Industrializing Cities

Manchester 1843: archetype industrial city

The Growth of Urban Britain
In 1801, London was the only city in the British Isles to have more than
100,000 residents.

By 1911, there were 36 such cities

In 1851 city dwellers comprised 54 percent of the total population

By 1911 this had increased to 79 percent

This transition reflects dual influences on the population the push

caused by growing rural poverty and the pull of new urban
opportunities
Salford by L S Lowry
Megacities (10 million+ inhabitants) 2015
Overcrowding in urban structures
revealed by Census returns from
1801

Not unusual to have 6-12

members of a family living and
sleeping in the same room
 Poverty and Squalor

Blue Gate Fields, 1872. From London: A Pilgrimage by Blanchard Jerrold

and Gustave Dor.
 Urban archaeologies
Lots of urban archaeology in Britain, from late 1940s, but tended to
remove modern overburden to reveal medieval or Roman remains

The Temple of Mithras, Walbrook is a Roman

temple whose ruins were discovered in
Walbrook, a street in the City of London, during
rebuilding work in 1954
USA Urban archaeology took off in 1980s
Roy Dickens (ed) (1982) Archaeology of Urban America
Academic Press

Industrialization, bottle consumption, settlement patterns,

Public interpretation

Edward Staski (ed) 1987 Living in Cities: Current Research in Urban

Archaeology . SHA Special Publication

New York, Sacramento, Phoenix, Boston, sites explored from

colonial period to early 20th century
 US urban archaeologies
- confronted social and spatial complexity

- appreciated plurality and rapid change in urban life

- analyzed large and complex assemblages from 19th and 20th century sites
 New York : Five Points

Five Points in 1827 as depicted in Valentine's Manual, 1855

 New York : Five Points

By the 1820s the expanding work force in Manhattan had created a severe
housing shortage. The city began to expand northward with landowners
subdividing their houses into rental units
Describing a visit in 1842, Charles Dickens wrote:

"This is the place: these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and
reeking every where with dirt and filth. ...The coarse and bloated faces at the
doors have counterparts at home and all the wide world over. Debauchery has
made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are
tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl
dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of these pigs live
here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on
all-fours? and why they talk instead of grunting?"
 New York : Five Points

Foley Square Courthouse, erected over part of the old Five Points by the U.S. General
Services Administration
 Rebecca Yamin (left)
of John Milner Associates

Through the study of the artefacts recovered in 1991, the daily lives of the
people who lived at Five Points became visible.
A team of 17 archaeologists, conservators, and historians analyzed the
850,000 artefacts recovered from the Foley Square courthouse block.
A rich story has emerged centred on the working-class residents of Five
Points, the neighbourhood's reputation as New York's most notorious slum,
and its overcrowded tenement neighbourhood teeming with newly arrived
immigrants
Overview of 1991 archaeological
excavation showing foundations and
features on lots 6 and 7 - 472 and 474
Pearl Street

Backyard features (abandoned privy

shafts, cisterns, wells) are often the
focus of urban archaeology.

A wealth of information can be

derived from people's rubbish
information about their private
lives, their personal choices, and
even their political allegiances.
 Feature O

By mid-century Irish and German immigrants crowded into the tenements and
apartments along Pearl and Baxter Streets.

Feature O, a stone-lined privy, contained trash belonging to the Irish tenants

at 474 Pearl Street
Five Points New York

Father Matthew Temperance Cup

Matching White Granite tea set,
made in England, 1840-1860

Transfer-printed ceramics
Staffordshire patterns, 1830-1867
 Yellow ware mug; transfer-
printed child's cup from the
Games and Pastimes
series, England, c. 1820;
Luster ware creamer;
Yellow ware mug

"Old blue" pitcher with Lafayette contemplating

the tomb of Franklin, French series,
Staffordshire, 1824-1835
The Rocks, Sydney
 More than 750,000 items and 30
buildings were excavated at the dig
site, between Cumberland and
Gloucester Streets, by the Sydney
Harbour Foreshore Authority

Grace Karskens
Former convict and butcher George
Cribb leased a site for his house and
slaughter yard from 1809 in what
became known as Cribbs Lane
Hed been sentenced to 14 years
imprisonment in Australia for being
in possession of forged bank notes.

.
A still was also found during the dig in
1994. At a time when rum and other
spirits were considered a de facto
currency, such an illegal still could have
been considered a sort of money
making machine.
The Rocks, Sydney: Cribbs Yard
 The Rocks, Sydney

Other stories from the site include that of George Legg and Anne Armsden
(their home was known as the arm and leg house).

In 1805 George went fishing and disappeared. A shark was found with his
hand inside it and a month later Cadigal (aboriginal) people visited Anne to
tell her the rest of the body had been found
Alan Mayne and Tim Murray (eds)
The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in
Slumland.
Cambridge University Press 2001
West Oakland, California
The I-880 Cypress Freeway Replacement

A project by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) District 4,

involved the reconstruction of a 3.1-mile section of freeway in Oakland and
Emeryville,

Caltrans contracted with the Anthropological Studies Center at Sonoma State

University (ASC) to examine the area of potential effects (APE).

The Cypress Archaeology Project database is unprecedented in the West.

Over 120 discrete artifact assemblages were recovered and associated with specific
households.

A wide variety of groups is represented, from unskilled working-class households to

upper-middle-class families, immigrants from numerous countries, and native-born
whites and African Americans.
 The I-880 Cypress Freeway Replacement

Putting the "There" There: Historical Archaeologies of West Oakland

http://www.sonoma.edu/asc/cypress/finalreport/
Mary and Adrian Praetzellis
The I-880 Cypress Freeway Replacement

Report focuses on the people of the neighbourhood,

with essays on:

- the archaeology of gender;

- the material culture of the aristocracy of labor;
- the Overseas Chinese and laundry work;
- the archaeology and landscape of lodging;
- the archaeology and 150-year history of African
Americans in West Oakland
Hungate, York

www.dighungate.com/