Month: November 2025

During our recent excavation we uncovered large, curved pieces of cast iron. 

They were likely fragments of a cooking pot or cauldron discarded from the kitchen’s dump site and once a fixture of 19th-century campus life. We found the cast-iron pieces in a deposit, intermixed with animal bone, ceramic fragments, glass, and other debris, typical of a 19th-century dump associated with institutional dining. Its placement outside the dining hall foundation fits the pattern seen across comparable sites, where refuse from kitchens was disposed of in designated midden areas.

By the 1800s, cast iron cookware had become a staple of both domestic and institutional kitchens. Following the innovations of Abraham Darby in the early 18th century, iron goods became increasingly affordable and widely available. Cauldrons and Dutch ovens were valued for their durability and versatility; they could be suspended above a hearth, set directly into coals, or later, placed atop the flat surfaces of cast-iron stoves that began appearing in American homes and institutions by the mid-19th century.

In settings like Kenyon, a cauldron such as this would have been indispensable. Large iron pots often served multiple functions in institutional contexts where labor, time, and equipment were shared among many.

As described in period accounts and preserved examples from museums like the Job Carr Cabin Museum, cast iron cookware of this era could easily last a lifetime, passed down or repurposed until the metal itself gave out. Its longevity, combined with its ability to withstand repeated heating and cooling, made it a cornerstone of 19th-century kitchens across North America. Though the 19th-century cauldron served a utilitarian role, its form echoes a lineage stretching back thousands of years. 

Archaeologists studying Iron Age and Roman cauldrons in Britain and Ireland have noted their dual role as both functional cooking vessels and powerful social symbols. In those contexts, cauldrons were often associated with communal feasting and social hierarchy. 

While our 19th-century example lacks the ritual associations of its ancient predecessors, it occupies a similar social space. In the dining hall of a college campus, the cauldron may have been the centerpiece of shared meals, its contents served to students and faculty alike. 

The layer where the possible cauldron was found expands on what we can learn. Alongside the vessel were fragments of ceramic ware and glass bottles. Together, these materials paint a picture of a bustling kitchen and dining space. The decision to discard the cauldron may have been practical; it could have cracked, warped, or simply been replaced by newer, more efficient cooking equipment as technology advanced.

 By the late 19th century, the rise of enclosed stoves and industrial kitchen ranges had largely displaced the old open-hearth cauldron. Yet the recovery of this one, buried just beyond the dining hall, allows us to glimpse that moment of transition. As we continue excavations at the former dining hall site, this discovery invites reflection on how shared spaces of eating and gathering shape the rhythms of community life.

Works Referenced

Liebeknecht, W., Burrow, I., Harshbarger, P., & Haley, A. (2014). Farmer’s Delight: An 18th-century plantation in southern Delaware. Phase III archaeological data recovery, the Cedar Creek Road Site (7S-C-100), Cedar Creek Hundred, Sussex County, Delaware. Hunter Research, Inc., prepared for the Delaware Department of Transportation.

Joy, J. (2014). “Fire burn and cauldron bubble”: Iron Age and early Roman cauldrons of Britain and Ireland. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 80, 327–362. https://doi.org/10.1017/ppr.2014.7

Teddy, M. (with contributions by B. Beltran, & edited by H. Stewart). (n.d.). Log Cabin Living: Cast iron cookware. Job Carr Cabin Museum. Retrieved from https://www.jobcarrmuseum.org/blog/log-cabin-living-cast-iron-cookware

Throughout our excavation of fall 2025, our class has turned up numerous examples of pottery. This specific post both sheds light on one of the larger, more intact pieces of pottery that our class has so far recovered, and serves as an example of the overall process in excavating, cleaning, and researching the pottery we have found.

The image above shows the initial uncovering of the pot sherd in my group’s unit. Initial extraction proved quite challenging as much of the enamel (the glossy surface of the plate with patterns) was flaking off due to long exposure to moisture in the soil. The varying pieces of the plate sherd and pieces of enamel were quickly placed into a cloth bag to avoid further damage and properly label the provenience of the find.

Our next steps were to clean and glue back together the portion of the plate we found. We used paraloid to glue our artifacts, it is an adhesive commonly used in artifact conservation. Careful cleaning and the gluing of enamel that had flaked off revealed a pattern resembling flowers and a pagoda.

The broad name for the specific pottery to which this article pertains is known as transferware, meaning that the designs on the vessel have been stamped on, much like a printing press. An initial inspection of this transferware plate led to the conclusion that it was likely used by someone of what we would now consider upper middle class. While the plate is not porcelain, it would have been considered superior to more plainly decorated earthenware. As a side note, the image above also depicts other pieces of the same plate found in our unit.

With the plate sherd restored and initial observations recorded, the next step undertaken consisted of a web search in which we attempted to identify what the fully intact plate looked like, who it was made by, and when it was made. Luckily we were able to find a complete example, and were even more fortunate that it had a clear maker’s mark.

We learned that this plate, with a pattern known as Jeddo, was likely manufactured sometime between 1819-1864 by a company known as W. Adams & Sons, and would likely have been sold as a set. Such a plate could have been used as part of the dining hall’s ware, or perhaps more likely the individual property of a faculty member or student. While some aspects are left to speculation, this pot sherd and others like it at our site provide a meaningful window into what life was like in Kenyon’s early years. 

A day of excavation starts in the basement of Oden. That’s where we keep all of our equipment: our trowels, our pickaxes that we don’t have to use anymore, and our gloves. It’s also where we get our forms, where we write down all the stuff we have to document about the site and what we’re doing there, and our journals, which are like our forms, but a bit more personal.

We carry it in buckets and a wagon to our site in front of the church, where what’s left of the cabin Philander Chase and others used to live in two hundred years ago is buried underground, according to a drawing, some GPR, and finally having dug down to see it. We settle down around our units with our partners, sitting on our knee pads, and get to work.

Our trowels seem to have been sturdy enough to get through the soil lately, which is nice. Because of the rain, the dirt has been browner, wetter, and softer, instead of the tan concrete-like soil we scraped at earlier in the year. We also don’t need to put up the shade tents anymore, since the sun hasn’t been out as much.

We carve at the dirt, removing a layer at a time, trying to keep the unit as level as possible. It’s harder for our group because our unit is rocky. Really rocky. It’s annoying, and we usually just dig up the rocks if they’re small enough, where, usually, you’re supposed to dig around them until they’re completely unearthed. We do stop to document large rocks as they might be a layer of rubble from when the building was demolished.

Another difference between our plot and the others’ is the distribution of our findings over time. We started the year off with some interesting artifacts in our plot, like a pig tooth, or a piece of pipe with a letter on it. Recently, there haven’t really been any interesting finds in our unit, in contrast to some of the other groups. From our vantage point on the ground, I’ve heard that the other groups have found some interesting stuff recently, like a bone or a piece of pottery.

Most of the stuff that’s not dirt that we’ve found is a bunch of slate, some nails, the occasional streak of red brick, and bugs that are somehow always alive. At the beginning of the semester I wondered how they got down there, but after the rain, it was obvious how they did it. I guess we’re kind of like little bugs, digging into the ground to get to… something? Maybe we’re different than bugs. Or maybe they don’t know what they’re digging for either, and something’s just telling them what to do.

After we’ve found whatever we’ve found and we sieve through all the dirt we’ve dug up, we get our unit ready for a picture with the whiteboard and the north arrow. Then, we put all our stuff back in our buckets, and we carry it back to the basement of Oden.

Later, we’ll get everything washed and see what we’ve found.