Cause for minor encouragement--maybe.  Exceptionally poor way to collect
artifacts; almost no context.  Section 106 violation?

D. Babson.




Buffalo's 'Big Dig"  rescues trove of canal-era artifacts from the dump

By Alan Oberst

On the summer's most beautiful August weekend, over 400 people  
appeared at a remote landfill outside of Buffalo, to dig in the dirt,  
drawn there by the siren song of history.  The challenge was to  
rescue canal-era artifacts recently trucked there from Buffalo's  
Inner Harbor redevelopment project.  But the artifacts they sought  
were thoroughly mixed with 100-plus years of dirt and debris  
excavated from Buffalo's Commercial Slip, once the western terminus  
of the Erie Canal.  So in an event that bore the fitting moniker "The  
Big Dig," people came from far and near, and the race was on to  
rescue as much history as possible in two days.  Some arrived with  
nothing more than a pair of gloves and determination.  Others brought  
more sophisticated tools of the trade such as metal detectors.  But  
with all the material to go through, perhaps the most useful  
equipment proved to be the backhoe-a tool capable of  surprising  
finesse in the hands of an experienced operator.

What did two days of digging unearth?  All told, a bit of everything,  
including leather shoes, marbles, silverware, ceramics of all kinds,  
from an earthenware jug to an eighteenth-century porcelain vase,  
likely the oldest find of the weekend.  Surprising for debris from  
the "Commercial" Slip, so much seemed derived from the domestic side  
of life-a reminder that the canal was not only about commercial  
freight, but was also home to families and the stuff of households.   
Also found commonly were bottle after bottle after bottle, which did  
nothing to belie the reputation of canawlers as a hard-drinking  
bunch.  Surprisingly, though, some were milk bottles, bearing the  
marks of long-closed Buffalo dairies.  Such marks were telltales  
signs to the practiced eyes of artifact screeners who kept watch on  
the proceedings.

Given the rough-and-tumble waterfront era represented by the  
excavation, some diggers half-expected to find human remains, perhaps  
from a victim who double-crossed one of Buffalo's notorious "saloon  
bosses." Somewhat disappointed, perhaps, diggers found only animal  
bones.
Perhaps the biggest story was told by the most mundane yet abundant  
artifacts in the dig-oyster shells.  Bushels of oyster shells were  
found, demonstrating the impact of the canal on Buffalo.  How?   
Oysters-not native to Buffalo-began showing up by the boatload from  
downstate shortly after the canal opened, humble heralds of the canal  
revolution in transportation which opened an era of economic  
development.  The location of the canal's Great Lakes port in Buffalo  
not only made her the Queen City, but made the world her oyster.    
Buffalo grew to become the eighth largest city in the nation, home to  
two presidents and last port of call for another, with a cultural and  
architectural legacy rivaled by few cities in the nation.

How did Buffalo's Big Dig come about?  Its origin was in the removal  
of 200 truckloads of debris excavated from the Commercial Slip,  
accumulated throughout the 100-year operation of the Erie Canal prior  
to embargement.  Although its removal was a necessary part of the  
restoration of the slip, it was originally hoped that the debris  
could have a proper going-through on site.  But that was denied by  
the state overseers of the Inner Harbor project, and for a time it  
appeared that this historic material was doomed to vanish in oblivion  
in a Tonawanda landfill.

But with a stubbornness and tenacity that would have made Sal the  
Mule proud, Tim Tielman, Executive Director of the Campaign For  
Greater Buffalo Art, Architecture, and Culture fought the good fight  
to get permission for volunteers to screen the debris at the landfill  
itself.  He then called the troops to arms.

Why would over 400 people respond to the call, sacrificing part of a  
beautiful summer weekend to work up a sweat digging in the dirt in a  
landfill?  The central reason: they knew their history was at stake,  
and like all good canal buffs and preservationists, they responded.   
Like those who saved the Day Peckinpaugh, and like those who pulled  
from creeks piece by piece and block by block the Aldrich Change  
Bridge and the Camillus aqueduct, canal buffs and preservationists  
respond when their history-which is really all our history-is at stake!

Artifacts uncovered in the Big Dig are expected to be displayed in a  
museum being planned on Buffalo's waterfront as part of the Inner  
Harbor redevelopment.

(Editor's note: Alan Oberst wrote an article for the Summer issue of  
Canal Times chronicling Rochester's "Chill The Fill" campaign).

(caption) A team of archaeologists and volunteers work feverishly to  
recover artifacts from a landfill near Buffalo.