A dig in Philly last month

[baltbottles]

This dig started off with a call from Matt he had gotten permission on several soon to be developed empty city lot. The houses that once stood there dated to just after the civil war. It sounded like fun. And i rarely turn down a chance to dig. And dig we did. I met Matt and Pete on the site about 8:00 and they had been trying to locate a pit on one of the lots and they found one that was shared with a still standing building that would be hard to dig. So I suggested we try digging on the next lot over. I quickly probed out a pit that was free from obstruction no trees growing out of it or buildings over half of it. The pit probed soft and ashy and generally felt good. We started opening up the pit and encountered the typical Philadelphia brick arch work on the top four feet of the pit. We broke this up and got the brick cylinder exposed. Set up the tripod and started bucketing out dirt and going down. We found a few milk bottles in the ashy fill. The ash ended at about 6 feet and gave way to a layer of clay mixed with bricks this layer lasted about another 6 feet then the loamy trash layer began it started with 1870s bottles and artifacts and continued until the bottom at about 19 feet. we found about 75 bottles worth taking home and some pipes and a few pieces of pottery that would be worth gluing back.

Chris

 

[baltbottles]

Setting up the tripod

 

[baltbottles]

Digging

 

[baltbottles]

Dirt and bricks.... Fun

 

[baltbottles]

Getting deep...

 

[baltbottles]

Time to fill it in...

 

[baltbottles]

And there were bottles.

 

[Wheelah23]

ORIGINAL: baltbottles

And there were bottles.

Boy were there! []

 

[KBbottles]

I was involved with digging the house to the right with Matt. Same type of stuff not as much later stuff on top as it seems you found. Anything unusual come out or just typical philly sodas and stuff?

 

[baltbottles]

KB,
I ended up digging about 10 pits in that row over the last few weeks most of them had Philly sodas in then. We did get one aqua smooth base Georgetown Dc and an aqua smooth base Richmond Va sodas out of two of the pits. I also found a small clear USA Hosp Dept bottle in Matt and your left over dirt. A few nice colored Doyttville whiskeys some colored seam sided flasks. the best pit was the shared one that was shared with the one lone still standing house it had several pontiled sodas in it and some other cool stuff it had just under 100 bottles in it worth taking home.

Chris