Life Underfoot

Fort Snelling was a military base, but it was also home to soldiers, administrators, workers, and their families, and archaeology at the Upper Post reveals their domestic lives through objects left behind in layers of soil representing generations of residents. Artifacts such as porcelain teacups, clay marbles, pomade jars, and whiskey bottles show how people lived their daily lives there. In the 1800s, residents used household items from around the world, including Japanese and French porcelain and ceramic tableware from England, much of it elaborately decorated and imported to the United States before being brought to the Fort. Excavated buttons from military and civilian clothing, a nineteenth-century shoe, hair pins, combs, and jars for perfumes and pomades reflect choices about dress, fashion, and grooming. Many such items were recovered from privies near residential buildings, which were commonly used to discard unwanted possessions before indoor bathrooms and regular garbage collection. Excavations also uncovered medicine bottles and jars used by nineteenth-century residents, including containers from local pharmacies, pharmacies in New York and Chicago, patent medicines, and early Bayer pharmaceutical bottles. Children of military personnel and later VA hospital staff lived at the Upper Post with their families from the early 1870s through the 1970s, and excavated toys such as dolls, a 1940-era lead cowboy toy, and clay marbles offer glimpses of the lives of Fort Snelling's youngest inhabitants.

Minnesota · United States