Phillips House: A Twentieth-Century Property with a Buried Past

Summary

As part of a larger landscape restoration project, PAL completed archaeological investigations at the Phillips House in Salem, Massachusetts. Currently owned and managed by Historic New England, the primary period of interpretive significance for the property dates to the Phillips family tenure, ca.1911’1955. During its twentieth-century occupancy, the rear yard of the house was used as a domestic work space and contained structures associated with laundry, gardening, storage, and small animal husbandry. In addition to the expected features associated with those activities, excavations resulted in the identification of an eighteenth-century fieldstone foundation and a relict eighteenth-century living surface. These data suggest that the eighteenth-century archeological signature of the property survives substantially intact, and has the potential to provide important information about the occupational history of the parcel predating the Phillips tenure that can add to the historical narrative of the Phillips House and the greater Salem area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Exploring the Evolving Urban Landscapes of Boston and Salem

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-68,05