THE COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND KITCHEN GARDEN: HISTORICAL URBAN AGRICULTURE

The kitchen garden was a mainstay of the Colonial American household. These gardens provided a range of goods from produce to essential household and medical supplies. In a study of an 18th century kitchen garden at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, MA, we integrate archival research and previous archaeological studies with geochemically fingerprinted soil cores to obtain a glimpse at early American gardening practices. One of the aims of this research is to determine if soils in relatively undisturbed colonial homesteads might be a repository that contains evidence of past land use and amendment patterns. Five soil cores were collected from sites on the Nurse homestead ranging from the 20th century kitchen garden to the speculated locations of 18-19th century gardens, to an on-site yet never gardened pasture location. The cores ranged between 19-49 cm in depth and were divided into 3-5 cm increments. As depth increased, the soil cores revealed a higher percentage of medium to coarse grained sand. In situ pH measurements ranged between 6.3-7.0, and increased with depth. By combining X-ray fluorescence trace element analysis with additional bulk soil chemical characteristics (e.g., organic content and pH) we should be able to fingerprint colonial soil amendments such as Rockweed (Fucus vesiculosus) from more modern practices of amending soils with synthetic fertilizers and urban compost. These approaches, combined with illustrations and descriptions of colonial gardening and cookbooks, should permit assessment of the utility of this integrated methodological approach for examining New England Colonial gardening practices in the kitchen garden context.