Carved bone chess piece (knight) recovered from an 1830s storefront cellar in Historic Washington State Park
The program for the October Kadohadacho Chapter meeting will be Dr. Jamie Brandon (AKA “Me”) who will talk about this summer’s excavations at Historic Washington State Park in southwest Arkansas.
We had a great time during our second field season with the Arkansas Archeological Society Summer Training Program at Historic Washington State Park. This was the second year of excavation at historic Washington on Block 6, the heart of the commercial district from the 1830s through the 1880s. When all was said and done, over the last two summers (2011 and 2012) our excavations on Block 6 discovered at least six different structures and 3-5 cellars dating from three major periods of activity—antebellum (1830-1850s), Civil War and postbellum (1860s-1880) and a flurry of activity in the 1920s filling in long-abandoned buildings following the 1870s and 1880s fires. As we have very little in the way of photographs, maps or archival material about Block 6, this archeological information is invaluable to reconstructing what kinds of buildings were on the block and what types of mercantile activity took place there.
These excavations also recovered hundreds of thousands of artifacts which will help us understand what life was like on the Arkansas cotton frontier of the nineteenth century. These include more than twenty gunflints, several early faceted blue and glass black beads, and a surprising number of coins—both US (1827 and 1806 silver half-dollars as well as several early- to mid-nineteenth century silver coins of smaller denominations) and Spanish (at least 4 Spanish silver reales).
Although the AAS-SAU staff conducted promotional talks throughout the year, the public outreach element during the 2012 Arkansas Archeological Society Summer Training Program was also invaluable. The excavations were covered in several media outlets including Sunday Features in both the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Texarkana Gazette, and interviews with KTXK 91.5 FM, a National Public Radio and American Public Media affiliate community-oriented, non-commercial radio station licensed to Texarkana College, and KTYC 88.5 FM, non-commercial radio station affiliated with the Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas. Additionally, the dig was covered by Rex Nelson in both is blog Southern Fried and his regular column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
As we did last year, we had over 100 volunteers and staff members involved in the summer dig. Despite the hot weather, we had a good time and made some great discoveries.
Come learn about what we discovered this summer at Historic Washingt9on State Park—Tuesday, October 9, 7:00pm in the Magnolia Room on the second floor of the Reynolds Center on the campus of Southern Arkansas University.
