Abstract
The First Baptist Church of Philadelphia (FBCP) burial ground was excavated in 2017 after being discovered during construction in historic Philadelphia (Leader et al., in press). Burial records indicate its use from ca. 1702–1859. Skeletal remains of approximately 491 individuals, along with associated funerary goods, including coffins and coffin furniture were recovered from the archaeological excavations. Across historical burial grounds, textiles are often infrequent due to a lack of preservation, or are understudied due to the inability to identify the fabrics. These disadvantages highlight the need for the increased sharing of methods for textile identification, and discussion of historical funerary textiles. Like many burial ground sites, a large number of shroud pins was recovered at FBCP yet only a small sample of textile material (n = 12) was preserved. Here we use polarized light microscopy (PLM) to identify textile fibers and weaves, and discuss these using other comparable funerary textile examples.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bashford, L. and Sibun, L. (2007). Excavations at the Quaker Burial Ground, Kingston-upon-Thames, London. Post-Medieval Archaeology 41(1): 100-154.
Bell, E. L. (1990). The historical archaeology of Mortuary behavior: coffin hardware from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Historical Archaeology 24(3): 54-78.
Bonneau, N. (2018). An accounting of the dead: historical research and big data in the Arch Street Project. Paper delivered at the Society of American Archaeology Conference, Washington, DC.
Bromberg, F. and Shephard, S. J. (2006). The Quaker Burying Ground in Alexandria, Virginia: a study of burial practices of the Religious Society of Friends. Historical Archaeology 40(1): 57-88.
Cherryson, A. K. (2018). Dressing for the grave: the archaeological evidence for the preparation and presentation of the corpse in Post-Medieval England. In Mytum, H. and Burgess, L. (eds.), Death Across Oceans: Archaeology of Coffins and Vaults in Britian, American, and Australia. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington, DC, pp. 37-55.
Cowie, R., Bekvalac, J., and Kausmally, T. (2008). Late 17th-19th Century Burial and Earlier Occupation at All Saints, Chelsea Old Church, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Museum of London Archaeological Service, London.
Crist, T. A. J., Pitts, R. H., Washburn, A., McCarthy, J. P., and Roberts, D. G. (1996). “A Distinct Church of the Lord Jesus”: The History, Archaeology and Physical Anthropology of the Tenth Street First African Baptist Church Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Department of Transportation, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg.
Cybulsak, M. and Maik, J. (2007). Archaeological textiles: a need for new methods of analysis and reconstruction. Fibres and Textiles in Eastern Europe. 15(5-6): 64-65.
Dethlefsen, E. and Deetz, J. (1966). Death's heads, cherubs and willow trees: experimental archaeology in colonial cemeteries. American Antiquity 31(4): 502-510.
Drooker, P. D. and Webster, L. D. (eds.) (2000). Beyond Cloth and Cordage: Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Frohne, A. E. (2015). The African Burial Ground in New York City: Memory, Spirituality, and Space. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY.
Henderson, M., Miles, A., and Walker, D. (2015). St Marylebone’s Paddington Street North Burial Ground: Excavations at Paddington Street, London W1, 2012–13. Museum of London Archaeology, London.
Hoadley, F. T. (1986). By God's Own Hand: The Story of American Baptists in Pennsylvania and Delaware. Abcopad, Valley Forge, PA.
Janaway, R. (1993). The textiles. In Reeve, J. and Adams, M. (eds.), The Spitalfields Project, The Archaeology, “Across the Styx”, Vol. 1. Council for British Archaeology, York, pp. 93–119.
Janaway, R. (1998). An Introduction Guide to Textiles from 18th and 19th Century Burials. In Cox, M. (ed.) Grave Concerns: Death and Burial in England 1700–1850. Council for British Archaeology, York, pp. 17–32.
Janaway, R .C. (2001). Degradation of clothing and other dress materials associated with buried bodies of archaeological and forensic interest. In Haglund, W. D. and Sorg, M. H. (eds.), Advances in Forensic Taphonomy, Method, Theory, and Archaeological Perspectives. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 380-399.
Keen, W. W. (1899). Bi-Centennial Celebration of the Founding of the First Baptists Church of the City of Philadelphia, 1898. Hard Press, Miami.
King, K. (2006). Real colonial women don't weave cloth. Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society, History Quarterly Digital Archives 43(2): 62-70.
Lang, P. L., Katon, J. E., O’Keefe, J. F., and Schiering, D. W. (1986). The identification of fibers by infrared and raman microspectroscopy. Microchemical Journal 34: 319-331.
Leader, G. M., Moran, K., Beatrice, J., Dhody, A., and Veit, R. (In Press). 18th and 19th Funerary Hardware and Material Culture from the historic cemetery (ca 1702–1859) of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia. To appear in Historical Archaeology.
Litten, J. (1991). The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral since 1450. Robert Hale, London.
Lowe, A. C., Beresford, D. V., Carter, D. O., Gaspari, F., O’Brien, R. C., Stuart, B. H., and Forbes, S. L. (2013). The effect of soil texture on the degradation of textiles associated with buried bodies. Forensic Science International 231: 331-339.
McKinley, J. (2008). The 18th Century Baptist Church and Burial Ground at West Butts Street, Poole, Dorset. Wessex Archaeology, Ltd., Salisbury.
Miles, A., Powers, N., Wroe-Brown, R., and Walker, D. (2008). St. Marylebone Church and Burial Ground in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Excavations at St. Marylebone School, 1992 and 2004–6. Museum of London, London.
Ordoñez, M. T. and Welters, L. (2004). Textiles and leather in southeastern New England archaeological sites. In Drooker, P. E. (ed.), Perishable Material Culture in the Northeast. New York State Museum, Albany, pp. 169–184.
Powers, N. and Miles, A. (2011). Nonconformist identities in 19th-century London: archaeological and osteological evidence from the burial grounds of Bow Baptist Chapel and the Catholic Mission of St. Mary and St. Michael, Tower Hamlets. In King, C. and Sayer, D. (eds.), The Archaeology of Post-Medieval Religion. Boydell, Martlesham, pp. 233–248.
Prangnell, J. and McGowan, G. (2013). Economy and respectibility: textiles from the North Brisbane Burial Ground. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 17: 487-519.
Pragnell, J. and McGowan, G. (2021). Identifying a burns victim 150 years after death. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 25: 1-13.
Press. (1860). A chapter in local history. The Press [Philadelphia], March 16.
Proctor, J., Gaimster, M., and Langthorne, J. Y. (2016). A Quaker Burial Ground in North Shields: Excavations at Coach Lane, Tyne and Wear. Pre-Construct Archaeology, London.
Public-Ledger. (1860). Advertisement. Public-Ledger [Philadelphia], February 18.
Reeves, J. and Adams, M. (1993). The Spitalfields Report, Volume I: The Archaeology Across the Styx. Council for British Archaeology, York.
Riordan, T. B. (2009). “Carry me to you Kirk Yard”: an investigation of changing burial practices in the seventeenth-century cemetery at St. Mary’s City, Maryland. Historical Archaeology 43(1): 81-92.
Rodgers, P. W. (2006). Textiles. In Brickley M. and Buteux, S. (eds.), St. Martin's Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin's-in-the-Bull Ring, Birmingham, 2001. Oxbow, Oxford, pp. 163-178.
Schaffer, E. (1981). Fiber identification in ethnological textile artifacts. Studies in Conservation 26: 119-129.
Tedrick-Kuttruff, J. and Strickland-Olsen, M. (2000). Handling archaeological textile remains in the field and laboratory. In Drooker, P. D. and Webster, L.D. (eds.), Beyond Cloth and Cordage: Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 25-50.
Webster, L. D. and Drooker, P. B. (2000). Archaeological textiles research in the Americas. In Drooker, P. D. and Webster, L. D. (eds.), Beyond Cloth and Cordage: Archaeological Textile Research in the Americas. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, pp. 1-25.
Acknowledgments
Authors wish to thank Professor Jerry Conlogue and Quinnipiac University students for conducting the X-rays of the burials. Special thanks to the Winterthur Museum for providing the opportunity to collaborate on the study. Thanks are due to Dr. Kim Eberle-Wang and her students, Sabrina Wang and Bill Haotian, from the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy for testing the soil pH-levels. Sadie Friend is also thanked for assisting with the skeletal analysis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Leader, G.M., De Paola, P., Mina, L. et al. Threads of Evidence: Polarized Light Microscopy for Funerary Textile Identification from an Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Philadelphia Burial Ground. Int J Histor Archaeol 26, 951–973 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-021-00634-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-021-00634-3