Making the Museum

An archaeology team from John Milner Associates (JMA) is excavating the site where the Museum of the American Revolution will be built. Each Monday, lead archaeologist Rebecca Yamin shares a recap of the previous week’s work. Today, she reveals the team’s newest findings:

As is often the case with urban archaeology, things turn up where they are not expected.

Last week the archaeologists uncovered a wall that spans the width of Carter’s Alley, which started at Second Street, but did not run all the way through to Third Street until the early 19th century. The wall is built of alternating layers of cut stone and brick, a rather distinctive style. Its builder’s trench (which is the trench dug to support a wall) contained the same kinds of 18th-century artifacts—ceramic sherds, straight pins, and glass fragments—that were recovered from the midden next to it that we investigated last week.

Another rubble stone and brick wall was found on the south side of Carter’s Alley and its builder’s trench also included 18th-century artifacts. Among them were lots of small pieces of animal bone and oyster shells, perhaps the remnants of meals enjoyed more than 250 years ago.

A two-foot diameter brick circle in the middle of the alley that we discovered last week was probably a communal well used by alley residents. According to the documentary record, the alley was “closely built on both sides.” The top two feet or so of fill in the well consisted of cinders, but as the archaeologists dug deeper they found a “Jayne’s Expectorant” bottle. Dr. David Jayne manufactured patent medicines on the block as early as 1852.

Several large flat cut stones uncovered on the north side of Carter’s Alley during the first week of excavation appear to relate to the famous Jayne building—the city’s first “skyscraper,” which stood on the site. It was taken down in the 1950s when Independence National Historical Park was created.

Have questions for Dr. Yamin and her team? She’ll be available to talk about their work every Thursday between 10am-2pm on the steps of the First Bank of the United States across the street from the construction site. Or submit your questions to editor@amrevmuseum.org and we’ll answer them in a future post.

Image Credit: John Milner Associates, Inc.

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An archaeology team from John Milner Associates (JMA) is excavating the site where the Museum of the American Revolution will be built. With principal archaeologist Rebecca Yamin behind the scenes and archaeologist Tim Mancl heading up the field effort, they are hoping to find evidence of the people who lived and worked on the site in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Every Monday, Dr. Yamin will write a recap of the previous week’s work. Below, she shares their initial discoveries:

Excavation on the Museum site started with a bang! With five huge machines (two excavators, two cranes, and a drill) swirling about, the archaeologists used their small hand tools (shovels and trowels) to investigate an area near the middle of the site, now five feet below grade. The area was considered “sensitive”—in other words, likely to contain an undisturbed record of the past—because it was once covered by Ionic Street, which was called Carter’s Alley in earlier times.

First, the archaeologists found two brick-arched conduits running along the northern edge of the street alignment. Just to the south of the conduits was a dark brown soil that contained artifacts dating to the mid-18th century. The artifacts included small ceramic sherds, straight pins, brick fragments, shells, and a few pieces of printer’s type. (A document dating to 1806 describes a “calamitous conflagration” that entirely destroyed several buildings along the alley including “Bioren’s printing office,” perhaps the source of the type.)

Also uncovered were a complex of 19th-century building foundations and a deep pipe trench that emptied into a storm drain. A probable privy—a circle of un-mortared bricks about two feet in diameter—was also found and will be excavated next week. Privy pits are often a major source of artifacts on urban sites since they served as trash repositories before there was trash collection.

We’re looking forward to hearing what Dr. Yamin and her team find next! Pictured above are some of the discoveries mentioned in her dispatch. The first image shows a handful of 18th-century ceramics, the handle of a clay pipe, two pins, two pieces of type, a button, and a bone fragment. The second image shows an uncovered conduit.

Image Credit: John Milner Associates, Inc.

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An archaeology team from John Milner Associates (JMA) is excavating the site where the Museum of the American Revolution will be built. Each Monday, lead archaeologist Rebecca Yamin shares a recap of the previous week’s work. Below is her newest dispatch:

It was a busy week on the site. Two circular brick features were uncovered near the southeast corner of the site after the contractor had scraped away overlying soil another five feet down. We suspect the features are privies from the backyards of historic houses that once faced Carter’s Alley or Dock Street. They measure 7.8 feet in diameter and 5.9 feet in diameter.

We test these kinds of features by digging out a quarter section layer by layer. Artifacts recovered from the larger of the two included lots of plaster, mortar, and many bottles dating to the late 19th century. A particularly interesting bottle, called “a master ink,” has a pouring spout and a partially legible label reading “Ink” and “London.”

The granite blocks at the back of the Jayne Building were further exposed, revealing an iron door leading to the boiler engine pump vault that ran under Carter’s Alley. The vault is shown on the Hexamer Insurance Map pictured above, which dates to 1897. 19th-century insurance maps are very useful to urban archaeologists because they show property boundaries and are often labeled with the business and/or owner’s names. Color coding indicates what the buildings were made of, i.e. brick, stone, or wood, and whether the building was residential, industrial, or commercial.

More foundations and features including a possible fireplace were uncovered further to the west. Many pieces of cut bone and abalone shells that had been cut out for button manufacture were also found in this area. This appears to be waste from the button factory that was located at 237/239 Dock Street in the 19th century. Button making waste was also found in this area when the Visitors Center was being built on the block in the 1970s.

Pictured above are some of the features mentioned in the post. The first is a likely privy pit; the second is a Hexamer insurance map showing the Jayne Building’s vault; and the third shows three bottles uncovered on site, including the “master ink” bottle described above.

Have questions for Dr. Yamin and her team? She’ll be available to talk about their work every Thursday between 10am-2pm on the steps of the First Bank of the United States across the street from the construction site. Or submit your questions to editor@amrevmuseum.org and we’ll answer them in a future post.

Image Credit: John Milner Associates, Inc. and the Free Library of Philadelphia.

archaeology philly history americanrevolution 19thcentury museumoftheamericanrevolution

An archaeology team from John Milner Associates (JMA) is excavating the site where the Museum of the American Revolution will be built. Each Monday, lead archaeologist Rebecca Yamin shares a recap of the previous week’s work. Here’s what they found last week:

A third, brick-lined circular feature was found this week very close to the two that were uncovered last week. They appear to be a cluster of privy pits that were in the backyards of houses near the corner of Carter’s Alley (later Ionic Street) and Goforth’s Alley (later American Street). A map reconstruction of the area in 1787, created by Independence National Historical Park historian Coxey Toogood, shows “Francis Donnell, schoolmaster (dancing)” living right on the corner and “Benjamin Humphreys, Gentleman” living next door.

Excavation of one of the privies produced a collection of artifacts dating to the mid-18th century. Included were clay pipe stems, diagnostic (or “dateable”) ceramic types like polychrome delft and white salt-glazed stoneware, and delicate pieces of table glass. The artifacts were embedded in nightsoil, which is deteriorated human waste. Privies are, after all, the holes under outhouses that in cities were deep shafts made of brick or stone. A dense deposit of bright white lime had been thrown into the privy, probably to diminish the smell. It covered still more nightsoil containing additional artifacts that the archaeologists will excavate later in the project.

The archaeology on this site is being coordinated with construction activities and we can only go as deep as the construction allows. We hope to move further toward Third Street next week.

Pictured above are privies described in the post.

Have questions for Dr. Yamin and her team? She’ll be available to talk about their work every Thursday between 10am-2pm on the steps of the First Bank of the United States across the street from the construction site. Or submit your questions to editor@amrevmuseum.org and we’ll answer them in a future post.

Image Credit: John Milner Associates, Inc.

archaeology philly history americanrevolution 18thcentury museumoftheamericanrevolution

While your humble editor was away last week on vacation, archaeologists from John Milner Associates (JMA) remained hard at work excavating the site where the Museum of the American Revolution will be built. Today, lead archaeologist Rebecca Yamin recaps her team’s past two weeks of work:

Lots of progress over the past two weeks. Continuing excavations have revealed more features, mostly foundation walls and floors. JMA archaeologists followed contractor DeAngelo’s huge excavator, testing one shaft feature and documenting the remains of at least three structures. Close behind the archaeologists a drill was used to place supports for the shoring of the site.

The location and the construction methods of the structural remains will be used as an aid in determining the names of the people or businesses that once occupied them. We are comparing the location of foundation walls to Anna Coxe Toogood’s 1787 map reconstruction of the block and to later insurance maps.

The next stage of the work is to see what fragments of the 18th century remain under the basement floors of the buildings that were taken down when the Visitor’s Center was built on the site in 1975. Two floors—one brick and one concrete—belonging to buildings that once faced Third Street were lifted last week. Nothing was found beneath them, but the back of the lots they once covered had been heavily disturbed by the bell tower for the Visitor’s Center. The contractor is still struggling to remove its remains.

Pictured above is DeAngelo’s excavator and the map being used to help determine what once occupied the newly uncovered structures. (Thanks to Independence National Historical Park for supplying the map!)

Have questions for Dr. Yamin and her team? She’ll be available to talk about their work every Thursday between 10am-2pm on the steps of the First Bank of the United States across the street from the construction site. Or submit your questions to editor@amrevmuseum.org and we’ll answer them in a future post.

Image Credit: John Milner Associates, Inc.

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