The Agnes Street Field School ended on June 25, and we're now completing final excavations on the two-story outhouse before beginning lab processing and analysis in the coming year.  The field school identified a well, the two-story outhouse, and one likely single-hole outhouse that each had dense deposits of twentieth-century artifacts.  In addition to these features we also excavated a handful of units in back yard spaces. The well and single-hole outhouse each contained dense assemblages of food remains including a vast range of animals that either made it to dining rooms or lived in the neighborhood.  The two-story outhouse has not yet been fully excavated, but it has already included several hundred bottles.  Much of the material culture from the outhouses and well dates to after 1920, which is not typically a period archaeologists have studied very closely.  Nevertheless, the artifacts should tell an interesting story about everyday lifeways--the material culture should provide a lot of insight into food and bottled consumption patterns, for instance--as well as bigger issues, such as the shifts fostered by urban renewal and migration into the near-Westside since World War I.  This is some of what we've found out so far.

Two-story outhouse The most unusual architectural feature on the site--if not the whole campus--is the two-story outhouse at 458-460 Agnes Street.  We have not yet reached the base of the pit that once sat beneath this monumental privy, so we do not know its depth, but the brick-lined outhouse was nearly eight-feet square, had large corner posts, and was backfilled around 1950 with a dense deposit of bottled goods.  The bottles contained almost every Cold War-era bottled good, including medications like Milk of Magnesia, personal products like Jergens, and a vast range of Midwestern sodas and liquor.

It is not clear exactly who filled the outhouse:  that is, one or all of the Agnes Street households may have dumped their trash into this feature, and neighbors may have contributed to the fill as well.  The outhouse fill includes many fine layers of coal ash that suggest the pit was filled in a series of successive episodes, rather than in one tremendous house-cleaning.
	Left (thumbnail): the outhouse was excavated in halves so we can more clearly see variation in deposits. Right: this profile shows bottles and coil ash layers within the outhouse.

	Right (background, from left):  Gail Plater (Assistant Dean, Development and External Affairs), Chancellor Charles Bantz, me, Anthropology Chair Rick Ward, and School of Liberal Arts Acting Dean Bob White look over the two-story outhouse (also left thumbnail top). Left (thumbnail bottom): the Snyder family volunteers as a group in the outhouse.

Left and right: excavating the outhouse

Left: Chancellor Bantz and company visit the 452 Agnes Street outhouse.

We are fortunate to have very detailed historic maps and photographs for the Agnes Street block, but these maps were produced at a vast range of scales that make it difficult to always determine exactly where an archaeological feature falls on both historic maps and the contemporary landscape.  University administrators directing preservation and expansion also need to be able to place historic and archaeological features on contemporary maps.  Bob E. Hall in the Center for Earth and Environmental Science and Dept. of Geology has begun to work with us to produce maps that could conceivably include archaeological, historical, geological, and environmental features on contemporary maps using global positioning system.  GPS uses satellites that transmit signals to a receiver, allowing the receive to accurately record their position; that record can subsequently be placed in mapping programs that can scale those positions and historical data onto a single scale map.  This map (right) places points on the Agnes Street site on a 2002 aerial picture of the site.  Eventually such a map could include "layers" representing prehistoric environment, historic map features, archaeological deposits, contemporary landmarks, and planned University structures and spaces. For Bob's pictures of the GPS survey and excavations, visit his archaeology survey page.

Above:  On this map the red dots mark the perimeters of the excavation area.  The green dots are corners of archaeological features like the outhouses and well, plus other units.  The brown line down the center marks five-foot intervals along our excavation grid.

452 Agnes Street outhouse The brick-lined feature at the rear of 452 Agnes Street is located in the rear yard like most privies in this neighborhood, but it turned out to be quite shallow for an outhouse and may be something else entirely.  The dry-laid brick feature was roughly 3 by 4 feet in size at the end of a laid brick sidewalk extending from the house's back door.  Unlike most outhouses, the feature was just five feet deep, lined with dense wood planks at its base that rested on a deposit of sand and pebbles.  Fragments of wood along the walls throughout the feature suggest it had a wood lining as well.  Unlike the two-story outhouse, this assemblage includes fewer bottles and slightly more bones.

444 Agnes Street Well The well at 444 Agnes Street was excavated to roughly six feet below the contemporary surface; when water began to seep into the unit at that point, we discontinued the well's excavation.  The well contained a dense bone sample that included most every animal that ever was eaten in this area, and a few that were not eaten particularly often:  in addition to commonplace pig, cow, and chicken bones, the well contained groundhog, raccoon, chipmunk, rabbit, and rats.  With the exception of rats, any of these animals might well have made it to the table as food, but this would not have been the sort of diet championed by Cold War cookbooks.  Since we have not analyzed this sample yet, we cannot say what animals were reaching the table as food and which were being discarded into the well as pests.  An analysis of butchery marks on the bones and an assessment of how many animals (and what parts of their bodies) are represented in the feature will help us better understand consumption in this home.

Excavation of the two-story outhouse will continue for a few more days and then all the artifacts will begin to be washed and analyzed in the IUPUI Archaeology lab.  If you're interested in touring the lab or helping with the lab analysis, email Paul Mullins or call 274-9847.

Last updated June 30, 2003