A construction crew working on a parking lot between West and Northwest streets in downtown Annapolis has unearthed pieces of pottery, china, bottles and bones that date to about 1760.
The artifacts were found buried in a long-abandoned privy catalog printing behind the house at 26 West St. The construction crew alerted city officials as soon as the brick outline of the privy became visible Wednesday.
Thomas W. Bodor - a consulting archaeologist retained by the Historic Preservation Commission to oversee such discoveries at construction sites - said yesterday that the privy appears to have been dug around the same time the house was built, about 1760. It is next to another abandoned privy, that was dug about 1860.
"We can tell the people who lived here had a nice collection of pottery off of which they were eating," Bodor said of the earlier privy site.
Holding up a square bottle that was in nearly perfect condition, and believed to have once contained medicine or liquor, Bodor said the discovery was an unusual for its "degree of preservation."
The family that threw these relics into the privy, which served as a dump for all types of refuse, must have been fairly prosperous, since there was a lot of quality china and glazed pieces of tableware, Bodor said.
The construction crew, which is redesigning and upgrading the roughly 1-acre surface parking lot that connects Gott's Court Garage and the city's visitors center, discovered the brick-lined privy late Wednesday.
"I'm the one who called; I have enough knowledge to know to stop and call," said Century Engineering Co. construction Supervisor Henryk E. Oswiecimka. "The privy was very defined by the brick wall."
"I have been doing construction since 1970, plus, we are working in Annapolis," Oswiecimka said, laughing at how abundant artifacts are in Annapolis.
The original privy pit was about 41/4 feet deep, and has been covered with about 2 feet of fill dirt for generations.
Scientists from the Frederick-based commercial archaeological firm of R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates are conducting the dig, and will excavate both privies, Bodor said.
This discovery is part of the Historic Preservation and Planning Commission process, and is not related to Archaeology in Annapolis, the long-standing University of Maryland program that trains archaeology students.
That program, in the past two years, has uncovered beneath the existing Fleet Street a log road that is older than the city. Students in that program also found, on the same street, what appears to be the oldest African religious artifact ever discovered in the United States.
As for the parking lot that is undergoing Replica prada wholesale renovation, city ordinances require nearly all construction projects in the Historic District to be reviewed by archaeologists as part of the permitting process.
Bodor listed three kinds of sites that come in for review: those that are known to have archaeological importance; those that have the characteristics of an archaeological site, such as places where old buildings once stood; and projects where "50 square feet of soil will be disturbed."
These restrictions typically apply whenever anyone is adding a room to a house, working on a foundation or building a retaining wall, said preservation commission Chairwoman Sharon A. Kennedy.