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ongoing excavation efforts at the john kent russell site yields a newly discovered artifact-laden privy

while i patiently wait for the city to issue an excavation permit that will uncover any undiscovered buried remnants from the john kent russell house site before the new foundation is poured, which not only effectively ends my frequent visits to the site, but in addition, draws the fieldwork to a close. with this facet of the project completed, i can finally devote more time to the catalog, exhibit and peer-reviewed paper i intend to publish in the near future.

we have thoroughly and systematically mapped out the site which at this point includes two brick-lined cisterns, a storm water drainage sewer and multiple ashpits located at various locations along the property lines towards the back of the lot (artifacts unearthed date to 1890-1915).

today, however, we discovered an earlier privy containing several more artifacts haphazardly arranged in a more confined concentration with many more bottles containing concoctions manufactured outside of chicago (the sparse collection of bottles  found in the ash pits weeks ago were all chicago-based ales, mineral waters and bitters.

before we concluded in the late afternoon, when sunlight quickly turning to darkness, we were finding earthenware and bottles dating to the late 1860's. as we were digging deeper the artifacts we extracted were older and older. for instance, at the very top, bottles and debris were dating to the 1880's. a few feet further down, the artifacts possessed greater age and uniqueness. the depth we walked away from was so unbelievably muddy and the stench was unbearable. the latter certainly influenced our decision to step away until the next morning when we arrive better equipped.

i'm sure there are additional cisterns and ashpits waiting to be discovered, and we may very well find them before the backhoe returns. regardless, the culmination of artifacts discovered since we first began has grown to several hundred pieces of pottery, marbles, coal, pipes, bottles and much more.

the gallery below offers a few of the fragments we found at the top level of the privy. the earlier artifacts discovered at greater depths are soaking overnight to loosen the "caked" mud and/or putrid human waste.

 



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