A front view of the Sprigg house (looking west) prior to the National Park Services 1997 restoration of the dwelling.

Sprigg House Move

Uncovering the upper brick pavement and the mouth of the brick-lined cistern.

This photograph was taken after shovel scraping through the lower midden and defining the subsurface features at that level.

Sprigg House Excavation

Test 7 Stratigraphy

Staffordshire Dog

Ceramics and glass were the primary artifacts from Feature 52. This is a domestic assemblage dating from the early 1890s through circa 1900.

View of the restored Sprigg house, as it sits on its original locaction (December 2004).

View of the Sprigg house as it was moved off its early twentieth century foundations, and prior to the completion of the subfloor basement archaeological investigations. Present in the photograph are National Park Service staff members Linda Suits, Timothy Townsend, and Fran Krupka.

The rear yard of the Sprigg House was excavated during the summer of 2003. This image was taken during the initial backhoe excavations of the rear yard at the Sprigg House.

Profile and photographic details illustrating the complex stratigraphy located immediately behind the existing Sprigg house (in that area of Test 7 located beneath the house's porch). The dark soil at the base of the photograph is the original ground surface, which is capped by 30cm of combination topsoil and subsoil fills and a brick pavement--which is in turn capped with post 1930s fill. It is suspected that the lower pavement dates from the original house construction and persists through circa 1875. The upper brick pavement may have been constructed sometime after circa 1875 and persisted through the circa 1922 remodeling.

The handpainted Staffordshire dog was recovered from an early midden located within the rear yard of the Sprigg Site during the 2003 investigations. Although such items often functioned as a child's toy, they also were used as decorative knick-knacks or "mantel art" by adults during the early to middle nineteenth century.