NORTHAMPTON — As archaeologist Gregory Walwer sifts through a pile of dirt and mud, something glints and catches his eye. He squints and bends his head closer to the minuscule object. It could be only a shiny rock, but it could be a small piece of Northampton’s history.
With curiosity and determination, Walwer shakes the large screen holding the pile of dirt, and more of the dusty earth falls through the screen’s cracks, leaving and revealing a single fish scale.
“Ah, fish,” Walwer said. “I love to eat fish. I think people loved to eat fish here, too.”
Things like the fish scale, which may seem insignificant to some, give archaeologists like Walwer insight into the lives and customs of 18th- and 19th-century New Englanders. Walwer, of Guilford, Connecticut, is one of two archaeologists hired by Historic Northampton to excavate a mysterious structure found last year behind the Parsons House at 58 Bridge St.
Walwer and fellow archaeologist Craig Chartier, of New Bedford, have been digging at the property — built in 1719 — since last Monday. Quickly, they discovered that the structure is a well built in the early 19th century.
The archaeologists are unsure exactly how the residents of the Parsons House used the well while it was operational, but mentioned the possibility that it was used to do laundry in addition to serving as the house’s general water supply.
However, there are things they are certain about: In 1870, the city of Northampton built a public water line, and the well became obsolete. The owners and residents of the Parsons House then used the well as a garbage pit, throwing all sorts of items into the former waterhole.
“Sometime after 1870, they began throwing garbage into the well. Then, they filled it with dirt and covered it up,” Walwer said. “We’re not sure exactly when it was filled and covered, but we’ve found a bottle cap that we know was first produced in 1892, so that’s the earliest year it could have happened.”
The archaeologists have been digging in three areas in and around the archaic structure. The first area is down the center of the well, the enclosure surrounded by the well’s brick walls. The second area is the area immediately surrounding the well’s walls — the builder’s trench, they call it — and the third area is the earth and natural soil around the builder’s trench.
Generally, digging in each of these three areas reveals items left after the well’s construction, during the well’s construction and before the well’s construction, respectively.
“We can learn all kinds of things from these items. We try and learn from these projects things like what type of ceramics or materials did they use, the type of things that don’t show up in someone’s diary,” Chartier said. “The artifacts we find allow us to reconstruct the history of the time and place.”
The artifacts that Walwer and Chartier have found have already given them lots of information about the house and those who lived there. For example, the family ate plenty of chicken, fish and pork, but not much beef, as evidenced by animal bones thrown as “garbage” into the well. They used blue and white china, and were probably comfortable financially.
“What’s junk to them tells us, years later, how they were living,” Laurie Sanders, the co-executive director of Historic Northampton, said.
Together, Walwer and Chartier have unearthed thousands of artifacts and historical relics.
“We’ve found clay marbles, pipe stems, a silver pin, utensils and bone-handled knives, an Indian head penny and animal bones,” Walwer said. “I haven’t found a clay marble for more than 10 years.”
According to Walwer and Chartier, there is a wealth of historical information about Northampton and the Parsons House. There is very little information, though, about the Native American occupation of the land before the arrival of European settlers. While they haven’t found much in that regard, the archaeologists have found a “shard” from arrowhead manufacturing.
Walwer said arrowheads were made manually by grinding and shaping with a rock tool. For archaeologists, the shards that come off an arrowhead are much more commonly found than the actual arrowhead, but still tell useful information like what rocks were used to make the arrows in a given area.
Each item that Walwer or Chartier finds — or that the public found during Thursday’s “volunteer day” at the site — is carefully cleaned, categorized and stowed in plastic bags. The items are then transported to Walwer’s Connecticut lab, where they are washed and identified, before pictures and information on each item are cataloged on a computer.
Some items, Walwer says, require lab testing to identify. Most of them, however, Walwer or his colleague can identify.
“We ID the items using mostly experience and guidebooks. At the lab we do some comparative analysis between the artifacts we find here and previous ones from other sites,” Walwer said.
“People have done a lot of research on old collections and artifacts, so there is a ton of information out there that we as archaeologists steal from,” Chartier said.
The archaeological dig was only the third in the past 30 years at the Parsons House, which was built by Nathaniel Parsons, grandson of Joseph Parsons, a founder of the city of Northampton. In 2015 — during the last Parsons House excavation — archaeologists found items from the 18th and 19th century under the house’s floorboards.
In 2016, Historic Northampton decided to demolish a mudroom attached to the back of the Parsons House. The room was in bad condition, had been scoured for artifacts and was of little use to historians and archaeologists.
“When we removed the mudroom, lo and behold there was a large stone slab on the ground,” Sanders said.
The removing of the stone slab revealed the tip of an underground structure. That’s when Sanders and fellow co-executive director Betty Sharp decided to hire archaeologists. With money from donations, Sanders and Sharp found and hired Walwer and Chartier, who have worked together around New England. The project is costing Historic Northampton $7,400.
Walwer and Chartier presented their findings from the week’s dig Sunday afternoon at Historic Northampton.
“Because this is one of the oldest houses in the area, there is always the possibility of finding something fascinating,” Sanders said.
Editor’s note: This story was changed on Sept. 25 to correct the spelling of the first name of Historic Northampton’s co-executive director, Betty Sharp.