{"id":8606,"date":"2014-08-22T09:13:43","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T14:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=8606"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:41:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:41:43","slug":"presidentsdig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=8606","title":{"rendered":"Archaeologists hit pay dirt at UNC president\u2019s house"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ast-oembed-container \" style=\"height: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"UNC archaeologists unearth history at president&#039;s house\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1fscVdt2goo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> <em>Brett Riggs and his archaeology team of faculty and graduate and undergraduate students wrapped up their dig at President Tom Ross\u2019 house on Aug. 29. The team had been granted additional time to survey the site, and dug deep enough to reach what was once the original basement floor of the Second President\u2019s House. Since our original story was written, the excavations have yielded additional artifacts, including pieces of a cast iron stove, door hinges, a boot scrape and an old lock, which Riggs believes is original to the house. The lock dates to when Joseph Caldwell resided there in the early 19th century.<\/em>\u00a0Upon concluding the dig, the archaeologists backfilled the excavation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Carolina faculty and students often head to far-flung locations to do archaeological field work, but this week, they are unearthing a big piece of the past in their own backyard.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, a construction crew was preparing to re-surface the driveway of UNC System President Tom Ross\u2019 house on Franklin Street. The driveway curves between his house and the Love House and Hutchins Forum, home of the <a href=\"http:\/\/south.unc.edu\/\">Center for the Study of the American South<\/a>. Crew members found what they suspected were historical artifacts in the construction debris, so they contacted archaeologists <a href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.unc.edu\/person\/brett-riggs\/\">Brett Riggs<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rla.unc.edu\/personal\/rpsd\/index.html\">Stephen Davis<\/a> from the 75-year-old Research Laboratories of Archaeology in UNC\u2019s College of Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>After an initial review of the site, a crew of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students from archaeology, anthropology, religious studies and classics quickly mobilized and began digging on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8608\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8608\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Excavation-5resizedforweb1-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8608\" src=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Excavation-5resizedforweb1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"UNC archaeologist Brett Riggs at the dig site. (photo by Kristen Chavez)\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8608\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">UNC archaeologist Brett Riggs at the dig site. (photo by Kristen Chavez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Archaeologists soon uncovered remnants of what is referred to as \u201cthe Second President\u2019s House\u201d in historical accounts of the University. That house was occupied by UNC\u2019s first president, Joseph Caldwell, when he was elected president for the second time in 1816 until his death in 1835. It was also the home of President David Swain from 1849 to 1868. The house was then occupied by several UNC faculty members, including Thomas Hume, who moved in on Christmas Eve 1886. That night, a devastating fire started in an adjacent outbuilding and quickly destroyed the president\u2019s house.<\/p>\n<p>The archaeologists believe they have unearthed the house\u2019s original foundation.<\/p>\n<p>The house foundation lines are 24 feet apart, and Riggs said that description coincides with details of the house that Caldwell reported in a Feb. 9, 1812, letter to his brother. (In 2004, UNC archaeologists excavated a well house and filled-in well in the Love House yard, and Riggs said the debris found there matches the kind of material they have found this week. Riggs and colleagues write about the well house excavations in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rla.unc.edu\/Publications\/pdf\/ResRep23.pdf\">this report.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have also uncovered nails; broken glass, pottery and chinaware; and plaster from the house walls,\u201d Riggs said as the hot sun beat down Thursday morning on a group of graduate students and faculty digging with spades. \u201cWhat was left here is what wouldn\u2019t burn in a raging inferno. Some of the structural nails look perfect because when nails burn at a very high temperature they don\u2019t rust.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8609\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8609\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Excavation-2resizedforweb-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8609\" src=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Excavation-2resizedforweb-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Riggs is holding the neck of a broken bottle found at the dig site. (photo by Kristen Chavez)\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8609\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Riggs is holding the neck of a broken bottle found at the dig site. (photo by Kristen Chavez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Riggs said artifacts found at the house date from 1812 to 1886. They will be collected, analyzed and become a part of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology\u2019s North Carolina Archaeological Collection, the largest and most important archaeological archive in the state. Researchers are trying to quickly document what they find so that the current driveway construction project can continue.<\/p>\n<p>Anthropology graduate students Mary Beth Fitts of Long Island, N.Y., and David Cranford of Wake Forest, N.C., said being able to participate in fieldwork is an important part of their education, and doing that on the UNC campus is an added bonus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a continuation of an interest I have in campus history. In 2011, there were <a href=\"http:\/\/endeavors.unc.edu\/trampled_underfoot\">excavations at Battle, Vance and Pettigrew halls,<\/a> and I helped to excavate there and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rla.unc.edu\/Publications\/pdf\/ResRep34.pdf\">write up that research<\/a>,\u201d Fitts said. \u201cThis is a period of time when the University was growing hand in hand with the town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cranford taught his first course at UNC last spring, and one of the things he did was take students on an archaeological tour of campus.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8610\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8610\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Excavation-4resizedforweb-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8610\" src=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Excavation-4resizedforweb-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Anthropologist Anna Agbe-Davies: 'It's important to document this site now before it gets covered over again.' (photo by Kristen Chavez)\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8610\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anthropologist Anna Agbe-Davies: &#8216;It&#8217;s important to document this site now before it gets covered over again.&#8217; (photo by Kristen Chavez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThe students got a kick out of walking around and realizing that there are archaeological features right underneath their feet. When they were doing the prep work for President Ross\u2019 driveway, this was an incidental find,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of times you go out looking for sites, but sometimes the sites find you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rla.unc.edu\/personal\/vps\/\">Vin Steponaitis<\/a>, director of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology and chair of the curriculum in archaeology, has also been out at the site this week, immersed in the excitement of the discovery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis excavation provides a wonderful opportunity to enhance our knowledge of UNC&#8217;s early history and also to train our students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>UNC assistant professor of anthropology <a href=\"http:\/\/agbedavies.web.unc.edu\/\">Anna Agbe-Davies <\/a>is a former staff archaeologist for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Her research interests focus on the plantation societies of the colonial southeastern United States and the Caribbean.<\/p>\n<p>She spent much of her summer behind a computer writing about her own research, so she said it\u2019s been great to get out and do fieldwork again this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to feel like the archaeology that I do connects me to the place that I live, and that I\u2019m really immersed in the society that I\u2019m learning about,\u201d Agbe-Davies said. \u201cThis has been a reinvigorating experience for me. It\u2019s important to document this site now before it gets covered over again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Story by Kim Weaver Spurr \u201988, video and photos by Kristen Chavez \u201913 <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carolina faculty and students often head to far-flung locations to do archaeological field work, but this week, they are unearthing a big piece of the past in their own backyard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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