St. Aubin

Site Name:

St. Aubin

WSUMA Accession Nos.:

721, 722, 723

Site No.:

20WN291 (aka WN-H36)

Excavated By:

George Miller and Jerry Kahn

Excavation Year(s):

1969 and 1984.

Site Description:

St. Aubin is located in the block bounded by Lafayette, St. Aubin, Fort Street and DuBois. It is in the center to Northwest quarter of the block. The area had been a park in 1852, and then a dry dockyard until almost 1920.

1969: Salvage project – surface features were bull dozed away. 3 garbage layers exposed by pipe trenches. Block raised for urban renewal. Each layer about 3-5 ft in diameter, all less than 2 ft from the surface.

1984: Development project. From March 21 to April 4 th of 1984, 7 test trenches were dug under principal investigator, Stephen Demeter.

Artifacts:

• 1969:

  • Ironstone, common yellow, glass bottle sherds. Also wooden box with “mixed materials” in it.

• 1984:

  • Metal . spike fragments and whole spikes (both round and square) (n=41), wire nails (n=3), square cut nails (n=27), horseshoe fragments (n=2), staples (n=3), fragments of sheet tin, a metal file, sheet copper, and a brass tack.
  • Ceramics. Almost 100 fragments were recovered.
    • Red paste ware (unglazed, green glazed, honey glazed and Rockingham glazed)
    • Yellow paste ware (cane glazed and annular)
    • Stoneware (slip glazed and salt glazed)
    • Pearlware (blue glazed, clear glazed, annular, sprig, sponge, blue edge and blue flow)
  • Glass: Bottle fragments including blue, olive, amber, green, colorless flat
  • Miscellaneous . Several leather shoe fragments, leather scraps, wood scraps, smoking pipe fragments, a worked bone button, burned limestone and several porcelains doll fragments and button fragments.

Cat. Nos.:

1W138406-1W138474, 1W138907-1W138924, 1W145835-1W145868

References:

• Demeter, Stephen (1985) “ St. Aubin Park Archaeological Testing .” Unpublished report created for the Recreation Department, City of Detroit . [WSUMA]
  • This is a CRM report of the area. It includes an introduction, a historical overview of the area, methods of excavation and soil description, artifact summation and conclusions and recommendations for the area. It includes some historical maps and pictures of the excavations.
     
• Pilling, Arnold (1981) Linked Riverfront Parks Project: St. Aubin Park. LandUse History Final Report. Unpublished manuscript on file at WSU Museum of Anthropology. [# 11W2494]
  • This report is over 1000 pages in length. It includes historical information on the property (i.e. deeds) and ir organized by lot. It also includes recommendations. There are almost 200 pages of references included in this document.