for future excavation. In a short while, we’d found quite a few spots where the probe hit what sounded like stone, and a few where the probe sunk in easily. While I’d like to do a more systematic probe survey next summer, this short foray with the probe did give us some food for thought. We opened up a new STP (#49), located three meters to the west of STP#26, behind the addition on the southwest corner of the house (which we believe is covering the former kitchen yard area), based on the probe survey. While we did find quite a few artifacts, nothing structural was found.
After work was finished for the day, the Volunteer Appreciation Party was held in the Gage House, with the Foundation providing refreshments. Because of scheduling issues, it was a small party, but anyone who couldn’t come will get their certificate in the mail.
Barb, Sheila, John, and I started excavation of two new STPs (#’s 37 & 48) along the east side of the house, in the narrow strip of lawn between the house and the sidewalk. These two STPs were deliberately placed to try to catch any remaining foundation to a large bay that was historically located on this side of the house; as with the stoop from the woodshed, measurements were taken from the Sanborn insurance maps. This bay was present on the earliest of the Sanborn maps, from 1890, and likely dated to the Gage’s construction of the front, 2-story Greek Revival portion of the house in the 1850s of which it was a part. It is also captured in the 1887 photos of the house taken by L. Frank Baum.
Excavation of STP 48 – located 5 feet from the side of the house – was stopped at a depth of 34 cm because a large stone (with mortar on top of it) was encountered, which covered the entire base of the test pit. This stone likely represents the easternmost edge of the bay, showing how far it protruded from the house. STP 37 did not produce any foundation stone, but quite a few ceramic fragments with different decorations – including pink and black transfer prints – were found.
Barb, Sheila, John, Hannah, and Yana here today; also, Lisa, from Crawford and Stearns, joined us during the afternoon. Jackie Hand, of WSTM NBC 3, came and taped a segment for the local 5:00 news’ new series called “Uniquely CNYâ€?, which aired on August 9th. If anyone was able to catch it, let me know how it was – I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to leave when it aired and missed it.
Given that we now had a good idea of where the back wall of the woodshed was located, as we’d found what appears to be the stoop indicated on the Sanborn map, we placed a new STP where the southwestern corner of the structure should have been – #46. Another new STP (#47) was placed immediately behind the original part of the house, in an area of disturbance related to the removal last year of a concrete stoop attached to the back of the house. Once the concrete was removed, a line of field stone foundation was uncovered, coming off of the southwest corner of the original part of the house; this foundation matched in appearance the foundation to the original part of the house itself. It was proposed that this foundation extension belonged to the attached woodshed. As no more of this was found in the test pits excavated where the walls of the woodshed should have been, this new STP was placed directly next to the end of the foundation extension in order to see its depth and if it continued southward beyond where it was visible above the surface. Unfortunately, this STP was very disturbed, and bottomed out at only 20cm when a large stone and a tangle of tree roots were encountered; this STP did not answer many of our questions.
Photos here.
A full house! Riley returned to join us for one more day of digging, Barb and Sheila were back, Hannah and a visiting friend, Yana, joined us, and Laurie and Debbie, two new volunteers, also started.
Given that on Saturday STP 43 bottomed out on a flat stone, we needed to figure out what exactly was associated with it. We laid in two new STP’s – #’s 44 and 45 – with 44 to the south of 43 (with a 30cm buffer between the two), and with 45 to the north of 43 (with a 20cm buffer instead of 30 because of a large tree root to the immediate north). These two new STPs were intended to allow us to determine the north-south extent of the stone feature found in STP 43; if just a narrow stone feature, it could represent the foundation of the south wall of the woodshed and, if wide (i.e. if it continued in both of the two new STPs), it could represent the bump out indicated on the Sanborn map. Riley, Barb, Sheila, Debbie, and Laurie made quick work of the two new STPs, and found, again, a dense layer of artifacts just below the surface, and – drum roll please – both the north and south edges of what turns out to be a rather large (42 inches long, north-south) stone feature – indicating that the bump out indicated by the Sanborn map was likely a stoop to an entrance on the south side of the woodshed.
Also significantly, a 1904 “Indian Headâ€? penny was found in Level 2 of STP 44, immediately above the stone feature. The presence of the coin tells us much about the sequence of events related to the woodshed’s removal and the layer of artifacts put down afterwards found in this area behind the house. Given that the coin’s date is 1904, this gives us a TPQ – terminus post quem – or “time after whichâ€? the artifact-rich layers were deposited. This is simply because it is not possible for the coin to have been deposited – along with the other artifacts – before 1904, its date of minting. This matches with the Sanborn maps, which show the woodshed as present in 1904 but gone in 1909. Tying this in to the Gage household’s activities, Matilda’s heirs sold the property in 1903 after her death in 1898; perhaps the woodshed removal and artifact deposition relates to the property’s cleanup either prior to or immediately after being sold. I’ll have to do more artifact-specific research to determine whether or not the artifacts can be attributed to the Gage household or not.
While most of the day’s crew worked on the two new STPs associated with the stone feature, Hannah and Yana began work on a new STP - #33 – in the far southwestern corner of the yard space; it had been hoped that this STP coincided with the location of a privy or other feature, as the surface vegetation at this spot looked very different from that surrounding it. As it turned out, this was not the case and very little was found in this test pit.
Photos for the day here.
Blythe and Phil joined me for work in the morning, and they finished excavating STP 31, again, not finding any structural remains of the woodshed. Because of the lack of structural remains found, it is possible that the woodshed: a) was a post-in-ground structure, which is difficult to find evidence of by doing the kind of small-scale test excavation we’re doing; or b) had a stone foundation, which was removed completely when the shed was taken down – this may account for the layer of mortar found 20cm below the surface in the test pits placed where the walls of the woodshed were expected to be.
Given that our attempts to find the side walls of the woodshed were not successful, we decided to try to locate the rear (southernmost) wall of structure. The Sanborn Insurance maps of the property between 1890 and 1904 show the attached woodshed as being 25 feet long and 20 feet wide, with a 5 foot by 5 foot square ‘bump out’ located on the rear wall, approximately five feet from the southeast corner of the structure. This bump out is not identified, but it seemed possible that is was a privy, covered entrance, or stoop. Based on this, we placed in a new STP approximately where this southern wall and mysterious bump out should have been located, although the scale used over the various years the Sanborn maps were drawn differed slightly. Also, while the maps showed the south wall of the house itself as being 20 feet long, in actuality, it is 17 feet long. Based on all of this, the new unit – STP 43 – was placed a little over 23 feet from the back wall of the house, and about 7 feet from where the east wall of the woodshed was expected to be. While these distances sound arbitrary, they would put the unit in the vicinity of the rear wall and bump out, while keeping the unit’s placement on the grid we’ve been using for the project.
Like all of the other STP’s excavated directly behind the house, a thick stratum of artifacts was found in the first 20cm below the ground surface. Excitingly, just as we were about to stop work for the day, Phil hit a flat, cut stone covering the entire base of the STP at a depth of 25cm below the surface. Now, we just had to wait until Tuesday to explore further to figure out what this stone was…
Hannah, Rachel, John, Beth, and I finished excavating out STP’s 27 and 28, located where the outer walls of the woodshed might have run. Although we didn’t find any structural remains (i.e. foundation) for the woodshed, we did find a horizon of small bits of mortar at about 20cm below the ground surface in both test pits; this may represent where the woodshed walls were at one point. There was also a good deal of artifacts found in the first 20cm of both pits; this may represent a sheet midden formed after the removal of the woodshed in the early 20th century. STP 31 was opened up, five meters due south of STP 27, also in the hopes of finding evidence of the woodshed. Photos from today are here.
Hi everyone –
I know that I’m woefully behind in posting dig day updates and photos, but I’ll be getting those up soon – hopefully tomorrow night. Things have been hopping – we’re finding a lot of artifacts, and have found our first structural feature (!) – but more on that later. We’ve had a flood (ok, maybe not quite a flood) of some good press coverage recently – on Saturday, there was an article in the Syracuse Post Standard’s Local section on the excavation; the article is available online (without the photos) here. Also, there’s a front page article on the dig in today’s Eagle Bulletin – a local paper out of Dewitt, NY; this one isn’t available online. Finally….my (speaking) TV debut will air on NBC 3 (WSTM)’s 5:00pm news hour this coming Tuesday, the 9th; the dig is the focus of a new series the station is doing called “Uniquely New Yorkâ€? which highlights local happenings that might not be heard about otherwise. You’ll be able to see me sweating in the 95 degree heat while trying to construct actual sentences on-camera! grin I don’t know if there will be any coverage on the station’s website, but you can check here.