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several bottles discovered at the site of a recently demolished huron street house

prior to visiting this site, i had only seen it in pictures, by way of google street view. despite toggling back and forth between images of the house between 2007-2014 on google's "timeline," it was difficult to ascertain stylistic features or architectural characteristics that would provide better insight into when the house was built and how it was configured (i.e., single family versus multi-family residence).

when i arrived onsite, all that remained of the building was a limestone foundation covered over long ago. however, once the excavator removed the foundation walls and basement slab, fragments from bottles and chinaware began to emerge. within the next few hours, completely intact bottles and an unusually large amount of ink bottle earthenware was spotted and retrieved from what quickly became a long and narrow lot of stench-filled mud located well below grade.

as of late, i've been finding fragments and a bottle or two at most residential sites. sporadic ash pits with animal bones and with no privy vaults have seemingly become the norm. thus discovering intact bottles in quantity at this recent dig was most welcome. it is a much-needed change of pace for collecting material and imagery, and will ultimately bolster the depth and scope of artifacts to be included in the up and coming unearthing chicago book.

on another note, i've grown increasingly frustrated with the amount of time needed to research and write up a detailed synopsis pertaining to this site (and the artifacts discovered there). sure, i can quickly look over a few sanborn insurance maps to see what exactly resided there, but doing this often leads to more questions than answers. for instance, according to Robinson's 1886 Atlas of the City of Chicago, nothing existed on the site. yet, at least half the bottles discovered date between 1875-1885. since the artifacts were scattered in a seemingly random fashion instead of discovered in concentration within a privy vault, i wonder if this may have been a temporary dumping ground for neighboring residents.

for the time-being questions surrounding this urban dig site will remain unanswered until i find the time to revisit them (and i will have to do so if i decide to include this find in my book). at the very least, i have images of the site and surrounding neighborhood, notes on where the artifacts were located in relation to one another, images of each and every artifact retrieved and later cleaned, and of course, the artifacts themselves. these will be carefully tucked away in a box with an address label and notes added. i have at least two full pallet shelves filled with such boxes, containing artifacts from dig sites all over chicago. at the rate i'm going i will have to rent another warehouse just to store these fragments, left behind by 19th and early 20th century chicagoans who had no idea that over a hundred years later someone would spend a great deal of time and resources unearthing their trash. i hope this process of documentation and storage will help others appreciate what daily life was like long ago.

the gallery below represents some of the artifacts i've managed to lightly clean and photodocument in my studio. several more artifacts were discovered, but due to time constraints, i'm sharing the images taken from the first day. as i write this post, two additional days of gathering artifacts from this site have passed (concluding late last week) and i'm now on another excavation site in the heart of downtown chicago, where i hope to find mid-19th century remnants where early wood-framed houses once stood.

 



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