Photographs for Boston College Magazine by Gary Wayne Gilbert.
斯托克斯大厅(Stokes Hall)历史系秋季学期举办的一个由学生策划的展览展示了19世纪和20世纪初波士顿穷人的日常生活. 每次展览的起点都是一件文物，由考古学家从城市后院厕所的遗址中挖掘出来，并送到波士顿市考古实验室. 这个节目是由13名学生创作的，他们去年春天上了历史学家罗宾·弗莱明(Robin Fleming)的课程“让历史公开:厕所里的历史”.” The class paid its first visit to the lab, 位于西罗克斯伯里查尔斯河的一个拐弯处，距离校园以南5英里, on the snowy afternoon of January 31.
在实验室的一个房间里，放着去年在南波士顿海港的泥浆中发现的一艘19世纪石灰纵帆船的完整横梁. Other rooms—humble approximations of the final set for Raiders of the Lost Ark—contained shelf after shelf of cardboard boxes. 他们收藏了在大挖掘(1991-2007)和其他建筑工地发现的文物，数量之多超出了实验室的处理能力. “I don’t even know what is in most of these boxes,” Joe Bagley, City Archaeologist since 2011, told the students. “It’s like having a library of books without the covers.”
巴格利带学生们参观了一系列房间，在这些房间里，几十个透明的袋子在荧光灯下摊开在木桌上. Each bag held one or more artifacts, 刷干净，贴上数字和字母的标签，标明里面的东西是在哪里发现的. And each room represented a single site, 里面有幸存下来的各种各样的碎屑:纽扣, dolls’ arms, animal bones, egg cups, a jar of French pomade (the Piver brand, “synonymous with . . . refined, original fragrances” since 1774). All had one thing in common: They came out of a privy.
一个19世纪中期的茶碗，出土于Unity Court 2号的厕所.
Before the rise of indoor plumbing in the early 20th century, outhouses were a fixture in old Boston neighborhoods. And without regular municipal trash collection, they often became the terminal repository for all kinds of junk. Outhouses make for “an unbelievably good time capsule,巴格利对挤在玻璃陈列柜和桌子中间的学生们说.
It would be the students’ assignment, over the course of the semester, 为了获得关于波士顿早期居民生活的直接知识，太阳城官网垃圾碎片. 巴格利告诉他们:“文物不应该只是与你已经拥有的故事相吻合的东西。. “Hopefully it raises questions about what the written record says.”
Encouraged to take objects out of the bags, the students passed around some bizarre finds—among them, remnants of a chamber pot depicting Benjamin Franklin’s tomb, 和一个邦克山纪念碑形状的古龙水瓶子(1843年奉献). However, it was the more pedestrian cups and plates, flower pots, and toys that promised a fuller picture of past times, said Fleming. In such items, “You can see the lives of poor people and women and children,” lives that “don’t always show up in official texts.”
2013年，弗莱明因对4世纪和5世纪英国考古发现的分析获得了麦克阿瑟奖学金, 随着罗马统治的崩溃和中世纪的开始，物质文化发生了巨大变化. Her techniques and concepts translate as well to 19th-century Boston. “我想给学生一个机会，让他们思考，如果他们所有的东西都是自己的，如何写一个民族的历史,” Fleming said. Since items dropped into outhouses remain relatively undisturbed, 它们提供了一个机会来观察财产是如何随时间变化的. Dating each layer in an excavation, with an old coin, say, or a type of pottery that was only produced in the 1840s, 考古学家可以拼凑出一个物质品味、舒适度和获取物品的时间轴, along with trajectories of economic mobility.
The head of a ceramic doll, also from 2 Unity Court.
For the course, 弗莱明和她的学生们专注于北区的两个地点:一个是2 Unity Court, behind Old North Church. The main building “no longer stands,” said Fleming, 但我们从19世纪30年代的一份报纸广告中得知，这是一栋三层砖砌排屋，每层有两个房间, as well as a cellar and an attic.” The first owners were well-to-do. By around 1860, the occupants were middle class, “but barely.另一间私室属于一所寄宿公寓，在19世纪70年代到90年代期间，这里是这座城市新来的穷人的家. “By that time, 整个北端变成了主要是爱尔兰移民居住的贫民窟,” said Fleming.
After that first trip to the archaeology lab, 学生们每人选择一个对象，从中开始他们对小学和中学历史读物的太阳城官网, 越来越广泛地撒网，包括相关的工件, 目的是讲述居民生活的一个特定方面. 在许多情况下，这些物品使这一时期的传统叙述复杂化. One student looking at toys, for example, 他们发现，穷人家的孩子和他们富裕的邻居一样，享受着许多同样的消遣——男孩玩玩具枪和弹珠，女孩玩洋娃娃. “我们告诉自己，那些在工厂里被工作致死的贫穷移民儿童, but they had their own little lives with joy and play,” said Fleming. Similarly, 穷人和中产阶级的私立学校都产自巴哈马的贝壳和珊瑚, 由于家庭装饰的流行，下层阶级和富裕阶层一样流行.
麦迪·韦伯斯特在波士顿的统一法庭的材料中进行筛选，那里有来自39次发掘的100多万件文物.
“Looking at these objects you see every aspect of people’s lives,” said Andrea Wisniewski ’18, who focused on a fragment of an ink bottle, putting it together with writing slates, pencils, 以及其他对象来推断19世纪40年代和50年代的教育信息. The process of material research, she said, 使19世纪的人们不仅仅是人口普查记录中的脚注. The objects make them . . . real.”
Bridget Halstead ’17 focused on dishware, 发现Unity Court的一个中产阶级家庭保存着不匹配的棕色盘子，而不是维多利亚时期流行的白色瓷器, perhaps due to Yankee parsimony, or perhaps because they did little entertaining, with the neighborhood in decline. 霍尔斯特德说:“我还上过其他关于政治趋势的历史课. 这项“小规模”的太阳城官网让她看到，“趋势并不总是被接受，人们可能并不总是遵循它们。.”
学生们将不能把实物在斯托克斯大厅展出. Those will have to remain in the archaeology lab. 但他们太阳城官网的精髓将通过海报和照片的方式提炼出来, 以及可以由观看者操纵的显示3D表示的屏幕.
弗莱明希望她的学生把他们对物质文化的直接性的兴趣带到未来的历史工作中. “If their next class is on the Vietnam War, I want them to say, ‘I’d really like to see the soldiers’ mess’,” she said. “有一个巨大的物质世界，比文本世界大得多, and I hope they will remember to draw from it.”
Michael Blanding is a writer in the Boston area. “厕所里的历史”是历史系“让历史公开”系列课程的第八门课程, a collaboration with University Libraries in which students plan, curate, and design an exhibition drawing on archival materials. Past courses include “The European Mapping Tradition from 1600–1860,” “Revealing America’s History Through Comics,” and “Righting Historical Wrongs at the Turn of the Millennium.”