Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1990 - 61

The human legacy, from top: nineteenth-century game
pieces, clay marbles , a fragment of an alphabet plate, and
a jackknif e reflect children's activities on the Common;
buttons , jewelry , and coins hint at adult recreational use
during the same period. At the location of British troop
encampments , archaeologists and volunteers found lead
balls, gun spalls, and flints.
summer camp sites and seasonal planting fields. The earliest artifact found in the Common, a projectile point, is
of the Middle Archaic period, roughly 6000 to 3000 b.c.
The Common, in other words, is a palimpsest of sorts in
which many layers of human history are recorded.

It's a colorful story. The first European settler on the
Shawmut Peninsula and first owner of the Common was
a hermit, William Blackstone, a graduate of the University of Cambridge and a Church of England clergyman.
Blackstone probably traded with the local Indians, and
in 1634 he sold the Common to the Puritans led by John
Winthrop. Between 1630 and 1640 thousands of immigrants came to Boston from England; other waves of
migration would of course follow later. In Puritan Massachusetts the town common had a dual function. It embodied the Puritan principle of Christian charity, providing for the sustenance of those less fortunate. At the
same time, somewhat incongruously, it was associated
with the enforcement of conformity, since public whippings and executions of criminals occurred on the Common. Executions may have accounted for the disarticulated human bones that turn up occasionally in the
Common's topsoil. Householders could always pasture
their livestock on the Common (a practice that was not
abolished until 1830), and Christian dead could be buried within its precincts.
People using the Common have not always conformed
to the city's wishes, however. Not surprisingly, the Common embodies more than the city's ideals and aspirations; it ¿liso reflects conflicts and compromises arising
from the needs of Boston's resident populations, which
have increasingly diversified over the centuries. In Puritan times, town ordinances were passed against the
dumping of waste and dead animals, the digging of sod
(probably used in household gardens), and the mowing
of grass for fodder. In 1822, the militia was prohibited
from firing guns on the Common and from "marching
in the Malls." Around the same time, nude bathing by
rowdy men and boys at the bottom of Beacon Street led
to the hiring of a constable to prevent "indecent exhibition . . . which was expressly disgusting to the inhabi"
tants of the houses of the neighborhood
Early ninefrom
North
and
South
Boston
teenth-century gangs
used to converge on the Common to fight, in one case
marring even so hallowed an event as the Fourth of July
celebration. Despite temperance reform and drinking
ordinances (one of our finds included a small brass pin
embossed with the word, "Repeal," perhaps in reference
to the Eighteenth Amendment), the Common was the
site of much public drinking, as attested by liquor flask
fragments found throughout our excavations. Vandalism of public monuments has been a problem in the
twentieth century.
Pasturing cattle on the Common has its own long history; so has its military uses. As the Common became
more and more of a formal public park in the early
nineteenth century, reformers focused their attention on
the 152 cows legally pastured on it. An 1823 town ordinance regulated the "going at large of Cows and the
right of pasturage on Boston Common" and was followed shortly thereafter by an order prohibiting loose
dogs. Cows returned as an issue again in 1830, when the
remaining 65 were finally banned both from the Common proper and from Boston's burial grounds, the reaMarch/April1990 45
Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1990

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1990
