West Street Lot 26, Backyard(18AP113)

The West Street Lot 26 (18AP113) is an18th-20th-century urban house lot and associated privies in downtown Annapolis. An alternate name for the site is Gott's Court II. The area was the site of a surface parking project on Gott's Court, between West and Northwest streets, and west of Church Circle. The landscaping project affected the interior space of lots that front both West and Northwest Streets. Historically, this area was rear yard or support space for structures that fronted the streets; for West Street the addresses included numbers 20, 22, and 24. On West Street, the addresses began as dwellings and a boardinghouse, and later became a combination of commercial and domestic occupation and included a restaurant and a furniture store. Typical cultural resources found in these areas include wells, privies, support structures, outdoor areas associated with domestic or commercial activity, and yard or sheet middens reflective of disposal practices.

In the summer of 2008, Christopher Goodwin and Associates conducted Phase II testing on the site. Two 1 x 1 meter test units were excavated on West Street, Lot 26). One (TU 2) was located in a landscaping area in the rear lawn of the Annapolis and Anne Arundel Co. Visitors Bureau offices, and the other (TU 8) was located in a grassy center island in the middle of the current Gotts Court parking area. Each test unit evidenced a unique profile, consisting mainly or varied fill deposits from the twentieth to (possibly) the eighteenth centuries. TU 2 encountered an older historic fill horizon between 80 and 89 cm below the current ground surface, with everything above likely dating to the twentieth century. TU 8 identified what might possibly be a historic living surface/ oyster shell walkway at 109 to 118 cm below ground surface. Overlying fill horizons dated mainly to the twentieth century, though the lowest profile horizons appeared to be fill from the late and early nineteenth century.

In early 2010, Goodwin monitored Monitoring construction-related activities at the site and identified two cultural features in the Gott’s Court Parking lot. Feature 1 was identified below a previous parking lot at 30 West Street. Feature 1 was a brick lined privy filled between the mid-18th to the early 19th centuries. Ten strata were observed/excavated to a total depth of 140 cm. Strata VI through IX were mechanically excavated prior to the archaeologists' arrival on site (some artifacts collected from back dirt), but X through XXIII were excavated by hand in 10 cm arbitrary levels, with natural stratigraphy observed. The brick lining of the privy was one brick wide and extended from 1 m to 2.04 m below the ground surface. Below 2 meters, the feature sloped in dramatically and was unlined, with the base of the privy located at 240 cm below ground surface. Brick and shell were sampled; mortar and plaster were noted and discarded.

Feature 2, another historic privy, was located 10m south of Feature 1. Fill soils overlying the features reached a depth of 1m. Stratigraphy below these levels (100-240cm) were indicative of historic period deposits (18th-19th century) with the lowest levels (190-240cm) interpreted as primary/active deposits. The similar orientation and alignment of both privy features may indicate sequential use on the lot.

(Written by Patricia Samford)