March 2004 - Society for California Archaeology

36
Articles
Enormous quantities of soil would have
needed to be removed and stockpiled and
there would have been excessive heavy
equipment and crew costs involved. It was
decided that the budget could be spent more
efficiently on the remaining city blocks. We
had to be content with demonstrating that
the wall foundations of St. Mary’s were solid,
intact, and deep.
Block 10 (Harrison, Bryant, Third and
Fourth) presented a different challenge.
Located on the edge of the 1850s bay marsh
this block saw the largest excavation area cut
a swathe through the historical remains of
what had been the most densely crowded
19th century housing in the project area.
Below as much as eight feet of landfill, 1906
fire-scarred building foundations survived
along with many privies and two deep wells
that produced the bulk of artifacts recovered
during the project. Innovation was the rule
on this block. Ground penetration radar was
used to attempt to peer through six feet or
more of landfill in advance of excavation. Two ASAs were
selected and a Caltrans crew from Sacramento brought in state
of the art GPR equipment to probe beneath the post-1906
sand and rubble fill near the Third Street edge of Block 10.
Initial results indicated that the fill deposits may have
attenuated and bounced the signal around substantially but
these results are being refined and reanalyzed. Final data will
become available as soon as a Caltrans GPR backlog related
to other construction projects has been cleared.
Based on its location close to the edge of the bay marsh
and on the proximity of a known prehistoric site, Block 10
was considered the most likely to harbor Native American
sites. A layer of shell midden was located at a depth of about
8 ft., about 200 ft. from the 1850s marsh edge close to the
Third Street end of the block. Only about 9 inches thick, it
spread over an area of 25 ft. x 7 ft. and was cut through by a
19 th century brick lined well. It contained dense
accumulations of marine mollusk shells, mammal, bird, and
fish bones, and small quantities of fire-cracked rock,
groundstone, and obsidian and chert debitage. Approximately
three cubes of midden soil were excavated. Given its position
adjacent to the historic period marsh, it is anticipated that the
site will be no more than a few hundred years old. Carbon
dating will help resolve the true age.
In the fall of 2002, the crew moved on to Block 4
(Howard, Folsom, First and Fremont), targeting the Miner’s
Hotel, homes on Fremont Street, and the small, cramped and
overcrowded houses set on 25ft. by 25 ft. lots on narrow
Baldwin Court, which used to run downhill off Folsom.
Located on the shore of Yerba Buena Cove in the 1850s
before landfilling began, this block developed as a mix of
industrial and residential lots. By the 1880s it was dominated
Figure 2: Excavation of the shell midden which is cut by a brick lined well. The tracked
excavator in the background is placing slide-rail shoring around another well.
by the Golden State Miner’s Iron Works that overshadowed
Baldwin Court. With the pollution associated with that
industry, it can’t have been the healthiest place to live.
Privies began to emerge in unexpectedly high numbers at
about 3 ft. depth along Baldwin Court.
Based on results from this alleyway alone, ‘Life on a San
Francisco Side Street’ could be one of the chapters in the
final report. Privies were also located at the Miner’s Hotel
and on Fremont Street, one of the latter over 6 ft. deep, an
unusual depth for a privy when you remember that before we
find them, they have all been truncated by later
development.
A puzzling feature in the project was connected with
Privy 1326, found on Block 4. Seemingly a typical privy,
when fully excavated it was found to be resting on a rather
elaborate granite base for which there was no obvious
explanation. It remains unexplained.
US Coast survey maps from the 1850s and other
documentation indicated that much of Block 4 was filled in
with sand after the Gold Rush. This raised the possibility that
Gold Rush shacks and associated features might have
survived buried deeply on this block. Three trenches were
opened with a backhoe in an attempt to determine where the
old Gold Rush period surface was located. It was possible to
dig in this way to about 15 ft. depth before the sandy soil
collapsed back into the trench and made further excavation
pointless. There was some indication of a possible earlier
surface at about 14 ft. depth in the trench nearest First Street
but for safety reasons it was not possible to enter the trench.
Looking for early Gold Rush camps on this block would
require excavating the sand to near mean sea level. This
SCA Newsletter 38(1)