This summer, archaeologists from John Milner Associates (JMA) began excavating the site where the Museum of the American Revolution will be built. Each week lead archaeologist Rebecca Yamin shares a dispatch about her team’s discoveries. Today, she reports on their newest findings:

Much to everyone’s surprise, six more privies turned up along the eastern edge of the site right next to (or west of) American Street. It is not clear yet whether these privies were located in the backyards of houses that originally faced Third Street or ones that faced Second Street before the alley that eventually became American Street was put through. In fact, the two furthest to the north may have belonged to property owners on Chestnut Street.

Only four of the six privies had been investigated by the end of the week. The one furthest to the south included a substantial number of cattle horns and bones probably deriving from one or more of the tanneries once located on Dock Creek. (William Hudson, one of the block’s earliest residents, owned a tannery on the creek.) The artifacts recovered from a layer below the tanning remains appears to date to the late 17th century. Among them were a heavy ceramic goblet, beautifully hand-painted tin-glazed earthenware, curious large discs made of stoneware, and glass bottle bases that once belonged to an early type of bottle described as onion shaped.

The team also cleared and recorded a basement floor at the southwest corner of the site. The contractor will lift the floor this week so we can look for truncated backyard features that might lie below.

Pictured above are two newly-uncovered privy pits.

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.