Archeology at the Stanwix Hall Hotel Site

Then and Now: Archeology at Fort Stanwix

Archeology Home		Archeology at the Stanwix Hall Hotel Site In 2003, the site of the Stanwix Hall Hotel was investigated for archeological resources. The hotel building itself had been destroyed in the 1970s in advance of the reconstruction of Fort Stanwix. The rear courtyard or work area was preserved and was the focus of the archeological study.
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		The Privy The most important find at the Stanwix Hall Hotel site was the intact hotel privy. The privy was the dumping place for the contents of chamberpots, and for some of the hotel refuse.
Since the hotel was a four-to-five-story structure, the privy needed to hold a lot of nightsoil and garbage. And this privy could: it was twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and ten feet deep, built from cut and laid stone. A sample was taken from the privy from the top of the stone to the natural soil it was built on. Read more.
			Privy cleanout Even a privy as big as the one at the Stanwix Hall Hotel filled up and needed to be emptied. Usually, the contents were dug out and dumped away from the privy itself. In one instance, the contents did not make it very far and were left very close to the privy. The cleanout deposit was older than the contents of the privy when it was abandoned, showing the things that changed over time and the things that stayed the same. The rocks you see in the image to the left were dumped to fill the hole created when the privy material settled.
Cistern A brick cistern was found in the working yard of the Stanwix Hall Hotel. The cistern, made of brick, had an unusual shape in that the top was wider than the bottom.
Like many brick cisterns, the top was domed; this gave rise to calling the cistern "ice-cream cone shaped."The cistern was damaged in the nineteenth century when a building was expanded and the foundation cut through the cistern, making it no longer able to hold water. Several cisterns were found during the investigation: read more about them here.
During monitoring, it was clear that the hotel had been thoroughly demolished and little archeological information was left. However, a few artifacts of interest were found. Click here to read more.

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