By: Maeve Marino
The punny title of this weeks post comes to us from 11 year-old Piers, who told me it was one of the team names his FIRST LEGO League team had considered for this year. Since I love a pun, I decided to steal it and share it here.
Piers came out to our site this Wednesday, along with Esme, 9, and Mary, their mom. Piers, Esme, and Mary spend they day with us screening for artifacts, and finding many, many pieces of glass, metal, and plastic. These are the most abundant artifacts students and volunteers are finding at the Prather site, which can feel a bit odd as an archaeologist who has primarily spent the past few years looking at lithic (or stone) material that is several thousand years old. It has been a welcome change of pace for me, someone who loves historical archaeology most of all.
This week, we continued to excavate in several units and identified more of the Prather house foundation. What you can see in the photo below are now several piles of architectural rubble positioned inside of the foundation of the home.
We are starting to learn more about the demolition of the house, or what remained of the house, after the arson. Mixed into the architectural debris and household remnants are golf balls, beer bottles and cans, and what appears to be take-out trash. This brought a new question: how long was the house left open before it was completely demolished? The amount of trash in the foundation was clearly not from one single day, or even month, so how long did the foundation sit open before fill was brought in?
From aerials we know that by 1980 it had been demolished and fill laid overtop, but that still left about 3 years from when the property was sold and those aerials. Based on just the analysis of a few beer bottles found in the foundation, we can now say it was open until at least 1978, or at least a year roughly. So before lab analysis even begins we are starting to get a clearer timeline of events.
Next week we will be back out and you can look forward to another student perspective. Don’t forget that tomorrow, 6/20, is our Public Archaeology Day at the site. Come meet some of the archaeologists and students, and get a tour of the site. Check our events page for more details!
