Concessions Uncovered

In fall 2019, University landscapers were planting new azalea bushes outside Maryland Hall when they stumbled upon a deposit of broken ceramics and glass lying just under the surface. Recalling that there was a burial ground nearby, they quickly stopped work, so as not to disturb any sensitive archaeological layers. After information about the discovery came to light, it was decided that the deposit warranted a small excavation as a learning opportunity for Dr. Elizabeth Baughan’s Introduction to Archaeology course. In the months of October and November, Dr. Baughan and her introduction class, with the assistance of Dr. Derek Miller (historical archaeologist in the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement) and other volunteers, excavated more than 1,000 individual artifacts. In summer 2021, these pieces were finally cataloged and analyzed, after being untouched for nearly two years because of COVID-19, and this is their story.

Beginning on October 17th, excavators laid out a 5 x 3 meter grid, with ten units named A1-5 and B1-5, each unit 1.5 x 1 meter. Excavations took place over 7 days, with students and volunteers digging with trowels and sieving the soil. We determined the site to be a sheet midden (trash deposit) scattered across a slight downward slope from west to east and interrupted in some places by more recent planting holes. The midden was best preserved close to the steps of Maryland Hall and did not extend all the way towards the cement retaining wall parallel to the building, where this layer of soil had likely been cut through during construction in 1932. Uncovered were a large number of ceramic and glass pieces with a smaller number of metal and other artifacts, concentrated in grids A1, A2, and A3. Finds were collected according to their grid positions, cleaned with water, and stored to be processed and cataloged at a later date.

In summer 2021, we processed our finds, taking detailed notes and measurements of everything found. Then, we began searching for joins across broken pieces. Joining pieces were glued together using B-72, a conservation grade adhesive that can easily be removed without damaging the artifacts. Mended artifacts and other diagnostic objects were then assigned unique catalog numbers and entered into a database. The table below gives an overview of the types and number of artifacts found.

Nearly all of the glass artifacts uncovered relate to food and beverage storage and consumption: tumblers, mugs, and condiment bottles. View the slideshow below for a selection of the glass finds and information about them (click images for full view).

Archaeologists employ a variety of methods in order to date their finds, some of which may provide exact dates, and others of which may only provide a range of dates or relative time period. The following paragraphs discuss a handful of the features we analyzed when dating our glass artifacts.

Historical records - In historical archaeology, written records are often the best sources for dating artifacts. In the case of dating our Klevesahl’s seltzer bottle, the number 1905 is embossed on the bottom of the bottle. While it is tempting to assume that this number is the bottle’s year of manufacture, this fact alone is not enough evidence to claim the bottle was made in 1905. Newspaper advertisements and Richmond city directories show that the company was in business from 1885 to 1917, which gives 1905 as a plausible date of production. We were able to compare our bottle with another made by Klevesahl’s located in the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, which has the number 1908 on its bottom. Now, by combining this evidence, it is safe to assume that 1905 is the date our bottle was made.

Typology and manufacturing methods - In the case of dating our various bottles, we referred to several bottle typologies. A typology organizes artifacts into types based on their shared attributes, which can then be given a relative chronology. When dating American-manufactured bottles, a mold seam typology can provide a relative time period for when a bottle was produced. Both the E.R. Durkee & Co. bottle and the Lea & Perrins bottles found in our deposit all have what is known as a cup-mold bottom, where the mold seams run down the sides of the bottle and around the outside of the base. The cup-bottom mold was used as early as the 1850s, but fell out of use in the late 1910s, with the rise in popularity of the automatic bottle machine.

Color - Another useful feature to examine when dating glass is color. The purple hue taken on by portions of these glasses is commonly known as sun-colored amethyst. Prior to ca. 1920, manganese dioxide was a common additive used in glass production in order to make glass clear. However, when exposed to the sun’s UV rays for a period of time, manganese dioxide causes glass to turn purple. Because we have several pieces of this purple glass, we can determine that those pieces are from prior to ca. 1920. Joining fragments of clear and solarized glass reveal that some of the vessels in the deposit had been broken at the time of deposition, with some fragments exposed to the sun while others were not. We confirmed the pre-1920 date even for most of the clear glass fragments (including the seltzer bottle) by exposing them to ultraviolet light in the Lora Robins Gallery. The pieces made with manganese dioxide glowed yellow, while a jar base from one of the stratigraphically later, disturbed contexts remained clear.

The ceramics that we uncovered are mostly whitewares related to dining, from several different pottery companies. Whiteware, which evolved from earlier creamware and pearlware, is found more than any other ceramic type on southern excavation sites from the late 19th century on. The ceramics in our collection can be classified either as ironstone or white graniteware depending on the complexity of details and/or patterns. Ironstone is notable for its decorations, whereas white graniteware tends to be undecorated. These wares became popular after the 1850s, and by the 1890s were especially common for restaurants and hotels. 

In our collection we have pieces from two major pottery-manufacturing cities (Trenton, New Jersey and East Liverpool, Ohio) in addition to pieces from Wheeling, West Virginia. The pottery industry began in the United States around the mid-1600s in the New York / New Jersey area, with several potteries already in business by the mid-1700s. From New Jersey, potters found that the East Liverpool area had rich clay deposits and in the 1840s they began setting up potteries in the area. By the mid-1800s, Trenton and East Liverpool would become the two biggest pottery manufacturers due to their rich clay deposits. 

It is likely that these objects traveled to Richmond through steamship or train. Warwick China sought to distribute their ceramics all across the country to several major cities. As shown in the map above, Wheeling, West Virginia happened to be at an advantageous location along the Ohio River Valley. There are rich clay deposits all along the Ohio River Valley, perfect for the manufacturing of ceramics, and the river offers a natural trade route, putting Warwick China in a favorable position for manufacturing and shipping their products.

We followed a similar method of dating the glass to date the ceramic pieces that were excavated. Through relative dating, it is possible to determine very broad aging for the ceramics based on the material and glazing. For example, whiteware was not in popular use until the late 19th century, and because we can identify our ceramics as whitewares, due to glazing and color, we can determine that they are from this general period. However, our main method of dating the ceramics was the use of absolute dating based on historical information, or more simply, historical dating. We were able to get the most precise dates by looking at the makers' marks. 

A maker’s mark is anything used by a company to identify their product. Because these ceramics were mass produced, the majority of dinnerware had their makers’ marks applied with an ink stamp prior to being glazed. Through the maker's mark we can determine where the pottery came from, establish when it was made, and speculate as to how it arrived at the site where it was uncovered. View the slideshow below to explore information about the various makers’ marks and how they helped us date the ceramics (click images for full view). 

This deposit most likely belongs to a trash dump of the early 20th century, when the land on the north side of the lake was home to an amusement park with a dance pavilion, shooting gallery, zoo, carousel, and café. Westhampton Park (1902-1909) was one of several trolley parks located at the turn-around points for streetcars connecting downtown Richmond with the countryside. Visitors would come from all over Virginia and the surrounding region to see the park’s replica of the Eiffel Tower, performances by the Flying Bicketts (a family of trapeze artists) and Polk Miller’s Old South Quartette, and many other exciting attractions.

Despite this atmosphere of gaiety, Westhampton Park reinforced racial injustices of the era. News articles confirm that it hosted events promoting Lost Cause ideology. Part of the park was located adjacent to a burying ground for enslaved people which was then owned by the headquarters of the United Order of the True Reformers. This mutual benefit organization, dedicated to Black self-sufficiency in the face of growing Jim Crow constraints, planned to develop another portion of their land (on River Road) into a home for the elderly and orphans. The park's events and its relationship with the True Reformers reflected the increasing racial divisions of the time which were triggered by white supremacist ideology. (For more information about tensions between Westhampton Park's owners and the True Reformers see  Paths to the Burying Ground ). 

Westhampton Park was never a booming success. Two streetcar boycotts decreased the appeal of the park to most Richmonders. By 1905, its owners—then the Virginia Power and Passenger Company—had started moving its attractions to another trolley park, Forest Hill. News reports confirm attempts to remain solvent by hosting group events, including Confederate reunions, but the park had closed for good by 1910, when the site became part of the University of Richmond.

The following timeline presents key moments in the history of the park. Click on the pictures for larger views, and follow the hyperlinks to sources that provide more information.

Archaeology provides tangible evidence of history and social practices otherwise recovered only in secondary accounts. In historical archaeology, written accounts can be used to contextualize material remains and vice versa. What more do we learn about Westhampton Park and the history of this land from the artifacts uncovered by Maryland Hall?  

The nature of the objects in the deposit—dishes, bowls, and condiment bottles, among others—suggest that they came from the park’s café. But the café itself was was probably located on the hill where Boatwright Memorial Library now stands: later sources like this 1953 alumni magazine article note that the park’s “refreshment stand” was later used as the post office and “college shop,” and this  1921 fire insurance map  shows the wooden post office next to the building that used to be the old dance pavilion. At the time of the park, the area we excavated would have been at the edge of the property on a wooded slope along a creek bed, just beyond the “Location for Amusements.”

It was common practice at the time to dump trash at the edges of property. But it is striking that this area was just yards from the burial ground that had clearly been noted on the 1901 topographical plan prepared before the park was designed. The Westhampton Park Railway Company was conscious of and even sought to purchase or condemn the land on which the burial ground was located (see  Paths to the Burying Ground ). 

The artifacts themselves also offer insights into the tastes and consumption practices of the park’s clientele. Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce had been distributed in the US since the late 1870s and was marketed as a high-class condiment.

Other archaeological evidence points to its use in elite contexts ca. 1900 (e.g., this  bottle excavated at the Van Cortlandt mansion in New York ). Durkee salad dressing was even more clearly tied to elite society, with overtly racist advertising (e.g.,  this ad from 1897 ; for racist advertising in this period, see Hale 167-169). It is clear from descriptions of the park in contemporary and later sources that it catered to upper-class white Richmonders, like the “Richmond dandies” who took the trolley from the former Richmond College campus downtown (see the 1953 alumni magazine story above). While the park did not exclude Black visitors (and the True Reformers even used proximity to the park as a selling point for its nearby development), race and “respectability” were prominent themes in many of the news stories about it (see the sources collected by Shelby Driskill and Douglas Broome, under  “The Park, the Neighborhood, and Race” ). The artifacts in this deposit also provide a glimpse at Richmond’s trade networks at the time, with products from New Jersey, West Virginia, and Ohio as well as Richmond (see map below). However, they are only a small sample of the items beneath our feet.

This exploration of the artifacts discovered by Maryland Hall and their historical context shows how much information can be gained from even a small, shallow excavation close to a modern building. Archaeology provides material evidence for the marginalization of the burial ground and the critical role of Westhampton Park in the erasure of the memory of slavery on this land. Even though the park occupied only one side of the lake and lasted less than a decade, it has until recently dominated popular narratives of the history of our campus before Richmond College acquired the land. The site had served for many more years as a plantation and prior to that as home to Monacan and Powhatan peoples. By placing an emphasis on the area as the site of an amusement park and overlooking the fact that it was once a plantation, or even that there was a burial ground here, popular memory has played a role in the erasure of slavery and continuing the cycle of injustice. 

• Arkush, Brooke S. and Mark Q. Sutton. 2014. Archaeological Laboratory Methods: An Introduction. 6th ed. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.
• Bahn, Paul and Colin Renfrew. 2018. Archaeology Essentials. 4th ed. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson. 
• Barber, Edwin Atlee. 1904. Marks of American Potters. Philadelphia, PA: Patterson and White Company
• Bower, Amy. 2009. “A Guide to Historic Ceramics in the Antebellum South.” Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies.
• Driskill, Shelby and Douglas Broome. 2020. “Paths to the Burying Ground: Enslavement, Erasure, and Memory.” ArcGIS Storymap.  https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=59690b2c313e42a8b112862f4dce2b28 .
• Driskill, Shelby and Douglas Broome. 2021. “Westhampton Park (1901 - circa 1908).”  https://paper.dropbox.com/published/Westhampton-Park-1901-circa-1908-NBRjauAMgayWQRjLq2p1Ep5 
• Grant, Vernon. 1989. Bottled in Richmond. Richmond, VA: Waterman Printing Incorporated.
• Hale, Grace Elizabeth. 2000. “‘For Colored’ and ‘For White’: Segregating Consumption in the South.” In Jumpin’ Jim Crow, edd. Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon, 162-182. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Kearns-Gorsuch Bottle Company. 1916. Illustrated Catalog of Packers’ Ware – Machine Made and Hand Blown, Issue of 1916-1917. Zanesville, OH: The Kearns-Gorsuch Bottle Co.  https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/KGBCo1916entire.pdf 
• Lehner, L. 1988. Lehner’s Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain, & Clay. Paducah, KY: Collector Books.
• Lockhart, Bill. 2006. “The Color Purple: Dating Solarized Amethyst Container Glass.” Historical Archaeology 40.2: 45-56.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/25617329 .
• Lockhart, Bill, Carol Serr, Bill Lindsey and Beau Schriever. 2015. “E. R. Durkee & Co. and The Misunderstood Durkee Bottles.” Historic Glass Bottle Identification & Information Website, E-published May 2015.  https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/ERDurkee&Co.pdf 
• Lockhart, Bill, Pete Schulz, Carol Serr, and Bill Lindsey. 2008. “The Kearns Glass Companies.” Bottles and Extras 19.4: 50-58.
• Lunn, Kevin. 1981. “Identification and Dating of Lea and Perrins' Worcestershire Sauce Bottles on Canadian Historic Sites: Interpretations Past and Present.” Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien D’Archéologie 5: 1-17.  www.jstor.org/stable/41058596 .
• Miller, George L. 1980. "Classification and Economic Scaling of 19th Century Ceramics." Historical Archaeology 14: 1-40.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/25615367 .
• Munsey, Cecil. 1970. The Illustrated Guide to Collecting Bottles. New York, NY: Hawthorn Books.
• Rose, Joel. 2009. “An Unlikely African-American Music Historian.” All Things Considered, National Public Radio,  https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120398673 
• Toulouse, Julian Harrison. 1971. Bottle Makers and Their Marks. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.
• Wilby, Jeanie Klamm. 2004. Decorative American Pottery & Whiteware: Identification and Value Guide. Paducah, KY: Collector Books.

• Map credit: “WESTHAMPTON PARK RAILWAY COMPANY; GENERAL PLAN FOR WESTHAMPTON PARK; SCALE 100'=1,” United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, georeferenced by Douglas Broome; basemap: World Topographic Map by Esri.Banner photo credit: Drone photograph of excavation by Dr. Stephanie Spera and GEOG 360 (Remote Sensing) - October 24, 2019

Timeline photo credit:

• Casino: Courtesy of the United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site,  Job #100-13 
• Flying Bicketts: The Daily Deadwood Pioneer Times, August 13, 1909, p. 5,  Newspapers.com 
• Walker Light Guard: Carter Museum, COPYRIGHT 1886 BY THE U.S. INST. PHOTO. C \ 90
• Polk Miller's Old South Quartette: The Valentine, Cook Collection, ca. 1900, Item 1397
• Cake Walk Performers:  Postcard from the David Hoffman/Boaz Postcard Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, AC #281. 
• Trolley Car Strike: The New York Times, June 25, 1903, pg. 1,  TimesMachine.Nytimes.com 
• Forest Hill Park: Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 1, 2019,  Richmond.com 
• Westhampton Park: The Valentine, Cook Collection, ca. 1900, Item 2642
• Eiffel Tower and Dance Pavillion: Trolley Rides in City and Country. Tri-city system, Richmond, Manchester, & Petersburg, Va., ca. 1907, Library of Congress
• Trolley Line Map: Trolley Rides in City and Country. Tri-city system, Richmond, Manchester, & Petersburg, Va., ca. 1907, Library of Congress
• Artistic Rendition: Richmond Dispatch, June 15, 1902,  Virginiachronicle.com 

We would like to thank the many UR staff members who provided advice and assistance with this project: Derek Miller and Alexandra Byrum (Bonner Center for Civic Engagement); Beth Zizzamia (GIS Operations Manager); Lynda Kachurek, Jeannine Keefer, Luci Ortiz, Dywana Saunders, and Jen Thomas (Boatwright Library); Shelby Driskill (Research Coordinator for institutional history); Douglas Broome (Information Services); Matthew Houle, David Hershey, and Stephen Duggins (University Museums); Nathan Taylor (VA Baptist Historical Society); and the UR landscaping team who recognized the importance of preserving these pieces of history, especially Larry Richmond, Jr., Manuel Garcia, and Allison Moyer.

We are also grateful to the community members who gave inspiring tours and provided helpful information: Christina Vida (Valentine Museum), Katie Watkins (Wilton House Museum), Laura Galke, Chelsea Blake, and Kristina Donnally (Virginia Department of Historic Resources), Andrew Foster (Virginia Museum of History and Culture), and Chris Wilkins (Preservation Virginia).

Finally, we acknowledge the Powhatan and Monacan people, original inhabitants of the land our campus occupies today, and pay our respect to their tribal members past and present.