Archaeological Investigations for the I-65 Accelerated Section of the LSIORB Louisville Bridges Project, Louisville, Kentucky
Project Name: I-65 Accelerated Section of the Louisville Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project (Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Number 5-118.00)
Location: Kentucky
Rural and/or Urban: Urban
Client: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
Dates: October 10–November 23, 2005; November 6–December 14, 2006
CRA Project Manager: Tanya A. Faberson, Ph.D
Project Description: At the request of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, CRA personnel completed a phase I survey for the I-65 Accelerated Section of the Louisville Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges project in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2005 ahead of proposed road improvements to I-65, including bridge, ramp, and highway widening and, in some cases, their relocation. The fieldwork aspect of the project was complex, as the project area was restricted primarily to existing rights-of-way adjacent to I-65 and an interstate exit ramp only 2–3 m wide. Field methods during this phase of work included geotechnical bore-hole monitoring, followed by bucket augering and mechanical trenching. Three sites were recorded during the survey. Following the survey, two of the sites (15Jf717 and 15Jf718) were evaluated and recommended as eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, in consultation with the Kentucky Heritage Council, concurred with these assessments.
Testing of Sites 15Jf717 and 15Jf718 was conducted by CRA in 2006. Fieldwork at both sites consisted of mechanical trenching followed by hand excavation of features. Thousands of historic materials, as well as several prehistoric artifacts, were recovered from both sites. Examples of features recorded during the testing included brick-lined privies, a brick-paved road and a cobblestone alleyway that are no longer extant, building foundations, and a brothel cellar. The features and artifacts discovered at 15Jf717 and 15Jf718 were the remains of a historic neighborhood that was first inhabited by working-class and professional white residents in the mid-nineteenth century. Over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this neighborhood became occupied primarily by the working classes, white American-born and European immigrants, as well as African Americans. Site 15Jf718 had even been part of a red-light district. By the early twentieth century, the neighborhood became occupied primarily by working-class African Americans. Class and ethno-racial identity shaped many aspects of the neighborhood over time, and as a result, the community was often marginalized.
Through the fieldwork and specialized artifact analyses, the data revealed interesting aspects of the former lifeways of the neighborhood residents. For example, the community members relied on pork and beef as their primary meat sources, augmented by chicken, duck, turkey, and oysters. While many of the site occupants struggled financially, they placed importance upon the social display of material goods—at the table as well as in their personal appearance. The data also suggest that although various public health ordinances were enacted throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these laws were not necessarily strictly enforced or complied with by the neighborhood residents. While the fieldwork was limited by very narrow excavation corridors only allowing for small segments of the larger features, such as the cellar, roadways, and foundations to be examined, CRA was able to gather a wide range of data and synthesize the information, in turn developing an in-depth history of a neighborhood buried under the buildings, streets, and parking lots present there today.
