Week Five - Keys, Marbles, and Lots of Visitors!
What a hot, hot week it has been! Despite the heat wave, we have completed a good amount of the excavation and plan to shut down the site at the end of Week Six (this coming week). I’ll be sad to leave the site, but with the heat getting more and more intense by the day, it’s probably a good thing that we’re packing up for the summer. With funding, I hope to return in the fall and possibly in the summer of 2006. If you are interested in sharing your history of Echo Mountain with me for another research project, I will be around in the fall conducting archival research at the Autry and would love to meet up with you!
The Pasadena Star News did a news bit on us this weekend. I am in the process of obtaining permission to reproduce the images and video produced by the paper on this website. Raul Roa, the editor/videographer/photographer of the story, was kind enough to hike out to our site and take some photos and videos of our Public Archaeology Day. We had a wonderful time showing visitors around Echo Mountain and discussing the findings we’ve had this summer. Brian Marcroft and Joe, two local historians, were kind enough to assist with the event. Thanks to everyone who showed up and made the event successful!
This week, we completed the A trenches (A1, 2, and 3) in the Southern portion of the section house. We continued to find interesting artifacts in the final A excavation (A3) – a couple keys, buttons, and children’s toys. The amount of keys found in A3 suggests that the Mexican occupants may have worked as maids at the Alpine Tavern. We also found a piece of either newspaper or a page out of a mail order catalog in A3. We are opening up one last unit, Z2, south of the A trench and in the corner of the house with the hopes of locating a few more personal effects from the section house’s occupants.
The cesspool (D1) appears to have no end and, consequently, we are going to have close up excavation in that area of the site on Monday. We continue to find ashy layers within the cesspool, suggesting that we have yet to hit artifacts dumped during the section house’s period of occupation. I am bit disappointed about this factor, but with funding, perhaps I will be able to return next summer to further explore the feature.
What I am calling the “corral” area of the site, excavation unit E1, has expanded into a 2 meter by 2-meter unit from a 1m x 1m unit this week. This has resulted in the exposure of what I, for the meantime, am calling “seedling casings.” You can take a look at a photo of these interesting objects below. Could they be part of a historic garden or part of a historic Forest Service reforestation project? Claire Rich, a volunteer and teacher, and I believe that these circular objects (possibly made out of tar paper or leather?) may have been used to project seedlings from rabbits and other wildlife. The deeper we get in E1, the more faunal materials we encounter.
We are also finding lots of large ceramic fragments in E1, a few with maker’s marks and decorations. Maker’s marks are imprints left on bottles and ceramics by the object’s producers – with a little (or a lot depending on the object and mark!) research, archaeologists are often able to figure out where the object was produced, when it was in circulation, and what types of materials and/or liquid it contained. My gut instinct tells me that these ceramic fragments were used to dump slop and excess food waste for the corral’s animals to eat.
We have had a number of visitors to the site this week, including Forest Service archaeologists Mike McIntyre and Darrell Vance, local historian and lawyer Paul Ayers, former volunteer Scott Mathers, USC Professor of Geology Lawford Anderson, and an artist (I will post his website up shortly!) who owns a cabin in Chantry Flats and an art gallery in downtown Pasadena. Jarrod Diamond, a Forest Ranger for Angeles National Forest, also spent some time at the site helping us screen and dig.
We said goodbye to Amy Amberger, a history student at Pacific University who has been with us since Week One of the project! Thanks, Amy, for all of your hard work! A special thanks also is need for volunteers who helped out this week in the intense heat; they include Amy Amberger, Jarrod Diamond, Cailee Mellen, Laura Ng, Koji Ozawa, and Claire Rich. They have endured long workdays since it’s nearly impossible to hike out with our equipment in the afternoon heat. We have been working 7am to 6pm everyday!
A few more thank yous are needed: a thanks goes out to Ed Chambers (www.chamcal.com) for donating money to pay for our rental car! We have had an extraordinary and unexpected amount of volunteers this season, many of whom don’t have a car to take up to the site. We ended up renting a large Chevy Tahoe from Pasadena Enterprise (1890 Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA) to get everyone up to the site. Thank you to Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Pasadena for helping us with our rental car and being so accommodating with our needs!
And last but definitely not least, thank you to Paul Ayers for doing some research on the occupation dates of the section house. According to Paul and Charles Seims, it appears as though it may have burnt down in 1941 instead of 1940 or 1936. Paul and me also discussed the foundations of the section house. We are interested in why the Eastern wall of the section house appears to be stronger and made of a different material than the house’s center and Western walls. Is it an addition to the house, or, as I am suggesting, related to the way in which Pacific Electric Railway’s management wanted the house to appear to visitors who could only see the Eastern wall from the train? Perhaps this is one of the many mysteries of Echo Mountain that will never be solved. Any ideas are appreciated!
If you are interested in coming up and seeing the site exposed, please do within the next week! We will be closing up and backfilling the units starting Wednesday, July 26th, 2006. The site will be closed for the year on Saturday, July 29th, 2006.
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(from left to right) Koji, Claire, and Laura digging in E1
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Stacey chatting with Members of the Public on Public Archaeology Day – July 22, 2006
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Raul Roa of the Pasadena Star News photographing a Key found in the A Line
A Key found in the A Line
A Decoration found in the A Line
Marbles found in A3
