Digging Up Middletown's Buried History

An archaeological dig in Middletown?  At the junction of Vine, Cross and Knowles?

Yes, Wesleyan professor Sarah Croucher teaches a class on local archaeological analysis, specifically tied to Middletown.  Her class is in the midst of screening materials unearthed in teh 1970's, but they will continue with digs at the site mentioned above.

You can follow their progress at here. 

A permanent link can be found in our Middlelinks section on the right of this page.

Here's a recent update at the site posted by one of Croucher's students.

Why does Middletown’s material history matter to me?

Apr. 4, 2010 by rlkowal

A recently assigned class reading on the challenges of writing archaeological literature for multiple audiences (such as members of academic disciplines outside of archaeology, members of the general public, etc.) prompted me to examine the manifold personal perspectives that have shaped – either consciously or otherwise – my approach to handling, sorting and identifying the material artifacts from the Magill site in our laboratory.  

In doing so, my first instinct was to pivot my embedded interests in enrolling in this course on my identities as a student of anthropology, a Connecticut resident, and a descendent of Eastern European immigrants.  I should note that I’m not yet certain as to how and why these frames of personal reference have become conditioned modes of thought.  For the moment, I merely want to flesh out how these aforementioned identities have contributed to the personal appeal that Middletown’s material history held for me.

My interest in Middletown history is, first and foremost, directly related to my status as an undergraduate student at Wesleyan.  As a result, I view my personal investment in Middletown’s history as somewhat circumscribed by the part-time and ultimately transient nature of my Middletown residency.  I feel privileged to have been afforded the opportunity – vis à vis my enrollment at Wesleyan – to personally handle fragments of Middletown’s material history, despite my indirect relationship to the town.  (Alternatively, if we were to get into the socioeconomic politics of this course, one could say that is precisely my ability to afford a private college education that has allowed me privileged access to Middletown’s material history.)

I feel the need, also, to point out that my overarching goal for this coursework is to develop a basic set of skills for analyzing material history in an archaeological laboratory setting.  To that end, I must admit that if, for example, I were enrolled in New York University, I would be just as happily working towards accomplishing this goal through, say, the study of material history of lower Manhattan.
Alternatively, as a Connecticut resident, I don’t consider the subject of such studies to be completely arbitrary.  I do have another source of vested interest in Middletown’s material history – my status as a longtime primary resident of Westport, Connecticut.  The Saugatuck River, which flows through Westport and drains into the Long Island Sound, once facilitated an active shipping industry, just as the Connecticut River did for Middletown.  According to Woody Klein’s Westport Connecticut, The Story of a New England Town’s Rise to Prominence (2000), beginning in the post-Revolutionary War period and continuing through the first half of the 19^th century, farmers who had settled along the banks of the Saugatuck River began to export grain, vegetables (most notably, onions) and butter to New York, Boston and Providence.  The network of shipyards and warehouses that was established along the River also facilitated the import of sugar, molasses and hardwood lumber from the West Indies.

Although Westport’s shipping industry was of a decidedly smaller scale than that of Middletown’s at it’s height, the two towns do share similar trajectories of growth, based on shifts from farm-based to shipping based economies. In this way, I see Middletown as a sort-of ‘stand-in’ (a term I use very lightly) for my hometown of Westport, Connecticut.  That is, part of my interest derives from an imagined notion that the some of the pearlwares whose sherds we recovered from the Magill site also decorated the tables of early residents of Westport, many of whose circa 18th and 19^th century houses still stand today.

On another note, I was amused to learn in the excerpt we read of Elizabeth A. Warner’s “A Pictorial History of Middletown” that the European migration to Middletown in the mid-19^th century included Polish émigrés.  My paternal grandfather emigrated from Poland to the United States in the 1930’s, although his family ultimately settled in Brooklyn, NY.  The addition to Magill’s home, which was removed in order to facilitate Professor Dyson’s excavation of the site, was dated as having been constructed post-1870, according to Wesleyan graduate Thea De Armond’s “Middletown Site Summaries.”  Following the vein of architectural history, I have wondered whether this addition was constructed in connection with a conversion of the Magill residence into a tenement for Middletown’s industrial labor force.  Could European immigrants – including my Polish “brethren” – have occupied the Magill site as boarders, and perhaps utilized the brown stoneware bottle, a large fragment of which was present in our second bag of artifacts, to store ink used to write letters to family in the homeland?  It is narratives such as these that emerge from my ancestral imagination occasionally as I sort and categorize fragments.  I readily concede that they are not necessarily historically viable narratives.  Nevertheless, the potential link between my heritage and that of Middletown’s industrial labor force contributes to my thirst for this particular laboratory research.

Having articulated the personal appeals that Middletown’s material history hold for me, I feel obliged to acknowledge them in the written portion of my final project.  However, right now I’m questioning what place (if any) the personal preoccupations of the archaeologist have in archaeological narratives.  With reference to my personal ‘preoccupations,’ is one identity more important to emphasize than the other, and if so, for which audience?  What does the audience of this blog think?  I would appreciate any feedback you have to offer on this subject!

And now, time to rest up before tomorrow’s laboratory session!

Rebecca