day 1 in Virginia City, Nevada. famous for the Comstock Silver Lode. we took a tour of the town today. we will be excavating the 1st opera house that was built there. Maguire's Opera House burnt down in 1875. by then it was no longer the Maguire Opera House because a guy named Piper bought it. Piper also built the Piper Opera House that still stands today. they are renovating the building. i learned the origin of the term "upstaging". the audience floor is flat with removable chairs to accommodate dancing. and the stage slopes upward by about 5 inches from front to back. so a guy in the back goofing around is upstage of the main actor. the ceilings are made of canvas. and the acoustics are really good. every famous performer stopped there from the time it was built until the early/mid-1900s. Mark Twain lived in Virginia city before he changed his name and made a point of coming back (he had moved to California) to the opening of the Maguire opera house and stayed in town until they made him leave. in their day the Comstock Opera Houses were of THE places to go.
next we wandered about the courthouse. also more than a century old. it's all fancy looking and there's an unblind-folded lady justice on the front. it used to be you had a choice between seeing and blind justice. there are a bazillion saloons. most of which are still saloons that sell hot dogs and such. one is an ice cream bar. anyway we saw the odd fellows house and a few others. we walked up what is called Barbary Coast, which is the second site to be excavated this summer. Barbary Coast became a slang term in the 1800s to mean the ghetto of a city. the term comes from the coast in africa when Jefferson decided to get involved in foreign affairs. they showed us some foundations poking up out of the dirt where we will be digging there. there's a grocery and a tin shop (which has 3 standing walls) and residences and saloons and a lodging house across the street. there's also a mansion (can't remember the name) that had a flushing toilet before 1900. they ran water in from Lake Tahoe because the local water was nasty. (still is according to the supervisors).
archaeologically we learned screening today. dump a bucket of dirt in the screen and sift out the dirt and pick out the artifacts. we did this at the maguire opera house that burnt down. we found plaster, charcoal, melted glass, non-melted glass, a rodent tooth (looks more like a claw to me) a few steak bones, a couple of buttons, a suspender hook, a bolt that looks like the ones that hold tires on a car, nails, other metals. all kinds of stuff. then we went inside and cleaned the stuff off and sorted and labeled it.
it's a long day. we meet at 7 am to drive up and come back about 4:30. it's a full-time job. too bad I'm only getting 6 credits (2 classes) for this. this dig is very important for my schooling and my career. i just remembered this dig is a public dig. that means it's a tourist attraction and we have to chatty with them and let them see the site and everything. same with reporters for newspapers and TV. so keep an eye on the news for the following keywords: Virginia City, Comstock, Maguire Opera House and Barbary Coast.
next we wandered about the courthouse. also more than a century old. it's all fancy looking and there's an unblind-folded lady justice on the front. it used to be you had a choice between seeing and blind justice. there are a bazillion saloons. most of which are still saloons that sell hot dogs and such. one is an ice cream bar. anyway we saw the odd fellows house and a few others. we walked up what is called Barbary Coast, which is the second site to be excavated this summer. Barbary Coast became a slang term in the 1800s to mean the ghetto of a city. the term comes from the coast in africa when Jefferson decided to get involved in foreign affairs. they showed us some foundations poking up out of the dirt where we will be digging there. there's a grocery and a tin shop (which has 3 standing walls) and residences and saloons and a lodging house across the street. there's also a mansion (can't remember the name) that had a flushing toilet before 1900. they ran water in from Lake Tahoe because the local water was nasty. (still is according to the supervisors).
archaeologically we learned screening today. dump a bucket of dirt in the screen and sift out the dirt and pick out the artifacts. we did this at the maguire opera house that burnt down. we found plaster, charcoal, melted glass, non-melted glass, a rodent tooth (looks more like a claw to me) a few steak bones, a couple of buttons, a suspender hook, a bolt that looks like the ones that hold tires on a car, nails, other metals. all kinds of stuff. then we went inside and cleaned the stuff off and sorted and labeled it.
it's a long day. we meet at 7 am to drive up and come back about 4:30. it's a full-time job. too bad I'm only getting 6 credits (2 classes) for this. this dig is very important for my schooling and my career. i just remembered this dig is a public dig. that means it's a tourist attraction and we have to chatty with them and let them see the site and everything. same with reporters for newspapers and TV. so keep an eye on the news for the following keywords: Virginia City, Comstock, Maguire Opera House and Barbary Coast.
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