Hi all. I'm pessimistic about anything left in place and covered only
by an outdoor kiosk, and enthusiastic about leaving in place under a
new structure that provides humidity control to the preserved masonry
to counteract Madame Nature's wet/dry cycle, at least here in the
(former) Eastern Woodlands. All over the eastern US there are failed
kiosks, defeated by algae and icky stuff growing on the underside of
the (now barely) see-through medium whether plex or glass. This
method of showing what we've found works in the Great Plains and
westward, as for example when we saw the full extent of the Alamo's
defensive wall during the field trip to San Antonio at SHA 2011 at Austin.
I had to tell the above to State Parks folks when we discovered
a great cistern and filter box array a couple weeks ago at
Historic Washington State Park in SW Ark. I should say, Dr. Jamie
Lockhart using GPR encountered a fabulous deep anomaly, Dr. Jamie
Brandon laid down 2x2 meter units over the anomaly, and volunteers
attending the Ark Archeological Survey and AASociety Training Program
dug down all of 20cm to expose the surviving upper courses of the
brick dome that in turn sits upon a cylindrical vault at least 3
meters deep (suggests the GPR data). The cistern, so close to the
surface and so entirely forgotten, is a spectacular demonstration
that the Park is primarily an archeological entity in spite of a nice
collection of 1840s-1880s structures.
We only dug about 1.5m of fill (1830s-1930s sheet midden) and did not
remove any bricks. Best we can probably do for interpretation is
replicate the top courses at ground level, then build a porch
above with boxed in access points so one can raise a lid and see the
"filter box" and "cistern" as they would have been visible in the mid
1800s. Plus several wayside panels. Unlike China, for some reason we
cannot afford to put the whole site under spectacular buildings as at
Neolithic BanPo and the First Emperor's Terra Cotta Warriors at Xian,
and the Bronze Age city site of Jin Sha in Chengdu. And even then I
saw some creeping algae at both places. Oh well.
At 08:31 PM 6/26/2011, you wrote:
>Hi all,
>I've been excavating at a house museum site this summer and we have found a
>small (6 by 10 ft) brick floored building with substantial stone
>foundations, attached corner to corner with the main house. The outbuilding
>floor is a bit below grade, and we are speculating that it's a dairy.
>
>The house museum is looking for options and technical information about ways
>that they might preserve the feature in place or incorporate it into their
>new addition (a classroom and archival ell that they are planning to build
>in the same area). They are also interested in hearing if anyone has any
>examples of moving something like this and rebuilding it elsewhere. They
>are at the brainstorming stage right now.
>
>Any pointers to references for ideas, examples of other ways this has been
>done, or technical info about preservation strategies are appreciated,
>either to the list of off list to [log in to unmask]
>
>A photo of the partially exposed floor can be seen here:
>http://blogs.umb.edu/fiskecenter/2011/06/23/the-durant-kenrick-dairy/
>
>Sincerely,
>Christa
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