Sometimes the contributions of the State Historic Sites are forgotten when considering the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites’ collection. But these sites can provide unique insight into the history of Hoosier life. Such is the case with the variety of artifacts recovered from the New Harmony State Historic Site. Because it was an active community from 1814, when it was created by the Harmonists, until it became a State Historic Site in the 1940s, the New Harmony site provides archaeologists with a unique look into the history of daily life in southern Indiana.
Due to deterioration in the main building, archeologists had to do some excavation of the surrounding areas so that preservation construction could begin. According to Bill Wepler, Curator of Historical Archaeology, the dig has produced a wide variety of interesting artifacts from pulled teeth to small rifle cartridges from indoor shooting ranges.
“New Harmony has provided us with probably the most unique grouping of artifacts from any of our site,” Wepler said. “Throughout the history of the building at this site, it’s served as school, dormitory, print shop for a newspaper, tavern, hotel, dry goods store, telegraph office and so on. Because of this variety of uses, busy areas like the back yard would accumulate a lot of archaeological materials from a variety of time periods.”
In addition to mundane everyday items, archaeologists have turned over some unusual findings at the site. The team was surprised when they began digging in one area of soil only to discover that it rapidly turned their hands as black as carbon paper.
“Probably a lot of ink was dumped there from the newspaper that was printed in the main building between the 1850s and 1933,” Wepler said. “We can’t say for certain. What we find is a reflection of various things that went on there and it’s not always a clear picture.”
Another unique finding was a buried tombstone underneath the back door. “I think that someone must have replaced a family member’s grave stone at some point. Not wanting to let a good piece of stone go to waste, they most likely decided to use it in the print shop as a table-top. I believe that after it was no longer of use for that purpose, it was salvaged to use as a foundation for the back steps.”
The dig has produced everything from Harmonist-made redware pottery to printing plates, leaving museum and historic sites archaeologists with a lot of material to analyze.
“Archaeology isn’t digging, it’s thinking, and we’ve collected an incredible amount of material from the site to give us a picture of life at that site,” Wepler said. “There’s just something more interesting about an item that’s been dug up and re-assembled versus one that anyone could find in an antique mall.”