Urban Archaeology in Tampa Id

Republica de Cuba (8HI110): Site-Formation Processes in an Urban Environment

In 1976 archaeologists from the University of South Florida (USF) were invited to spend

a weekend excavating a dirt parking lot at the corner of Palm Avenue and Republica de Cuba (10th Avenue and 14th Street) prior to its paving for use by Hillsborough Community College’s

BRent R. Weisman—Florida archaeology Confronts the Recent Past 21

FiGURe 2. Republica de Cuba site on Hillsborough Community College campus in 2009, view to the north. the arguelles turkish Baths building is in the right background, now housing college administrative offices. (Photo by author, 2009.)

Ybor City campus (Figure 2). Eight 1 × 2 m units area by studying city directories, census listings, were staked out within the 50 × 100 m lot, and and Sanborn insurance maps, archival sources were excavated in natural levels down to cultur- that had not previously been compiled or exam- ally sterile soil. In one unit, excavation reached a ined during the excavation project. This analysis depth of 1 m below the surface, while the others revealed that cigar workers comprised the single were typically discontinued at depths of 40 to 50 largest category of employment from 1893 through cm below the surface (Haidar 1998:45,46). Some 1937 (ranging from 33% to 41%), that after 1937 4,000 artifacts were collected in the weekend’s blue-collar occupations dominated (including a work and were taken to USF. There they sat for wide range of jobs such as teamster, baker, barber,

20 years, boxed and shelved, until graduate stu- seamstress, and stenographer) until the destruction dent Mary Haidar opened them up, released them of the neighborhood in 1968 at the hands of urban from their bags, assembled the surviving field renewal, by which time cigar workers accounted notes, and asked the question: Can the analysis for only 9% of the occupational sector (Haidar of these artifacts, excavated 20 years before in 1998:16,17). The neighborhood contained a mix of hurried and imperfect field conditions, produce shops, restaurants, residences, and boardinghouses, insights into the behavior of the people who once was prominently cornered by the Cuban Club on lived on this corner of Ybor City (Haidar 1998:2)? the southwest side of the intersection, and was Quickly realizing that whatever happened on the only two blocks north of the original Ybor Cigar site could not be understood without understanding Factory. Most of the people who lived in the area its context within a neighborhood, Haidar recon- between 1893 and 1968 had Cuban or Spanish structed the population history of the surrounding surnames, according to the city directories, with

22 HistORiCaL aRCHaeOLOGY 45(2)

several such individuals, probably Afro-Cubans, also being noted as “colored.” In the early years of the neighborhood, between 1893 and 1908,

a number of male cigarmakers are described as “boarders” living at the same address (Haidar 1998:127). Based on multiple lines of docu- mentary evidence, a microcosm of the larger Ybor City can be expected to be seen in the neighborhood around the Republica de Cuba site, populated almost exclusively by working-class people of immigrant origins, whose social and economic worlds were contained within the few blocks around their homes, but who were not immune to changing conditions brought in from the outside world.

For an archaeologist, the historical record cer- tainly is rich enough to generate a number of testable propositions about the use and role of material culture to indicate wealth, status, group membership, gender roles, family structure, divi- sion of labor, and the advent of consumerism, to name just some topics, in urban immigrant working-class populations of the early-20th-cen- tury South. In terms of developing an archaeo- logical research design, a project with such a solid historical base and cultural richness appears very promising, and it would be, except for one thing. Both the city directories and the Sanborn insurance maps indicated that the specific lot on which the archaeological site was located, 1402 Palm Avenue, sat vacant until the mid-1930s as the neighborhood took shape around it. By the time that a small automobile service station was built on the portion of the lot later investigated by archaeologists, the site surface had been open for some 40 years, serving as a trash receptacle (intentionally or simply by circumstance) for the nearby homes and businesses. Its nearest neigh- bors were an auto painting and polishing business (behind it on the lot, to the north), and, to the east, with the greatest longevity, a “Turkish Bath House” (as labeled on the Sanborn maps), also known as the Naturopathic Bath House, Gymna- sium, and Vegetarian Hotel (when it opened in 1910) and, from the 1950s forward, the Arguelles Turkish Baths. By the mid-1960s the economic bloom of Ybor City had long faded, and by 1969, most buildings in the Republic de Cuba neighborhood shared the fate of so many others throughout the formerly thriving community: demolition by the wrecking ball of urban renewal (Mohlman 1995).

How then to account for the 4,000 artifacts? The use history of the lot indicates that they did not get there by being dumped by non- existent residential occupants of the property, therefore, any explanations that rely on the link between individual or family-level behavior and depositional pattern cannot hold up. Rather, at best, what most likely created the archaeological record was aggregated behavior organized into broad categories of activities. In recognizing this, archaeologists are located firmly in the middle range, theorizing about how the site came to

be and forced to develop a deposit model that can be expanded across urban Tampa to articu- late with and contribute to the formation of a master stratigraphic column. Following this line of thinking, three deposit types can be identified for the Republic de Cuba excavation. One of these is a demolition or urban renewal deposit, consisting of building materials, nonbottle glass, hardware, and nontableware ceramics. Specific artifacts included within this category include fragments of tiles, bricks, shingles, and window glass (all almost certainly from neighboring demolished buildings), nails, ceramic tile and pipes, and chunks or blocks of concrete. Artifacts deposited as a result of demolition activities account for slightly more than 12% of the total by count (Haidar 1998:102). A second deposit type relates to the use of the property as a gas station. A small number of identifiable car parts were found, accounting for less than one-half of one percent of the total. Finally, and numerically dominant, are artifacts attributable to vacant- lot dumping. These artifacts account for nearly 87% of the total (Haidar 1998:102) and include

a large number of glass-bottle sherds (dumped, no doubt, by several locally documented bever- age and bottling companies), ceramics, marbles and other toys, and, as a one-of-a-kind find, the handle portion of a purple glass handgun, made either as a candy dispenser (if so, dating post-1939) or a vanity perfume vial (then dating post-1888) (Haidar 1998:87,88). Spatial analysis of the relative frequencies of artifact categories present per unit suggested that vacant-lot dump- ing accounted for most of the deposits around the edges of the property, while demolition deposits were more generally spread across the site sur- face. Unfortunately, the stratigraphy of the site does not really help evaluate the degree to which the distribution of vacant-lot deposits also reflects

BRent R. Weisman—Florida archaeology Confronts the Recent Past 23

disturbance by the demolition process. Demolition can even result in an inverted stratigraphy (Ellis 1977). Ultimately the picture is one of a lot, left vacant for much of its history, serving primarily as a dump (or place of accumulation) for the neighborhood trash and a surface upon which demolition debris was spread.

The Republica de Cuba analysis was a direct attempt to understand the recent past through archaeology. How well did it do, and what was learned? One clear message is that while the archaeology of the recent past can be and must

be about people, the archaeological record will not always give people in discrete individual units, but rather show the effects of compos- ite human behavior on the landscape. At this scale archaeologists can come to understand the transformative effects of human actions on the immediate environments in which people live. It can then be seen that powerful forces originating from far outside the local environment can have dramatic impacts on human space, and therefore can have serious, even traumatic, consequences for the people engaged with that space. The archaeology of the recent past is about people, yes, but people enmeshed in huge and complex social, political, and economic processes only partly within their control and realm of influence. Any anthropologically informed archaeological research design must first be based on a real- istic and informed appraisal of the archaeologi- cal record, for it is at once both maddeningly ephemeral and bewilderingly complex.

In Search of the Buffalo Soldiers: The Past in Service of the Present

Called to the front lines with the quick mobi- lization of troops sent to invade Cuba during the Spanish-American War, the so-called buffalo sol- diers, African American regiments of the regular army comprising the 9th and 10th cavalries and the 24th and 25th infantry regiments (Kenner 1999; Nankivell 2001) began arriving in Tampa in April and May 1898 for embarkation. Devel- oped from the black volunteer regiments in the Civil War and then established as regular army regiments through congressional order, the buf- falo soldiers had seen hard service at remote western outposts (Leckie and Leckie 2003), alter- nately engaged in either numbingly monotonous or extremely grueling tasks ( Kenner 1999) and

occasionally dispatched to enforce order among the Indian tribes, from whom they earned the respect- ful nickname “Buffalo” soldiers (Schubert 1995). Needless to say, the onslaught of nearly 3,000 armed and uniformed black men was a cause of great alarm in the Jim Crow South, and Tampa became the scene of violent conflict between citi- zens and soldiers as the prevailing racially based social order was put to the test. As members of the U.S. Army, these black soldiers did not take lightly being turned away from whites-only bars, restaurants, barber shops, or houses of ill repute, and in this highly charged environment it did not take much to spark a fight. Local newspapers seemed only too happy to fan the flames through their own incendiary journalism: “Negro Troops Still Trying to Run the Town—Situation Growing Serious,” proclaimed the Tampa Morning Tribune (1898) on 12 May, which helped propel the city to the brink of a race war, ultimately avoided only by the departure of the buffalo soldiers with the first invasion force steaming to Cuba during the second week of June.

The archaeology of buffalo soldier campsites brings a physical dimension to the study of race relations in turn-of-the-century Tampa by locat- ing the space in which actions took place and the material objects through which they were expressed. One effect the buffalo soldiers had on the segregated society in Tampa was to intro- duce ambiguity into the rationale for upholding the prevailing social order. The buffalo soldiers brought with them a mixed message, expos- ing cracks in what was usually presented as an unquestioned worldview. If blacks were intel- lectually and biologically inferior, why did the government deem them capable of serving (and with distinction) in the regular army? Yet, if they were not inferior, even potentially dangerous, why did the army segregate them into their own regiments and place them exclusively under the command of white officers? Further, suspicions in the post-Reconstruction South gave rise to the belief that the federal government was using the buffalo soldiers to force a change in racial attitudes. Despite the 1898 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling that upheld separate but equal policies at the state and local level (thereby sanctioning state-level segregation), many still feared more covert federal intents to trample states rights. Fears were fanned even higher by the jubilant welcome given the buffalo soldiers

24 HistORiCaL aRCHaeOLOGY 45(2)

by local black populations. Further, the arrival of the buffalo soldiers in Tampa could hardly have come at a worse time. Tampa’s city fathers were desperate to bring an image of respectability to the town, pitting them against deeply entrenched local interests who early on discovered the profits to be had from drinking and prostitution. The police and local courts looked the other way, unable or unwilling to enforce bans on Sunday drinking and little interested in padlocking well- known houses of prostitution. In came the buffalo soldiers to expose the double standard, demand- ing to have at whiskey, beer, and women, the same as any white man. Visible by their color, marked by their uniforms, feared for who they were, the buffalo soldiers became easy targets for public scorn, ready scapegoats for blame, and the very embodiment of a society caught up in change and uneasy with itself.

In 1997, as the centennial of the Spanish- American War approached, Florida’s department of state began soliciting proposals for projects commemorating Florida’s role in that conflict. I wondered, could that story be told through the lens of the buffalo soldier experience? That expe- rience had been wiped clean from the historical and cultural memory of Tampa. Other than a few idiosyncratic and short-lived efforts by local historians to situate the buffalo soldiers precisely within Tampa’s larger role as the major point of embarkation for the invading army, the presence of these troops in Tampa had long ago been submerged beneath the top billing given to Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. Further, despite

a steadily growing body of scholarship on the buffalo soldiers, their brief but dramatic sojourn in Tampa was largely ignored (Gatewood 1970; Mohlman 1999), their physical presence invisible. When the reality of Tampa’s highly contentious and strife-filled race relations in the 20th century was added to the mix, I needed to ask: Would this project open up channels of constructive dia- logue about Tampa’s racial legacy or simply open old wounds? Even worse, would it be considered only a curious addendum to military history and relegated to the dusty shelves of irrelevance?

Building the Archaeological Discovery Model

Mindful but undaunted, and with state fund- ing in hand, the project moved forward with a

plan for discovering buffalo soldier campsites and for recognizing and interpreting the associ- ated archaeological record. It became clear very early as the team started to look around that the effects of site-formation processes on the integ- rity of the record would need to be taken into account. The general area of the camps, although open land on the outskirts of the city when occu- pied by the soldiers, was soon after swallowed by residential development in Tampa’s first urban sprawl. A lucky find in the city’s preservation board archives was an 1898 map of Tampa made by the engineering firm of Hendry and Knight (1898) showing the camps in relation to Tampa’s street grid and other physical landmarks. Also discovered was a file compiled by independent local historian Charles T. Rouleau containing his sketched version of this map with reference to the street names of the 1960s and other of his notes and observations (Rouleau 1966). Fur- ther, project historian Geoff Mohlman located local several newspaper accounts describing the campsites and troop activities (Mohlman 1999). These accounts made it clear that the papers were writing about the same locations shown on the Hendry and Knight map and also contained details about camp life that indeed could have archaeological expression (Figure 3). The team compiled all of the known documentary evidence and came to the following conclusions. First, the four buffalo soldier regiments, the 9th and 10th cavalries and the 24th and 25th infantries, were dispersed over a large area, with the 9th Cavalry in Port Tampa, the 10th encamped on Lake Wire in Lakeland, 30 mi. east of Tampa, and the two infantry units, although placed closest to each other, still physically separated by white units. The Hendry and Knight map did not show the Port Tampa or Lakeland camps. The location of the 25th Infantry camp had been largely obliter- ated by the construction of Interstate 275, itself

a major and largely unrecognized force in the city’s modern history. That left, for the purposes of the limited funded survey, the campsite of the 24th Infantry, also partially destroyed by interstate construction, but with, it was hoped, its western half disturbed only by residential development and still reasonably intact. A por- tion of this area fronting Elmore Street was vacant lots and, with landowner permission, could be accessible. Adding to the project’s good fortune was the discovery of an article in the

BRent R. Weisman—Florida archaeology Confronts the Recent Past 25

FiGURe 3. Camp of the 24th infantry, tampa Heights, June 1898. (Photo courtesy of the tampa Bay History Center.)

Illinois Record (1898:1) (its out-of-state location back-corner camp. It was hoped at first to locate undoubtedly contributing to the article’s positive diagnostic military artifacts like buttons or equip- spin) headlined “Colored Soldiers in Tampa,” ment through use of a metal detector, naively subtitled “They Are Quick, Energetic, Painstak- it turned out (upon posthole testing), as modern ing and Thorough” and focusing on the 24th metals blanketed the lots just below the surface. Infantry. The article showed keen observation of Without metal-detector hits to guide testing, the detail of great archaeological interest, noting, for team simply established a grid across the six lots example, that

for which permission had been granted (each lot measuring about 60 ft. wide by 194 ft. deep), then

[t]he streets are kept perfectly free from rubbish, and

dug 158 shovel tests (all but 7 yielding artifacts)

from a sanitary point of view no camp could be better

at 10 m intervals. Plenty of artifacts were found,

conducted. At the mess kitchens and cook house gar- bage is not thrown out promiscuously as it is in the

collected in 275 different proveniences, almost all

Cuban camps, for instance, but is cast into pits dug

of them, it turned out, relating to the residential

for the purpose, and when these are partially filled the

development of the block that soon followed on

sand is thrown in and the garbage buried.

the heels of the buffalo soldiers. A porcelain doll’s ear, a marble, a jack, hairpins, plastic beads, a

Statements like these build archaeological models comb, perfume bottles, coins (dating from 1930 and kindle the archaeologists’ hopes of find- to 1970), and, from what was most likely a trash ing unintentional time capsules sealed tight in dump or incinerator site against the back alley, archaeological features.

large amounts of broken dishes and ceramics, glass bottles, utensils, an iron skillet, enamel pot,

Findings

and a broken clock, all of which gave evidence of early suburban life in Tampa. Butchered animal

To the field the team went, armed with mea- bone and other faunal remains were also recovered suring tapes, posthole diggers, shovels, screens, in distributions suggesting kitchen-door deposition and metal detectors, and attracting, almost imme- or backyard disposal. But where were the buffalo diately, the earnest interest of the local press soldiers? At best, their activities were evidenced (Hawes 1997) and the begrudging attention of by no more than 16 artifacts spread across all the homeless occupants of an underbrush-shrouded six lots, none of them absolutely and specifically

26 HistORiCaL aRCHaeOLOGY 45(2)

diagnostic of a soldier, but most probably dating an unlikely place, namely the congregation of a to the 19th century. These artifacts included a church on the block adjacent to the survey area. “REAL WOODSTOCK” kaolin pipe stem, lead This traditionally black church had recently opened shot and sprue, an “F” (for Federal) .22-caliber its doors to a displaced white congregation and short rim-fire shell casing, three other shell cas- was attracted to a ready-made local historical ings, a brass button or badge with an 1894 patent example of blacks and whites working together date, and several brass rivets and eyelets, conceiv- for a common purpose, as they saw the black ably part of a tent. These paltry results would and white regiments doing in the Spanish- seem to spell doom for the success of the project, American War. To further the cause, one of the but, unexpectedly and fortunately, this turned out congregants, who also served on the Hillsborough to be far from the case.

County Historical Advisory Council, convinced the group to support the installation of a state

Heritage Making and Commemoration

historic marker on the corner of the survey block and across the street from the church.

While doing the fieldwork the team was also On 5 December 1998, this marker entitled “The presenting public-education programs on the Buffalo Soldiers in Tampa Heights 1898” was buffalo soldiers and developed a portable exhibit unveiled in a dedication ceremony featuring a that made its appearance in several highly attended 21-gun salute from a combined group of Rough public venues associated with the Spanish- Rider and buffalo soldier reenactors, a invocation American War centennial. These activities plus by the church’s minister, and speeches by local the newspaper visibility brought supporters from politicians and community activists (Figure 4).

FiGURe 4. Buffalo soldier historical marker, tampa Heights. the survey area is within the tree line in the background. (Photo by author, 2009.)

BRent R. Weisman—Florida archaeology Confronts the Recent Past 27

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only historical marker in existence offering public interpretation of the role of the buffalo soldiers in the Spanish-American War and is quite probably the only marker commemorating their activities east of the Mississippi River. As another measure of benefit, although the project cannot take entire credit, the buffalo soldiers have been included more frequently, even if still only slightly, in new local-history exhibits and public-education venues opening in the 10 years since the marker dedication. All of this started with a simple, small-scale archaeological survey. The message is clear: the act of archaeology itself, no matter how inconsequential the result, can bestow legitimacy and credibility to the process of heritage making in the modern world (Trouillot 1995) and can thus serve both political and social interests that might be quite distinct from those of the archaeologist. Public archaeology of the recent past can have unintended consequences, largely positive it is hoped, but not always or necessarily within archaeological control. The team also learned from working on Elmore Street that suburban life can imprint its own signature on the archaeological record and is a prime candidate for middle-range modeling.

Central Avenue: History Lost and Found

Few undertakings have had more profound effect on the physical and social fabric of modern Tampa than the construction and subse- quent widening of interstate highways through the core of its historic neighborhoods (Gedalius 2006) and the destruction and displacement resulting from urban renewal, often targeting those very same communities. Beginning with the construction of I-4 in 1963 and continuing to the present day with the massive widening of I-4 and I-275 (in some places to 10 lanes), several of Tampa’s oldest neighborhoods were literally cut in half (Gedalius 2006), with people and busi- nesses forced to flee, and those who did not or could not were forced to define a new network of connections in their new enclaves of exis- tence. These devastated communities made easy targets for ongoing federal- and city-funded urban renewal and its hope of promoting new kinds of neighborhoods that would thrive at the ends of interstate exits. The combined effects of these large-scale impacts are nowhere better evidenced

than in the Central Avenue district of Tampa, now flattened and largely submerged beneath the gargantuan cement cloverleaf linking I-4 and I-275 (known locally as “Malfunction Junction”). In its heyday during the 1940s when known as Tampa’s “Harlem of the South,” Central Avenue was the thriving center of black businesses and social life (Baber 1998; Greenbaum 1998). By the early 1970s much of this once-vibrant com- munity lay in ruins and then was gone, reduced by bulldozers and wrecking balls to piles of rubble, twisted steel, and broken glass (Mohl- man 1995:160), then cleaned up, paved over, or planted with grass.

With the physical disappearance of Central Avenue’s core came the near-complete erasure of its cultural significance from the public memory. In the 1990s came an effort by University of South Florida anthropologists to preserve the legacy of Central Avenue, to “resurrect this ghostly landscape, to make it part of the public heritage of Tampa, and to underscore its impor- tance in the ongoing discourse about race rela- tions and the historical contributions of African Americans” (Greenbaum 1998:2). Their methods relied on oral histories and archival research. Could archaeology contribute to this cause? This would have to wait until 2003 when the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) awarded funding to answer that very question. FDOT’s internal review of their cultural resource manage- ment efforts called into question practices and policies regarding historic sites and urban archae- ology. How could it be, they wondered, that despite appropriating large sums of money for compliance archaeology in urban settings, they had yet to net a single significant site or contrib- ute in any substantive way to advancing either public or scholarly knowledge of the archaeol- ogy of contemporary urban societies? The team agreed to develop a research design for approach- ing urban archaeology in Florida, using Tampa as

a pilot study. The first stop was Central Avenue, that part of district archaeologically preserved (it was hoped) beneath the sod of Perry Harvey, Sr. Park, a small city recreational space in the front yard of the Central Park Village public housing complex (Figure 5). The park covered several blocks of what had been the core area of down- town Central Avenue. Along its eastern edge, the park also took in a portion of the area once known as the “Scrub” (Hawes 2004; Mormino

28 HistORiCaL aRCHaeOLOGY 45(2)

FiGURe 5. aerial view of Perry Harvey, sr. Park in 2002 (DigitalGlobe 2002). north is at the top of the photo. the entrance ramps for i-275 and i-4 are at the upper left, Central Park Village housing complex (demolished in 2008) borders the park to the right (east).

2006), a free-form neighborhood of working-class practices. Could archaeologists engage the local or poor blacks in the no-man’s-land separating residents in the quest for the early history of middle-class Central Avenue from Ybor City. For their neighborhood? What would the message the archaeologist, Perry Harvey, Sr. Park provided

be about the value of learning about this history the perfect setting—flat, open, unobstructed, the through archaeology? Answering these ques- lure of a “lost city” right beneath the feet, its tions became a major challenge to the project, deposits nicely bracketed in time and presenting despite going in with a community engagement

a range of historical contexts that have rarely plan. Allowing open access to work in progress been subject to systematic archaeological inves- brings a certain democracy to an enterprise, as tigation (Figure 6). If successful in producing people moving about in the course of their daily meaningful archaeological results, this pioneering routines, peering into open units, bring questions effort promised to put a truly urban archaeology and observations to the project that might go on the larger map of Florida archaeology, its unexpressed in more formal focus-group settings. stars and dots until now almost entirely indicat- At night team archaeologists often sat up devel- ing locations of prehistoric sites.

oping new flyers or posters in response to the Further, engaging in a visible, relatively large- questions of the day, often written to confront scale project right in peoples’ front yards made the skepticism expressed by local residents about the team’s presence both difficult to avoid and the value of what was being done. It became the perfect venue for public archaeology, the clear day by day that this community, like many very setting FDOT was interested in exploring modern communities, was composed of people as part of a new approach to their compliance who had different points of view and who chose

BRent R. Weisman—Florida archaeology Confronts the Recent Past 29

FiGURe 6. excavations underway in Unit 1, a presumed backyard location on Harrison avenue. Central avenue disappears beneath the park where the paved street ends, by the tree line, right foreground. the tampa skyline is in the background. (Photo by author, 2003.)

to engage with the outside world with varying investigating these questions in the ground. First, levels of interest. Some eyed the archaeological the team wanted to know if the earliest docu- team with suspicion, others altered their normal mented businesses of Central Avenue, dating to routes to avoid passing by. But, by turning that the 1880s and 1890s, were connected to local, first shovel load of dirt, the genie had been let state, regional, national, and international com- out of the bottle. Now something had to be mercial networks and markets. Beneath this found to validate the community history that the question was another: Did the early consumers team promised lay buried beneath the sod.

of Central Avenue have access to the same goods that were for sale to consumers in Tampa and

Archaeological Discovery

Ybor City? Did being a consumer on Central Avenue mean something different than being a

Study was focused on a one-block stretch of consumer elsewhere in Tampa? The most direct Central Avenue (most of it within Block 120) archaeological test would be to find glass bottles that throughout its history had a consistent mix associated with a well-documented 1890s saloon. of businesses and residential properties, and also

Next, the team wanted to know if the residents was contained largely within the open field of of Central Avenue were able to participate fully Perry Harvey Park (Figure 7). The team devel- in the local economy, the shops, businesses, and oped a set of four broad research questions services available right outside their front doors. relevant both to modern social urban processes Would the material record reflect their member- and to the specific history of Tampa, and then ship in the middle class? To answer this, it would described the archaeological requirements for

be necessary to find refuse deposits associated

30 HistORiCaL aRCHaeOLOGY 45(2)

with these households. Third, the team wanted to find out if economic or class distinctions within the African American community were evidenced in the archaeological record. Looking specifically for the remains of houses along the Gladstone Alley portion of the Scrub, it was hoped to find backyard midden deposits that would contain a wide range of artifacts, including animal bone and food refuse, enabling the reconstruction of the daily life of this community. Finally, the team wanted to see if the flow of capital and the history of capital improvements produced an archaeological signature that could be compared with capital investments elsewhere in Tampa. Of specific and compelling interest, given the eventual outcome that all of Block 120 was demolished in urban renewal, could this fate be predicted by the presence of archaeological indicators signal- ing economic decline? Archaeologically the team needed to look broadly at land use patterns and go

deep stratigraphically to find evidence of capital improvements in construction sequences.

To be successful, the archaeological team needed to find reasonably intact deposits in the right places and containing the right kinds of materials. It was decided not to leave this to chance, but to instead develop a targeted excava- tion plan. The questions had to fit the deposits. The team had a detailed knowledge of the San- born maps and a good understanding of how the maps correlated to the modern landscape. The team knew the kinds of deposits and contexts needed to answer the research questions and so had the elements of a predictive model. The team was fully aware that it would take the excavation of large units to meet the archaeological require- ments, but wanted to minimize the effort spent in needless excavation. Multiple trips were made to the project area, maps and historical photographs in hand, and repeated surface inspections were

FiGURe 7. the 1899 sanborn map showing Block 120 and the project area. north is at the top of the map. the saloon is located on the northwest corner of the intersection of Harrison and Central avenues (Block 112), the stable is on the south side of Harrison directly opposite, and Gladstone alley connects Harrison (on the south) to emery (on the north).

BRent R. Weisman—Florida archaeology Confronts the Recent Past 31

conducted in an attempt to identify locations and demonstrating archaeological integrity. This where surficial deposits might indicate the pres- is an important realization in Florida archaeol- ence of buried remains. Although helpful and ogy, where too often these deposits are written showing promise, surface collection alone was off and tossed aside as being disturbed, “only inadequate for further defining target areas, so fill,” redeposited, or simply lacking in value by

a grid of quickly completed posthole tests was virtue of being close to the surface. The stratig- used to provide an initial characterization of soil raphy of Perry Harvey Park starts with a white deposits, which, when added to the predictive sand indicative of scrub or pine flatwood vegeta- model, greatly increased confidence in success. tion, underlying the cultural deposits at a depth The archaeological team then moved forward to of 3 ft. or less. On top of this sand a number open six excavation units, specifically placed to of things happen across the site, with complex, yield the kinds of remains necessary to answer multi-intrusive layers or lenses present along its research questions. It was also important to Central Avenue itself (buried but evident) and open all units as simultaneously as possible to its strip of commercial buildings, and domestic allow for the development of a master strati- midden levels characterizing the deposits to the graphic profile and to test ideas about relation- east (behind the commercial strip), increasing in ships between deposits during excavation, rather depth closer to the Scrub, where several feet of than in a later analysis stage.

dark, artifact-rich soils come into contact with the Units 3 and 4, 3 × 10 ft. trenches, were exca- white sand subsoil. A distinct demolition layer vated in the hope of finding glass bottles or consisting of broken brick, twisted metal, broken bottle sherds associated with the saloon. Units glass, and concrete covers these occupational and

1 and 6, both 5 × 5 ft. in size, were intended commercial deposits across the site, thickest in to yield refuse deposits from the backyards of the commercial area where the most substantial Central Avenue residences. Unit 2, also 5 × 5 ft., construction existed, clearly resulting from urban was located in what was hoped to be a backyard renewal. On top of the demolition layer is a fill deposit for a Gladstone Alley “Scrub” dwelling. layer, also variably thick, consisting of largely Unit 5 was excavated to investigate the capital- debris-free sand and intended to provide a flat, investment/land-use question, and it was hoped level surface across the block, concealing the the unit would show a stratigraphic sequence remnant cultural remains from view. With the documenting the change in property use from addition of a thin sod layer, Perry Harvey Park an early livery to the later, locally prominent came into being, creating an active surface for establishment on Central Avenue known as the the accumulation of artifacts relating to recent Central Hotel or Pyramid Hotel.

uses of the space by nearby residents of the Artifact analysis has been slow and frustrat- Central Park Village public housing complex ing, and handled mostly as a series of student (razed in 2008 and slated to be covered over, research projects (Logan-Hudson 2004; O’Brien adding yet another stratigraphic episode for 2004). The academic products of this project will archaeological study). As the team looks toward

be slow in coming. The public results, however, building a master stratigraphic profile for the city have been more immediate. Selected artifacts of Tampa, Central Avenue shows that attention have traveled back to the community in heritage must be paid to both demolition and fill layers events as ambassadors of a tangible past and, it as cultural deposits, reflecting the dramatic local is hoped, will eventually find a permanent home effects of powerful extra-local forces whose seat there in a community museum. Glass soft-drink of authority and control is far removed from the bottles, ironstone china, glass marbles, bone and community. Demolition and fill are fundamental porcelain buttons, and a uniform button from urban processes and represent a fundamental the Plant Steamship Line all have served as truth about the realities of power in city politics memory prompts for stories once told and lives (Byles 2005:202–221). As made physically evi- once lived.

dent in the archaeological record, any local story Beyond artifacts, Central Avenue excavations of demolition and fill should be one of the main reinforce the awareness that the archaeology of narratives of urban public archaeology. the recent past has stratigraphic reality, that is,

Despite encouraging results overall and proof deposits ordered in an understandable sequence beyond doubt that an area previously thought

32 HistORiCaL aRCHaeOLOGY 45(2)

to be of no promise does in fact contain interpretable archaeological remains, the team came up short in successfully answering all of its research questions. As expected, questions that rely on the recovery and analysis of glass bottles or bottle glass have a good chance of being answered. Historical archaeologists recognized long ago the value of bottle glass for studying consumer behaviors (Baugher-Perlin 1982; Spencer-Wood 1987; Bond 1989). For the period after the mid-19th century, when rampant consumerism swept the world, and through the preplastic 20th century, the myriad attributes of bottle glass have proven useful in recognizing distribution and supply chains and market penetration into new population sectors. The studies of the Central Avenue glass, although far from complete, are focusing on analyzing the assemblage by functional category, location of manufacture (local, regional, East Coast, national), date ranges, and breakage and disposal patterns. The primary sample consists of 33 intact bottles and nearly 1,000 diagnostic shards, although these represent only a small percentage of total glass recovered. Glass bottles and containers are present in the earliest documented historical contexts (1890s) through the terminal deposits of the 1960s, with one major buried bottle-dump feature dating probably to the 1940s. African Americans of the Central Avenue community participated as consumers within the larger consumer-based economy, consumed

a range of products that were widely available and reflect regional and national trends, and appear through the lens of archaeology not to

be materially distinct in any dramatic way from society at large. This conclusion reinforces the more general interpretation of African American consumer behaviors in urban settings (Little and Kassner 2001). From the deep, dark midden in the Gladstone Alley backyard in the Scrub came pig, chicken, and fish bone, buttons, glass, and ceramics showing a way of life, either by choice or lack of it, still partly based on self-sufficiency.

The archaeological team was less successful in investigating the social and economic processes of community rise and fall. Six units, no matter how well placed, are not enough to answer complicated questions in a complex urban envi- ronment. It was evident, for example, that the broader interactions between the demolition, fill, and construction deposits relating to the transition

from livery stable to hotel covered far more ground than the small area intersected by the excavation unit, and the view from the team’s little window was too small to see the depo- sitional consequences of intensifying land use. It is possible, however, to reconstruct the land- scape history of this plot of urban Tampa and link it stratigraphically to the histories unfolding in other neighborhoods, and in so doing watch the city as an entity grow in centralized power and authority. As a city brings legitimacy to its power through public works, archaeologists can chart this process by uncovering the extensions of water and sewer lines, for example, viewing them as the fossilized tentacles of control. In the Harrison Street backyard next to the bottle dump, and at about the same depth, was a sewer line (Figure 8) servicing the indoor plumbing of that residence as early as 1903 (Sanborn 1903), but in the nearby Scrub the lack of plumbing was still being decried as a public health risk into the 1930s (Mays et al. 1927).

Sulphur Springs Water Tower: Landmarks, Landscapes, and Community Identity

The Sulphur Springs Water Tower (8HI609B) is one of Tampa’s most visible historic land- marks (Morgan 2002), rising 214 ft. above the Hillsborough River to greet southbound motorists entering Tampa on I-275. Designed to be the water source for the 1927 resort and commer- cial development of Sulphur Springs and sunk

45 ft. into bedrock over one of the springs, its gothic style and crenellated parapet (Figure 9) long ago stamped its image on local myth and folklore, even as the short-lived resort failed to survive a major flood in 1933 and the downturn of the economy in the Great Depression. Today, for an economically challenged community on the margins of the city (Brown 2004), the tower symbolizes a time of former grandeur, when Sulphur Springs was a destination, at the center of prosperity rather than its edge, and therefore became a rallying point for community preser- vation efforts. These grassroot efforts built on the National Register status of the structure and resulted in the official designation of the tower as a city landmark (City of Tampa 1989:11), protecting it from destruction or inappropriate modification. The city purchased the tower and surrounding acreage for $2.85 million and is

BRent R. Weisman—Florida archaeology Confronts the Recent Past 33

FiGURe 8. Glass bottles, broken plates, and other refuse found in the pit feature in Unit 1, the Harrison avenue backyard between Central avenue and Gladstone alley, view to the north. note the sewer pipe in lower left section of the unit. (Photo by author, 2003.)

developing it as an urban riverfront park and demonstrating to FDOT the value of community- botanical garden.