By April M. Beisaw
Paper Presented at
the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Montreal.
Abstract:Excavation within a building’s foundation can provide important information on the life history of the structure. Construction, habitation, repair, renovation, abandonment, and demolition processes contribute to the creation of these assemblages, as do post-abandonment processes. What is often overlooked is the potential for building foundations to serve as habitats for a variety of non-human species. Below the floorboards animals find ample space to burrow and/or den and scavengers enjoy a reliable food source in the inhabitants’ refuse. These commensal animals can heavily influence deposition and transformation of subfloor assemblages. Taphonomic analysis is therefore a vital tool for interpreting these assemblages.
Recent research on the archaeology of institutional sites in general, and schoolhouse sites in particular, has suffered from the lack of a specialized methodology. By their definition as institutions, the use, maintenance, and even abandonment of schools, orphanages, and asylums, are governed by regulated or specialized activity.
Regulated behavior results in an artifact assemblage that does not easily conform to traditional archaeological analyses such as mean ceramic dating and spatial analysis of artifact distributions. Variability in artifact classes is minimized to accommodate usability by specific age or sex subgroups or the population as a whole. Site occupants are encouraged to keep artifacts in the systemic context of the behavioral system for as long as possible, until breakage or obsolesce renders them no longer useful; maximizing use-life and minimizing discard rates. Limited on-site personal possessions often lead to creative avenues of reuse, recycle, and curation.
In addition to limiting artifact variability and promoting adaptive reuse, institutional regulations often impose order and hierarchy through the maintenance of clean living areas and the discouragement of uncontrolled disposal. Larger institutions are likely to have used forms of bulk trash removal and disposal such as incineration, much earlier than domestic sites. As a result, many institutional sites, especially those that did not involve on-site living, often yield few of the kinds of deposits found on domestic sites.
Low artifact densities have encouraged archaeologists studying institutions to pursue research that melds conventional techniques of archaeological data recovery with those of historical and architectural research and analysis. However, without seeking out the theoretical and regulational history of each institution, which often dictated an institution’s architectural design and site layout as well as the regulation for on-site behavior, these studies lack the conclusions necessary to develop intersite and institution specific comparisons.
In addition to the historical and architectural studies, institutional archaeology must develop its own models for site formation processes in the face of regulated behavior and its corresponding low rates of deposition. While each institution may have its own regulations, artifact typology, and spatial patterning, what all intuitions share is a focus on architecture. An institution’s buildings are the epicenter of all of its activities. The remnants of institutional buildings are often easy to identify during archaeological or historic preservation surveys, and therefore seems the appropriate place to focus archaeological excavations.
School Formation Processes
For example, testing of schoolyards, despite the methodology used, is unlikely to result in an assemblage that shows spatial patterning, and may not even provide an assemblage large enough for a statistical analysis. As is the case with any site whose inhabitants took care to maintain the grounds, archaeologically rich areas most often correspond to artifact traps (areas which were difficult to clean), discontinued features such as wells, intentional refuse areas such as privies, and areas of repeated activity not conducive to cleaning including coal piles.
As a result, most schoolhouse site research designs amount to a quest for the privy. This small and variably placed feature has proved difficult to find on many a school site and when found their contents contain little material that can be directly attributed to the use of the site. Instead, a more promising focal point for schoolhouse sites is the areas adjacent to and within the building foundation.
To understand deposits occurring within and around building foundations, the life history of the building must be considered. In a 1999 article, LaMotta and Schiffer outlined cultural and non-cultural formation processes in relation to a domestic structure’s life history stages, including use (habitation), abandonment, and post-abandonment stages. While processes that create house floor assemblages were divided into two broad families: accretion processes which result in the deposition of objects within a domestic structure, and depletion processes which either (a) remove objects from archaeological deposits within a house or (b) prevent objects once used within the domestic structure from being deposited at their locations of use.
During the habitation stage, few materials are deposited through primary deposition as most activity areas are cleaned up periodically and the refuse deposited elsewhere (La Motta & Schiffer 1999:21). Instead many objects used and expended by a household are removed from the activity area, and deposited in a spatially removed location such as a midden, landfill, or abandoned structure, a secondary deposition context.
Alternatively, broken or worn-out objects may be stored or cached with the expectation that they will serve a useful purpose later. Provisionally discarded objects are frequently cached in out of the way places and are likely to compromise only a small fraction of floor assemblages, usually forming clusters along walls or under features such as beds or tables.
During the abandonment stage, de facto deposition can be seen in the abandonment of still useable objects within a structure. These objects may be difficult to transport, easy to replace, and/or have little residual utility. Curate behavior occurs when portable objects that are still useable or have high replacement costs are usually transferred to a new location. The complicating factor during the abandonment stage is the identification of ritual refuse or intentional abandonment of objects.
The post-abandonment stage re-use of a structure, either for habitation or other purposes, may introduce a new set of primary, secondary, and provisional depositional processes, which may obscure traces of earlier occupations. In addition, abandoned structures are often used as refuse dumps, leading to accumulations of varying artifact content. Structural collapse can introduce objects onto room floors, primarily through the deposition of objects used as construction materials. Disturbance may occur as cultural or non-cultural processes, including faunal- and floral-turbation, organic decay, pot hunting, and archaeological excavation.
“Objects left on house floors are therefore more likely to be the product of abandonment processes or of post-abandonment deposition.” (25)
LaMotta and Schiffer’s excellent summary of house floor formation processes was created for dirt floor houses. Despite the extensive literature that exists for the excavation and interpretation of house floor assemblages, little attention has been paid to the excavation and interpretation of subfloor contexts, those that exist below the floorboards. In the absence of subfloor pits such as cellars, subfloor contexts are often ignored, or interpreted with methods meant for dirt floor structures. When artifacts are recovered from subfloor contexts the only explanation for their deposition is the “fell through the floor-boards theory”.
Subfloor areas may or may not have served as specialized activity areas but invariably served as artifact traps. Subfloor cellars or basements served as storage areas during the buildings habitation stage (secondary or provisional discard) and maybe the location of de facto deposition during abandonment or secondary deposition during post abandonment. Due to their size and identifiable boundaries within the foundation walls, subfloor cellars or basements are the most commonly studies subfloor contexts because their analysis and interpretation easily follows those developed for dirt floor house assemblages. Subfloor contexts can also be attributed to crawl spaces, which primarily serve as utilities access or ventilation to prevent decay of the wood floor. When decay, daily wear, or utility upgrades require it, floor repair and/or replacement create their own deposition events.
The interpretation of subfloor contexts is of particular importance to schoolhouse sites as much of the history of the institution can be written in the foundations of the buildings. Schoolhouses underwent regular structural maintenance, which generally included at least one replacement of a floor, possibly foundation work and/or the construction of an addition. As schoolhouses were upgraded to more efficient heating systems, indoor chemical toilets, the addition of a vestibule or new classroom, and/or the installation of electricity, disturbance to the foundation occurred.
The excavation of the Blaess School Site (20WA370) in southern Michigan revealed a rich archaeology deposit in a subfloor context while shovel testing of the school yard produced no artifacts related to the school. Within the foundation were school related and typical domestic artifacts of several time periods as well as artifacts from building repair and replacement. Also recovered within the foundation was a wealth of faunal material.
However, it was obvious that little if any of this material could be related to the function of the school itself unless students were consuming T-bone steaks with a side of rabbit for lunch. More likely, subfloor occupants, such as raccoons, deposited much of the faunal material. Raccoons tend to inhabit abandoned buildings near reliable food and water sources. They can access through openings of as little as 4 inches in diameter and bring food such as birds and small vertebrates into their den for consumption. Reliable food sources for subfloor occupants can be rabbits, which themselves tend to inhabit abandoned domestic sites, or rodents, who tend to inhabit agricultural fields. Alternatively nearby agricultural fields or trash collection areas can serve as a reliable food source.
A variety of other animals tend to inhabit subfloor contexts as they provide protection from the elements and predators. While rats, skunks, and mice tend to prefer making their home within inhabited buildings, raccoons, weasels, and foxes prefer abandoned buildings. These species do more than bioturbate contexts. Animal cohabitation or post abandonment habitations introduce new faunal and non-faunal material to a site, create new artifact traps, and move previously deposited artifacts around the site. Through the identification of subfloor faunal material and an understanding of the behavior of each species, a greater understanding of the formation processes is possible.
In the case of the Blaess School site, an adjacent cornfield provided a wealth of reliable food sources. Raccoons were the primary inhabitant of the abandoned subfloor context and it is likely that they were the source of much of the faunal material recovered, including the cattle cuts, and chicken and fish bones possibly from adjacent domestic site refuse dumps. That the skunk remains are likely from the habitation stage of the schoolhouse is confirmed through oral histories that even identified the known skunk access point as the northwest corner of the foundation.
Understanding the taphonomy of subfloor contexts has important implications for the archaeological analyses of historic sites. During the habitation stage, subfloor areas create artifact traps around foundations. In addition to the cultural deposition resulting from building maintenance, repair, and even “artifacts falling between the floor boards”, non-cultural processes may deposit material with artifact value. If faunal remains suggest that subfloor occupants were common in the post-abandonment stage, these materials are likely being transported from adjacent sites.
During the post-abandonment stage, reuse of the structure may introduce different types of artifacts into old artifact traps. Use of the site as a dump may introduce newer artifacts into artifact traps. Structural collapse may transport significant architectural material into subfloor contexts.
Despite the removal or demolition of an institutional structure, the area within and adjacent to the building foundation may be the richest area of the site. Within these contexts, a mixture of natural faunal material, cultural faunal material, and artifacts should be expected. Identification of naturally and culturally deposited species may help separate habitation from post habitation deposition.
As buildings increasingly migrate across the landscape, consideration of the potential for subfloor deposition is needed. High amounts of naturally deposited faunal material in a subfloor context should not reduce its archaeological potential. In fact analysis of the species habitat preferences can help to identify site formation processes. Subfloor artifacts may be from various time periods and adjacent sites.
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