Treasure from Trash: XRF Analysis of Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Metal Artifacts from San Antonio, Texas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Before Trinity University, a small liberal arts campus of approximately 2700 students, moved to its present location in San Antonio, Texas, the land was used as a limestone quarry, a low-income informal housing site, and a municipal trash dump site in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the university purchased the land in the 1940s and subsequently built its present campus, it prohibited dumping and capped the site with soil. However, materials from this site have been unearthed through erosion, and are being studied by an ongoing undergraduate archaeology research project. This poster will present research on metal artifacts recovered from the site. Using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF), a non-destructive analytical technique, a large sample of the recovered metal artifacts was analyzed to determine their elemental composition. In addition, electrolysis was used to remove rust and preserve artifacts for better visual analysis, including manufacturing labels. This information was then cross-referenced with archive materials, historical newspaper articles and advertisements, and patents to determine the uses and histories of the metal artifacts. In doing so, this analysis reveals information about the infrastructure, manufacturing, development, and sanitation of San Antonio in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52955