|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
The Road to Walden Pond - Revisiting Roland Robbins' 1945 Excavation of Thoreau's House (15FA218), Middlesex County, Massachusetts Roland Robbins's discovery of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond in 1945 marked the beginning of a controversial career in archaeology that encompassed excavations across the northeastern United States, many of which explored industrial sites. Robbins was in many ways a pioneer in historical archaeology, and can be counted among the first industrial archaeologists in America. He excavated numerous early industrial sites in the Northeast using a thoughtful approach that suited his restoration-oriented goals, captured the public's imagination, and, in retrospect, embodied many characteristics of modern industrial archaeology praxis. Robbins's initiation into archaeology grew out of his previous research projects and the ongoing dispute over the exact site of Thoreau's cabin. While attending the Thoreau Centennial held at Walden Pond on July 4, 1945, Robbins was enthralled by the story of the stone cairn reportedly marking the cabin site and questions raised regarding its accuracy, and became intrigued with the idea of discovering the actual house site. Some older members of the audience recalled that the cairn was previously closer to the Pond, while others quoted Thoreau's own description of the house's site "...on the side of a hill, and half a dozen rods from the pond." After the meeting, Allen French reportedly stopped Robbins and said that he was pleased to see him turn his research interests to the problem of Thoreau's house. Robbins recounted that
Several weeks after attending the event, Robbins received a note from a friend, who warned him that others were planning the same "hunt" and that he might have a "race" on his hands. Clearly hoping to discover the site himself, Robbins wrote that this information "...startled me into getting out my inadequate six-foot steel ruler the following evening and heading for the pond...." Thus it was, that in the fall of 1945, armed with "a pocket compass, a ninety-eight cent G.I trench shovel...[and] a couple...of probing rods," Robbins began exploring for the house site. Initially examining the landscape around the cairn, he located several brick fragments with his probing rod. When further searching failed to turn up new evidence, Robbins turned to documentary sources for answers. Over the course of the next two years, he applied his knowledge of the documentary sources and his visual hunches gained through examining landscape clues to the problem of locating the buried remains of the house. During this period, he identified, excavated, and carefully documented the building's stone chimney foundation, stone corner piers, and root cellar. While Robbins's
work at the Thoreau house site was in his own mind a completely amateur
undertaking, the work is creative and resourceful because of its integration
of historical research and excavation and the overall level of documentation.
His decisions to excavate in specific areas, while not systematic in
the sense of grid-oriented testing, were intelligently based on a dialogue
with the documentary evidence and testing with his steel probe rod.
His study of the Minute Man statue had prepared him for the documentary
research required for the
Robbins approached the work at Walden in a commonsense and logical way, excavating vaguely by natural strata and utilizing general horizontal controls. His plan drawings of the excavations provide accurate horizontal placement of both features and artifacts; he measured and mapped all of the excavated features, using triangulation based on fixed points. In addition to his detailed drawings, Robbins took hundreds of photographs to document his work at the site. While horizontal control of artifact provenience is evident, vertical control is less obvious but ultimately recoverable. His three daily log books, however, are filled with references to the specific depth of artifacts and their soil associations. It is apparent from these log books that Robbins recognized basic soil changes and understood their importance. Artifacts from the excavation were stored in numbered envelopes that were referenced in his daily log reports, providing annotations for both horizontal and vertical position. While Robbins made efforts to have the artifacts identified by various experts, he clearly saw them as less important than the actual "foundations." This, however, is not surprising since he declared that he "did not dig for artifacts...but for ruins," not an altogether atypical practice in historical archaeology at the time. Robbins guarded his claim to the discovery of the cabin site, controlling who saw his fieldwork at Walden and maintaining a level of secrecy that in some ways worked against him. Early in the dig, he refused to let Walter Harding of the Thoreau Society look at his excavations. In recalling the incident, Harding remembered that Robbins was reluctant to allow him to see the site because he "was always very suspicious of any college teachers--he had one particularly unfortunate experience." Robbins made no excuse for his careful handling of news about the discovery, stating that "many are they who want to know the secret and have gone out to Walden Pond to seek it. This is in vain as I took special precautions to conceal my work until plans were formulated to preserve it." In recording the discovery of Thoreau's house in his field notebook, Robbins noted that "Mr. Conant said it would prove to be one of the world's greatest shrines," and added in the margin, "Let's hope so." Robbins desired to do more than simply earn a living by unearthing ruins and recreating buildings, explaining that "by profession I operate a small and successful window cleaning and painting business but by heart I live with the unanswered questions to the... past." He sought to interest the public in the process of research and the excitement of discovery. The animated style of his book Discovery at Walden was well suited to captivate readers. Thoreau Society secretary, Walter Harding, wrote that Robbins "did a superb piece of work." In the introduction to Discovery at Walden, Harding writes that as a person "more stimulated by ideas than things," he was skeptical. A brief visit to the site, however, gave him a shiver of excitement, and a review of the evidence convinced him of the accuracy of Robbins's work. The Walden project was Robbins's answer to a calling that came from deep within himself. It was at Walden Pond that he first realized that history and archaeology could fulfill his desire to find a meaningful professional career. He sought to be more, he said, than an "expert at washing other people's windows and renovating other people's houses...." At Walden, he began to formulate the answer to the question that had drawn him to the Daniel Chester French sculpture of the Minute Man: how to secure a chance to pursue a meaningful career with little experience or education. Working amidst Thoreau's chimney foundation, he also experienced for the first time the power of physical remains to captivate and capture both his imagination and the imagination of those around him. Although his entry into this work created anxiety and insecurity, it also held immense promise for the future; in his mind there was no turning back.
The Walden excavations set the pattern for Robbins's future career in historic-sites archaeology and restoration. As chronicled above, he applied his intuitive knowledge of the world to the task at hand, utilizing an interest in history, a natural talent for meticulously documenting the world around him, and his everyday skills as a handyman. During this first excavation, he borrowed heavily on his practical workman's craft knowledge, whether painting houses or washing windows, and on his proficiency in problem solving. He became familiar with soil strata and with the use of artifacts and features for dating and site interpretation through on-the-job experience, a dialogue with other practitioners and experts in the field, and by reading in history and archaeology. Robbins used his basic knowledge of carpentry, masonry, and surveying and his inventive mind to craft commonsense solutions to the puzzle that he endeavored to solve at Walden. In keeping with Robbins's restoration and reconstruction focus, the site was eventually commemorated with a monument, and later by a replica cabin. His publication of Discovery at Walden, was a critical and financial success and brought him to the attention of historical museums and associations across New England at a critical time in our history.
The current project is an attempt to completely revisit Robbins's Walden Pond excavation using his fieldnotes, photographs, and the artifacts (a complete artifact analysis was never completed) (these materials are held by the Thoreau Society at the Thoreau Institute archives in Lincoln, Massachusetts). Because of Robbins's amateur status and his secrecy during the early excavations, his finding and interpretations continue to be questioned by some scholars and Thoreauvians. The first step in our study has been to digitally recreate all of Robbins's field notebook sketch maps at their proper scale using the triangulation measurements indicated in the sketches in order to develop an overall plan map of the excavations. This has produced a layer map that shows the excavation of units or areas in a chronological sequence (the separate units are number chronologically and linked to Robbins fieldnotes). The links to the fieldnotes also provide envelope numbers containing artifacts for that excavation unit. The artifacts remain in the original 1945-1947 envelopes used by Robbins. With the plan map complete, we moved onto a full inventory and analysis of the artifacts for the excavation. This inventory is contained in a relational database that allows for sorting and analysis of the artifact categories. Although this work is still underway several important observations can be made: the collection in general is all 19th century in date; the nail category includes only cut nails and many earlier types of cut nails; the window glass is 19th century as well, and an initial calculation using the Moir window glass dating formula returned a date of 1847 (Thoreau built his house in 1845 and left the Pond in 1847!); and the very limited amount of ceramic and glassware includes several redware and stoneware storage vessels (crocks, etc.) and one faceted drinking glass. Finally, we are using computerized mapping techniques to compare Thoreau's map of the Pond that shows the location of his house in relationship to Robbins's excavations and interpretation.
For further reading: Linebaugh, Donald W. "Forging a Career: Roland W. Robbins and Iron Industry Sites in the Northeastern U.S." IA: Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology 26(2000)(1):5-36. Linebaugh, Donald W. "The Road to Ruins and Restoration: Roland W. Robbins and the Professionalization of Historical Archaeology. Ph.D. Dissertation, American Studies Program, The College of William and Mary in Virginia, Williamsburg (UMI, Ann Arbor, MI, 1996). Linebaugh, Donald
W., "The Road to Ruins and Restoration: Roland Wells Robbins and
the Discovery at Walden." The Concord Saunterer 2(1)(Fall
1994):33-64. |
||||||||||||
