Foundry Rising!

Hello Everyone,


       Yesterday was the start of this year's Brownsville Archaeology Month! The day was filled with one fascinating find after the other, opening small windows into a complex past of the John Snowdon and Son's Vulcan Iron and Machine Works. The work was hard using picks, maddocks, and of course trowels and shovels to excavate down almost three feet (1 meter) to buried foundation below. 

Phil Shandorph, Carl Maurer, and Jonathan Crise

     Some of the cool artifacts that we recovered are in these photographs:

Whiskey Bottle

 Alcohol bottle found outside one of the shop's footers. Alcohol bottles may indicate resistance of workers in the foundry to the strict rules that often governed their conduct. 

 It is not often in Archaeology when you find a name carved in stone of the object of your research. Here we have the name "Vulcan". The foundry, like others in the area, was known as the Vulcan Iron and Machine Works.

Carl Maurer

Stay tuned!