Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1987 - 34

eastern boundary. The tropical ship worms, or
teredos, preserved in the ship's pitch and horsehair
sheathing offer evidence of the trade between colonial
New York City and the Caribbean in the late
seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Whether or
not the route plied by this anonymous vessel (now
dubbed the Ronson Ship) was within the trade
network of the owners of the block's water lots
remains unknown.
Consulting nautical archaeologists Sheli Smith
and Warren Riess, who were called in to excavate
the land-bound ship, found it tied into a pier and
bulkhead system that served to hold the landfill in
place while keeping the East River out. This reuse
of an abandoned or sunken ship in a developing
seaport is an example of an ancient fill technique
that may have been relatively common in New
York's seaport. About ten years ago, another ship
was partially uncovered in the basement of a building
on Water Street and remains under the recently
renovated buildings of the South Street Seaport.
Evidence for other ships has been revealed at
various construction sites, and still others are
believed to exist throughout both the East and the
West Side port area of New York. So far, however,
the Ronson Ship is the only one extensively
excavated.
The block's fill process, only briefly described
here, is now quite well documented archaeologically,
although as noted earlier, it is not detailed in any
record. From map data and ceramic and glass dates,
it appears to be a process that took 40 years or more
to complete. During this period, the wharves and
piers were engineered and for a time used as dockage,
the ship was incorporated into the system, and the
landfill- a garbage-laden debris- was slowly deposited and stabilized. Apparently, the process not
only involved the use and perhaps revival of ancient
engineering techniques but also required vast
quantities of timber, sand ballast dumped from
docked ships, and trash from a growing urban
population.
Since it incorporated trash, the block's landmaking process offers precious information about
eighteenth-century
goods, diet and sanitation. It
also implies the noxious condition created by
dumping garbage and leaving it to decompose for
decades. Letters written in the late eighteenth
century by Dr. Richard Bayley, one of New York
City's first Health Commissioners, repeatedly
describe the slips and filling lots along the East
River as repulsive repositories for "every species of
filth and perishable matter."
Analysis of the landfill process also made it
apparent that its impetus clearly came from
commerce. As suggested by Amy Friedlander, site
historian for the project, wharf construction extended docking facilities on the block into the
deeper water of the East River, increasing the size
of the cargo ships that could be accommodated and
the quantity of imported goods that could then be
acquired and sold. Historical and archaeological
data indicate that by 1754 the "Ronson ship" had
been tied into a bulkhead system that defined the
block. While the landfilling process continued, this
34

ARCHAEOLOGY

maneuver made the water lots east of Front Street
available to New York City's merchant entrepreneurs;
more specifically, it made them available to the
owners of lots on the 175 Water Street block. The
subsequent filling of these more easterly lots
ultimately shifted the position and fortunes of the
block, relegating it to the inland commercial hub
rather than the active waterfront.
In addition to suggesting motives for landmaking, archaeological investigation provided
evidence of cooperation and interaction among New
York's eighteenth-century merchant elite, an involvement previously suggested in shipping receipts
and correspondence and now graphically illustrated
by the ship's placement across five separately
owned water lots. The very motives and methods
of the block's creation provide an early example of
the dynamics of the city's commercialism and
trade. Clearly, these dynamics, which include land
development, continue to affect the block and
the city to this day.
-A.rtifact analysis provided much of the data for
reconstructing the block's history. Well-used ceramics
and broken, discarded glass were recovered from
backyard features, as were new but damaged plates
and glasses from shops or warehouses. In addition,
food-related animal bones- mainly from cows, sheep
or goats, and pigs- as well as pits and seeds from
watermelons, peaches, raspberries, strawberries,
squashes, and other common fruits and vegetables
were collected.
While all of these food remains were well preserved by the wet condition of a landfill situation, some were from meals eaten by the block's
nineteenth-century occupants while others were
from the older eighteenth-century landfill. In
both instances, food-related bones were almost
exclusively from domesticated animals, suggesting
that even New York's early inhabitants did not
rely on wild species for food, although forests were
nearby. For example, no deer bones were recovered from nineteenth-century features, and only one
fragment was found in a sample of more than
1,600 mammal bones from the earlier fill.
Beyond providing evidence of diet, archaeological material from 175 Water Street indicates its
change over time from a place where people mainly
lived to one where they mainly worked. The earliest
archaeological evidence remaining for the block's
occupation dates from 1780 to 1795. At this time,
although it was both residential and commercial,
households out-numbered businesses. By 1830 the
situation had reversed, and businesses predominated. This general shift was determined through
analysis of deposits found in the yards' cisterns
and privies- stone, brick and sometimes wooden
features that often become receptacles for the trash
and debris that are the very core of historical
archaeological data.
Since the creation of neighborhoods or districts
is an integral part of urban development, the shift
from a mixed residential and commercial neighborhood to one that is mainly commercial is an
important development in the growth of a city.

Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1987

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January/February 1987