Archaeology of Holes

Question 1

What is a privy?

Answer 1

an outdoor toilet

Question 2

Why are privies useful to archaeologists? (2)

Answer 2

• easy trash disposal

- diet

Question 3

What makes privies unique in the archaeological record?

Answer 3

archaeological evidence of private space, not often recorded historically

Question 4

What screening method is often utilized in privies?

Answer 4

seed flotation

Question 5

When and where were privies discovered in old Philadelphia?

Answer 5

2014, site of new Museum of the American Revolution

Question 6

What was found at the old Philadelphia site? (3)

Answer 6

• 12 privy pits dating 19th century or earlier
• circular shafts dug into the ground lined with brick
• over 82,000 artifacts excavated from 12 pits in the area

Question 7

Who led excavations at the old Philadelphia site?

Answer 7

Rebecca Tamin

Question 8

What was unique about one of the privies discovered in Old Philadelphia?

Answer 8

built July 10, 1776

Question 9

To whom did the 1776 privy belong?

Answer 9

Benjamin and Mary Humphreys

Question 10

What was unique about the 1776 privy? (3)

Answer 10

• only small proportion of standard colonial household garbage
• abundance of drinking glasses, tankards, punch bowls, serving dishes, smoking pipes, and alcohol bottles
• artifact collection matched those of taverns of this area

Question 11

What led archaeologists to the conclusion that the Humphreys ran an illegal tavern on their property? (2)

Answer 11

• artifact distribution

- arrest record for Mary Humphreys, July 1783: ‘disorderly house’

Question 12

When was the Boston brothel outhouse discovered?

Answer 12

during Boston’s ‘Big Dig’ construction project

Question 13

What sort of privy was at the brothel, and where was it located?

Answer 13

• wood-lined privy

- 27 and 29 Endicott St. belonged to Mrs. Lake

Question 14

What sort of artifacts were found in the Boston brothel outhouse? (3)

Answer 14

• over 3,000 artifacts dating to between 1852 and 1883
• abundance of items relating to female hygiene: hairbrushes, toothbrushes, medicinal/pharmaceutical bottles, vaginal syringes
• also large proportion of alcohol bottles and servingware

Question 15

What are wells?

Answer 15

structures created by digging into the ground to access groundwater

Question 16

What are cisterns?

Answer 16

waterproof receptacles built for holding liquids, often designed to catch and store rainwater

Question 17

What makes wells and cisterns sources of archaeological information?

Answer 17

both are great places to throw garbage when they’re no longer in use

Question 18

Describe the first well at Jamestown. (3)

Answer 18

• rectangular cellar with barrel-lined wall
• cellar 5ft deep
• well 14ft deep

Question 19

When was Jamestown’s first well backfilled, and what does this indicate? (3)

Answer 19

• backfilled by 1611
• all artifacts pre-date 1611
• indicates early use

Question 20

Describe Jamestown’s second well.

Answer 20

5ft x 5ft, 16ft deep

Question 21

What sort of artifacts were recovered from Jamestown’s second well? (2)

Answer 21

• over 120,000 artifacts uncovered

- including excellently preserved organics from anaerobic conditions

Question 22

What are three methods of pattern recognition in archaeology?

Answer 22

• Brunswick Pattern of refuse disposal
• Carolina Pattern of artifact relationships
• Frontier Pattern showing high architecture ratio

Question 23

What is the point of pattern recognition?

Answer 23

to establish general laws for similar sites and be able to apply them to other similar sites

Question 24

What is quantitative analysis in historical archaeology?

Answer 24

moves from particularist into the nomothetic paradigm

Question 25

What is the nomothetic paradigm?

Answer 25

gathering a great deal of information to make broad, general assumptions

Question 26

What is the Brunswick Pattern of Refuse Disposal? (3)

Answer 26

• refers to the tendency for entrances and exits of buildings to have concentrations of waste nearby
• applies to 18th-century British colonial sites
• so firmly established was this pattern for refuse disposal that entrance to areas to structures could be identified by the increased quantity of midden at doorways, even if no architectural data had been present

Question 27

What is the Carolina Artifact Pattern? (4)

Answer 27

• applies to British colonial sites in North and South Carolina
• examined frequencies of artifact groups recovered from the secondary refuse piles around a structure
• found that one artifact group type will have a consistent frequency to other artifact group types for similar sites

Question 28

What is an example of the Carolina Artifact Pattern?

Answer 28

broken ceramics from a domestic kitchen will have a consistently higher frequency in relation to other artifact classes

Question 29

What is the Frontier Pattern? (3)

Answer 29

• same idea as the Carolina Pattern but analyzing sites on the British American frontier
• reversed the frequencies of kitchen and architecture group artifacts
• indicates an increase in building activities for the time period during which the site was occupied

Question 30

What are the three key concepts of patterns in historical archaeology?

Answer 30

• refuse disposed of in the yard will not remain forever untouched
• it will likely accumulate in concentration over time, but it will also be disturbed, scattered, looted by people and animals, weather, etc.
• there are no natural laws governing the acquisition and disposal of artifacts

Question 31

What is NAGPRA, and when was it created? (3)

Answer 31

• Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
• required publicly funded agencies and institutions to return human remains held in their collections to culturally affiliated, federally recognized Native American tribes and Native Hawaiian groups
• 1990

Question 32

What does NAGPRA apply to? (2)

Answer 32

• mostly applies to public property

- private property has been a different matter, but this is changing

Question 33

Why is the treatment of human remains a hot topic for some?

Answer 33

taps into historic injustices; an extension of racist, colonialist policies inflicted on indigenous peoples

Question 34

What is among the most controversial sites?

Answer 34

grave sites

Question 35

Why are grave sites controversial?

Answer 35

for historical archaeologists, this means excavating modern-era burials which may mean that the descendants of the deceased are still living

Question 36

What is the result of the controversy surrounding the excavation of grave sites?

Answer 36

historic burials are often forbidden or extremely limited

Question 37

What does the historical archaeology of grave sites demonstrate?

Answer 37

a massive discrepancy in the rights accorded to populations in power vs. minorities

Question 38

What sort of grave sites have been disturbed?

Answer 38

a much larger portion of historical African American sites compared to European American sites have been disturbed

Question 39

What is the story of the Kennewick Man, or ‘Ancient One’? (4)

Answer 39

• 26 human remains found during construction in Iowa
• 24 white people, 2 Native Americans
• white people given a proper burial, Native Americans sent to a museum
• this led directly to NAGPRA

Question 40

What is the story of the African Burial Ground in Manhattan? (5)

Answer 40

• construction project; Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act
• found intact human skeletal remains 30 feet below the city’s street level
• 6-acre burial ground with 15,000 intact skeletal remains of enslaved and free Africans
• 1630-1795
• oldest and largest known excavated burial ground in North America for both free and enslaved Africans

Question 41

How did the archaeology of the African Burial Ground show the burial practices of enslaved Africans in colonial New York? (2)

Answer 41

• shrouds with brass straight pins

- buried with valuables, e.g. coins, shells, beads