Tenement Museum

I just got back from a trip to New York City and while we were there I visited a really great house museum called the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The building was erected in the 1860s and was home to an estimated 7,000 people between then and the 1930s. At any one time this single address housed around 20 families.

I went on the "Getting by Tour" which took us to the apartments of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family who lived at the address in the 1870s and the Sicilian-Catholic Baldizzi family who were there in the 1930s. Each of the apartments were around 300 square feet and had a small bedroom, a kitchen area and a small living room. Of course due to the size of the apartments all of the these rooms doubled as living, dining and work spaces. There were outhouses in the back yard for the 20 families until the early 1900s when they received indoor pluming. After that each floor had two bathrooms to share between the 4 apartments on each floor. In the early 20th century they ran electricity to the tenement building.

Much of the information known about the Gumpertz family was taken from historical documentation. They showed us pictures of the family members as well as census records and citizenship papers and used these documents to tell the story. As for the second apartment (pictured here), the museum was able to contact a member of the Baldizzi family that lived in the tenement as a young girl. They have around 15 hours of oral history interviews with her and she played a major part in helping reconstruct the apartment as she remembered it for the museum. They played a few minutes of the oral history recording for us where she describes her mother and some of her daily activities.

At the end of the tour they took us into what they call the "Ruin Room" which is an apartment left exactly as the museum found it in 1988. The guide wrapped up the tour by talking about current immigration in the city. I asked if there had been any archaeology done at the museum. The guide said that archaeologists had excavated the backyard and had found the privy and they are currently excavating the cellar area. As you can imagine they found a tremendous amount of domestic material but beyond that the guide couldn't give me too many details.

For me this museum was so interesting because it wasn't about one time period or one group of people. It was about the urban immigration experience as a whole. It managed to tie so many different types of people together but also kept it personal and relevant to the present. If you're in NYC I recommend a visit. Don't forget to ask about the archaeology!

For more information on the museum check out their website: http://www.tenement.org/index.htm

How many people does it take...

One of the things that strikes me about the objects on display is the presence of several toys. At the Calvert House, Brice House, and Maynard-Burgess House archaeologists found toys ranging from different types of marbles at Maynard-Burgess, parts of a porceline doll at Brice House, and several different toys including toy soldiers and small toy pitchers at the Calvert House.

One of the toys found at Reynold's Tavern caused us a bit of trouble during installation. The object was a toy soldier and horse made out of metal that had broken into a few different pieces. As you can see in these pictures, attaching the toy was no easy feat. It took three people to attach these pieces to the case and secure them so that they will not fall over. Thankfully after several attempts, the installation was successful.

Expanded Cell Phone Tour

An expanded version of the Seeking Liberty Cell Phone Tour is hitting the streets today - literally. The new version of the tour covers not only objects inside the exhibit, but takes visitors out to each of the sites featured in the exhibit. The cell phone tour also includes new stops within the exhibit.

Visitors can pick up brochures for the cell phone tour at the Banneker-Douglass Museum or at the Annapolis Visitors Center starting this week. To learn more about the Seeking Liberty tour, check out our March posting on Cell Phone Tours.

Wye House Dig Video

To learn about the work Archaeology in Annapolis' field school is doing at Wye House, check out this video from Discovery News filmed in 2007.

Field School

Right now Archaeology in Annapolis is nearing the end of our six-week field school. Each year AIA teaches a class in archaeological field methods which offers beginners instruction in excavation methods, laboratory work, stratigraphic analysis, technical drawing, writing and interpretation. This year the last half of the field school was held at the Wye House in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Wye House is a plantation that was founded in the late 18th century by Edward Lloyd, a wealthy Maryland landowner. Wye House is a National Historic Landmark and is still privately owned by descendants of the Lloyd family. The field school is currently excavating in a location on the property called the "Long Green" where slaves to the Lloyds worked and lived. Frederick Douglass actually spent a few years of his childhood as a slave at Wye House. One of the best accounts we have of the property comes from one of Douglass' autobiographies, My Bondage, My Freedom, where he describes the landscape and living conditions in some detail. Students are excavating what we believe was a slave quarter. Through excavation we hope to confirm that this was in fact a domestic site for slaves and to further gain some insight into their everyday lives.

For more information on the AIA field school see the following link: http://www.bsos.umd.edu/anth/aia/school.htm

For information on field schools that are held throughout the country and all over the world check out the Shovel Bums website: http://www.shovelbums.org/component/option,com_sobi2/catid,10/Itemid,880/

Underwater Archaeology part 2

A few weeks ago, I posted about the Museum of Underwater Archaeology. I then asked my friend Michelle Damian, an underwater archaeologist with the museum to write a posting about her experiences in the field. Here is her response.

Genevieve introduced everyone to underwater archaeology in a recent blog post, and kindly invited me to talk a little more about the subject. Since then with all the rain and groundwater on the featured site here, I see that the archaeologists have indeed had to handle a “submerged” site! Though the water in the pit looks pretty murky, that’s actually similar to most of the underwater sites I’ve been able to work on so far – including the very first archaeological dive I ever did.

I got started in underwater archaeology when I was living in the Washington DC area. I had been diving for several years and enjoyed the handful of “touristy” shipwreck dives I’d done in tropical waters, just observing large steel wrecks usually sunk intentionally as artificial reefs. When I heard about the Maritime Archaeological and Historical Society’s (MAHS) introductory class for maritime archaeology, I knew I had to find out more.

Little did I know how my life would change by taking that class! The MAHS program was a series of classes on search and mapping techniques, ship construction, ethical approaches to shipwreck archaeology, and historical research. After participating in some pool training sessions, we spent a weekend in a Maryland river inlet investigating the remains of a nineteenth century schooner. It was my first experience with “black-water” diving – so silty that it is nearly impossible to see anything underwater. And there were jellyfish to dodge!

But even with all that, something amazing happened. We felt around the wreck site and found various recognizable parts of the ship – the keel, some hull planking, some structural supports (“knees”) and even a stempost. With the data we collected the professional archaeologist who led the class, was able to create a site map that revealed the basic shape of the wreck. We were probably the first people to touch that site in over a century. By recording what was left of the ship and making that knowledge publicly available, we gave this lost vessel a voice again. It is truly an incredible feeling to help bring history back to life. I was captivated. Jellyfish, black water, and all!

I began volunteering with the Museum of Underwater Archaeology (MUA), which is run by Kurt Knoerl, the same archaeologist who led our field school, and learned more about the field. Since I had spent many years in Japan and have a love for that area, I began to wonder how I could integrate all my passions. I was able to do so in East Carolina University’s master’s program in maritime archaeology, which among other things allowed me to investigate Japanese shipbuilding. As Genevieve mentioned, that journey is recorded on the MUA as well. I’m hoping to finish that thesis this summer.

If any divers reading this are interested in learning more about underwater archaeology, the annual MAHS class is relatively local to the DC area and is a good introduction to the field (I think the jellyfish were an unusual occurrence on a field school!). For interested nondivers and divers alike, the MUA holds a wealth of information on sites ranging from the Delmarva area to Florida, the Great Lakes, France, Australia, Asia, and beyond. Good luck as well to the archaeologists on the Banneker-Douglass related sites – hopefully your terrestrial sites will remain terrestrial in the future!

Michelle is currently working on her PhD at the University of Southern California. Her degree will help her better combine her love of all things historical, Japanese, archaeological, and underwater.

Thanks Michelle!

Well, well

I wanted to highlight one more exciting find that came out of the Fleet-Cornhill excavation. Here's the photo:
This is an 18th century brick well that was was found in front of 40 Cornhill Street about two weeks ago. In particular the shape of this well puzzled us. You can see at the top of the picture that the well is perfectly round and then at the bottom the walls straighten out forming a teardrop shape. We originally thought that the walls may have pinched in from the weight of the soil on the other side of the wall but the more we dug the more we were convinced that this was intentional. If you have any ideas as to the shape of this well please feel free to comment!

The small hole you see in the bottom-center of the picture is from an auger we used to try to test how deep the well is. The auger actually slipped down into the hole suggesting that there is an air pocket beneath the layer you see here. Judging from other wells in Annapolis that we know of, this well is most likely about 15 to 20 feet deep.

The well was almost certainly in use into the 20th century. Within this well we found a lot of 20th century artifacts including the glass bottle shown here:

This is a Snider's Chili Catsup bottle which dates to the mid-20th century. The presence of these 20th century artifacts suggests that the well was filled in throughout the 20th century.

At the time of these photos we were about 3 and a half feet down to the first course of bricks of the well and then another 2 and a half feet down into the well. Considering how deep we were and the likelyhood that there was an airpocket in the well we decided that it would be too dangerous to dig further without proper shoring of the walls of the excavation and also some kind of a harness in case it were to collapse. We also know that the undergrounding of overhead electrical wires is not likely to go deeper than we have already excavated so we decided that it would be best to leave the well intact in the ground. Essentially we chose to preserve the site by leaving it alone.

18 Fleet Street

On Wednesday we tried again to mitigate all the water pouring into the unit in front of 18 Fleet Street. We attached a large nylon "sock" to the end of the water pump hoping that it would filter out all of the sediment and leave clean water that could be disposed of in the storm drain. Unfortunately there was so much sediment that it clogged the "sock" almost immediately so we had to abandon that idea. Next we tried using a large settling tank. The idea was to pump the water into the tank and let the water sit so that all the sediment would settle to the bottom leaving clean water. We found that the unit was filling up with water so fast that we didn't have time to pump the water out and then let it settle.

Yesterday we decided that given these water mitigation issues and the time restraints we're working under that we aren't going to be able to excavate this unit further. We're all a little disappointed that we won't find out if the log road extends up Fleet Street but the project managers will recommend that the City excavate further in this area. Depending on how deep they plan to bury the utility lines on Fleet Street it is possible that the log road we found won't be disturbed considering it was 4 and 1/2 feet below the current sidewalk level.

We filled in the 18 Fleet Street unit yesterday and will replace the sidewalk early next week. Guess I can say goodbye to the Wellies for a while!

More water!

We had a frustrating week trying to excavate in front of 18 Fleet Street. On Wednesday we removed the brick sidewalk we uncovered the previous week. Directly below this we found what was most likely another fill layer that contained a variety of small artifacts. We excavated only a few inches through this layer and then we were completely overwhelmed by water. We seem to have hit a spring about 2 feet below the current sidewalk level. Water was pouring into the unit as quickly as we could pump the water out. The surface of the excavation was completely saturated with a few inches of water on top making it impossible to excavate by stratigraphic level. We decided to dig a hole about a foot and a half deep in the corner of the unit to create a place for the water to drain. We still had to pump out the unit continually but it did help to dry out the top layer of the excavation a bit.

We were pumping out around 15 to 20 gallons of water per hour from the unit. With all of this water comes a lot of sediment which cannot be dumped into a storm drain. In addition, Annapolis has very little permeable surface meaning that most of the ground in Annapolis is covered in materials like concrete or brick which do no absorb water. Unfortunately, there was no way for us to dispose of all the water coming out of the unit and we were unable to continue excavating. Our project supervisors are working with the Department of Public Works to come up with an acceptable way to dispose of the water. This project was suppose to end yesterday but it looks like we will be extending the project a couple days. Hopefully we will be able to open this unit again on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Check back for updates!

History Repeats Itself

We had an exciting find on Saturday... here it is...

After digging down through about a foot and a half of bedding sand and fill we came upon an earlier sidewalk level that resembles many of the current Annapolis sidewalks. You can see the distinct Herringbone pattern just like the sidewalk we removed a week ago. It's amazing that it is so well preserved!

This sidewalk though, dates to around the first quarter of the 19th century. We know that the granite curbstones seen at the very bottom of the picture were put in in the 1830s so we think this sidewalk is associated with the original placement of the curbs. In the other unit further down on Fleet street we also found a sidewalk layer that dated to the early 1800s. That sidewalk was not as well preserved, but the two are almost certainly contemporaneous. In the first unit we also found evidence that these curbstones were moved in and bumped up to the current sidewalk level.

We also know that the townhouse that we are digging in front of, 18 Fleet Street, was built in 1902 and so the sidewalk was not associated with this house. There was most likely another house which predated this one. It's pretty neat to think that we've stood on a sidewalk that hasn't been used in around 150 years!

Rain, rain go away!

I feel like I’ve been doing underwater archaeology the last few days. There’s been more than eight inches of rain in the last week in Annapolis which has really affected the progress of the Fleet-Cornhill excavations. Because we are digging only a couple of hundred feet from the city dock the water table is already really high. In the unit where we found the wood planks we hit water around three feet down. We are only about one foot down and we’re already completely flooded. Here’s a picture of what the unit looks like each morning:

We use a hand pump and buckets to take out around 20 gallons of water at the start of each day. Then we have to continually pump water out of the unit throughout the day so we can see the soil as we dig. Working with saturated earth makes excavating really difficult because it's harder to identify changes in soil color and texture. Needless to say by the end of the day everyone is covered in mud!

When it's raining like this we can't excavate so we weren't able to make it out to the field every day this week. On our rain days we stayed in the lab to process artifacts and to look over our field notes. We also spent a day at the Maryland State Archives to do some historical research on the area where we're excavating. It's definitely not the romanticized version of archaeology you see in the movies!

Water, water everywhere

Given the large volume of rain Annapolis has received over the past week, I thought I would do a post on a museum featuring a type of archaeology I had never heard of until 3 years ago - underwater archaeology. After this week, I am sure that the AIA archaeologists working at Fleet and Cornhill Streets are beginning to feel as though they are underwater archaeologists.

I know that there are people who go out searching for ship wrecks, but I never made the connection between these searches and archaeology until one of my friends decided to pursue underwater archaeology professionally. Underwater archaeology as defined by the Museum of Underwater Archaeology (MUA) is "a way to study the past by examining a collection of artifacts that are found at the bottom of rivers, lakes, oceans, or other bodies of water. Although many of these sites are shipwrecks, they can also be airplanes, piers, or even sunken settlements."

The MUA is entirely online and looks at projects going on all over the world. This museum is devoted to bringing the field of underwater archaeology to the general public by allowing experts to present online exhibits and project journals discussing their research and findings. My underwater archaeology friend, Michelle Damian, is the Exhibits Editor there and has a fascinating set posts on work she performed involving Japanese Woodblock prints while working on her masters thesis in Japan.

If you are wondering how you can enter this field, I can share Michelle's story. Michelle's interest in Underwater Archaeology came after she earned her scuba diving certification. She combined her interests in diving, Japan, museums and historical things and determined she wanted to enter the field of Underwater Archaeology. She has since earned a masters degree in the field and is working on her doctorate.

I encourage you to explore the Museum of Underwater Archaeology's website. There are some fascinating projects to learn about.

Stay dry!

Fleet Street excavation

We have two weeks left on the archaeology project that’s taking place on Fleet and Cornhill Streets in Historic Annapolis. So far our most exciting find has been a series of logs which were discovered about 4 and a half feet below the current sidewalk level at the bottom of Fleet Street near the City Dock. These logs date to the late 17^th or early 18^th century and could be evidence of an earlier road surface or possibly part of a ramp or dock that helped people to navigate what would have been a marshy area. We have started digging in a new area that is about 30 feet from the unit where the logs were discovered. We are hoping to get some idea of how far the logs extend so we can better understand what this surface would have been used for. Because this is such an exciting find I plan to post frequent updates on the progress of the excavation.
Here is a photo of the bottom of Fleet Street taken from the area of the new excavation. We have filled in, and replaced the sidewalk in the area where the logs were found. That unit was located between the telephone pole in the foreground and the potted shrub on the left of the photo. Looking down Fleet Street the building straight ahead is the Market House and just beyond that is City Dock.
Here is a photo of the new unit we just opened. As archaeologists we excavate by level. So every time the soil changes we call that a new layer. The idea is that each of these layers represents a distinct event or point in time. The period of time associated with each of these layers can vary greatly from a single event such as a layer of ash left from a fire to a longer “event” such as a thick layer of silty soil left from years of runoff being deposited in the same place. As you can see in the photo we took out an area of the brick sidewalk and went through a layer of hard gravely material. Now we have a level of sand that is probably a bedding layer that was put down to level out the ground before the sidewalk was put in. Hopefully the rain will let up so we can keep digging tomorrow.

Everyone is invited to come watch the excavations and to ask questions. We will be there for the next two weeks Tuesday through Saturday. Be sure to check back here for frequent updates.

Seeking Liberty on NPR!

Seeking Liberty's Guest Curator Mark Leone was interviewed on May 4, 2008, by NPR's Andrea Seabrook for All Things Considered. In the interview, Dr. Leone talked about the religious practices of slaves and the fact that as much as slave masters tried to stop them, slaves held fast to their religious practices. The interview also touches on evidence of African Americans on Fleet and Cornhill Streets in Annapolis based on findings at the ongoing dig in that area.

Click here to be directed to NPR's website where you can listen to the interview.

Upcoming Seeking Liberty Event

Alexandra Jones, Director of Archaeology in the Community, will visit the Banneker-Douglass Museum on May 22, 2008 to present African American Religious Practices in Maryland from the 1600's to 1800's: An Archaeological Perspective.

Come learn about the connections between African and African American religious practices and the objects uncovered during archaeological digs at sites including the Brice House and the Charles Carroll House.

Event Details:
May 22, 2008, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
Banneker-Douglass Museum
84 Franklin St.
Annapolis, MD 21401
Free, Registration encouraged.
To register email BDMPrograms@mdp.state.md.us or call 410.216.6186