h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Weather is beautiful in Pennsylvania for this 4th of July. We're proprietary about the Declaration of Independence because it was written in Philadelphia. We get conceited about how many clever people we managed to corral in one hot city at the same time.

And now, Philly has something even more exciting to pull in the tourists: colonists' Stuff.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/philadelphia-excavation-finds-artifacts_us_5777d0d3e4b0416464103834?section=

Yep, they've been digging around in the middens. Ben Franklin's garbage is our treasure. Okay, his house was on Market Street, and they were digging on Chestnut, but Ben might have been over at that tavern...

Anyway, they found 82,000 artefacts. Cool stuff like dishware and wig curlers. Take a look.

Having spent a whole year living in the 18th Century a few blocks away, I truly appreciate this treasure trove of nostalgia. Talk about your Antiques Roadshow...I don't envy them the dusting. I used to have to dust our meager collection wearing white cotton gloves. Which, when you consider where they came from, is pretty funny...

One of the artefacts is a punch bowl with a picture of the Tryphena, the ship carrying the Stamp Act Petition. Here are some 7th graders' karaoke version of a song about the Stamp Act:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGhHQ0KSlSw

If you can't get 'Hamilton' tickets, maybe you'd like to hire the kids to come by and sing it for you.

Enjoy the holiday. And don't think about Brexit or people in Cleveland, Ohio...

Come to think of it, Britain could use Tom Paine right about now. Maybe we could put him in a time machine and give him his own chat show...

"outhouse" used to keep me pushbike in there

So now it's called a pushbike

"bike" round herebicycle/cycle elsewhere I reckon

Ah, a bicycle

But...

What on earth would you need that for in a loo

our "outhouses" were old washing areas and "modern" times 50's and 60's and still today saves building a shed

750 pieces of printer's type?

That is exciting and may indeed be some Benjamin Framklin debris, though
its a little surprising the lead-tin-antimony alloy used for the purpose wasn't recycled.

The type may be traceable to the manufactury that produced it.




I've seen a couple of early 20th century digs of the character, a pre WW II backyard privy in San Bernardino, CA, that yielded a lot of glass bottles and jars, an extensive field in the site of Riverside, CA's Chinatown, that burned down in the 1920s, yielding incredible numbers of fragments of bottles rather similar to those on the right in photo number 3 in your 1st link, DG.

(The China trade was well established on the American east coast during the 18th century.)




I've also seen a gold rush era privy excavation in northern CA at one of the more important gold rush sites that yield nothing of interest beyond a few very rusty old sardine tins.

Lead shotgun pellets swelled up with absorbed water to more than 13 times their original size after almost 150 years of immersion were common along the waterline of the river on that site though.

Exposed to air, rather than being stored under distilled water or oil, they oxidized to white lead in a few hours, an important conservatory issue of relevance with respect to tin and lead artifacts generally.

That's really interesting. I think, on the whole, midden archaeology is a pretty fruitful area of study.

When I lived in Cologne in the 80s, they were digging along the waterfront and discovered a subbasement in the houses there. Turns out they were mediaeval workshops - for souvenirs. Little saints' statues pilgrims bought.

And of course there were the Roman artefacts that turned up when they worked on the U-Bahn...you couldn't stick a shovel in Cologne without digging up history.