With this year’s field season at Fort Hunter Mansion and
Park behind us, we continue our look back at archaeological projects conducted
by The State Museum of Pennsylvania over the course of the last half century. This
series is intended to dove-tail with the broader celebration of the 50th
anniversary of the construction of the William Penn Memorial Museum building in
Harrisburg, which houses The State Museum of Pennsylvania and the executive
offices of its parent state agency, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum
Commission.
excavating a post mold feature at Ephrata Cloister (36La981)
A number of posts in this series previously detailed the
excavation of stratified prehistoric sites in advance of large, federally
funded or permitted development projects, such as Sheep Rock shelter (36Hu1)
for the Raystown Reservoir (Army Corps), and 36Da50 in anticipation of the
construction of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor (FERC). This week, the
focus will be on the decade long historical archaeology project that took place
at Ephrata Cloister, an 18th century religious commune in Lancaster
County, now a popular historic site that has been owned by the Commonwealth
since 1941.
WPA poster for Ephrata Cloister
The formation of the Ephrata Cloister community was the
direct result of a founding policy of William Penn’s nascent colony, that of
religious tolerance. Nowhere else in colonial America were the conditions such
that a social experiment like that of the Cloister was possible, thanks to Penn.
Political and religious upheaval, and the accompanying economic hardships faced
by marginalized groups throughout Europe in the late 17th century,
spurred many to seek a new beginning across the Atlantic. Such was the case
with Conrad Beissel, a German immigrant who would come to settle in Lancaster
County around 1730 seeking a more meaningful spirituality through solitude and
piety.
The charismatic Beissel soon found himself the leader of a
small, but industrious group of like-minded people that would comprise the
Cloister community. While spiritual purity was the primary focus of the
cloister’s celibate brothers and sisters, some of the activities they engaged
in include agriculture, print making, fraktur art, and among other industries,
the construction of large dormitories and prayer houses, some of which survive
today and have become icons of this National Historic Landmark.
at left, sisters' dormitory (1743) and right, prayer house (1741)
In the late 1980s site administrators expressed concern
that adequate measures had not been implemented to protect the massive wooden
structures, some of them at this point approaching 250 years old, from the threat
of destruction by fire. Steve Warfel, then Senior Curator of the Section of
Archaeology at The State Museum of PA, was contracted to perform an
archaeological survey of the proposed fire suppression line across the property
in an effort to identify any significant subsurface features relating to the
site’s early religious commune activities.
large cellar on Mt. Zion, excavated in 2001
From that initial
scope of work would emerge an annual historical archaeology field school, conducted
in the months of June and July, which instructed dozens of college students in
the methods of excavation, recordation and artifact identification. Over the
course of eleven seasons, hundreds of thousands of artifacts were recovered, and
several no longer extant buildings were relocated on the landscape, enhancing
and enriching the story of the Cloister (including its time as a hospital
during the American Revolution), and sometimes challenging long held
assumptions about the behavior of its inhabitants.
reconstructed storage crocks and table wares from the 1995 field season
top row, left to right: medicine vial fragment, english gun flint, two pieces of lead printers type
middle row: musket balls, french and english flint fragments
bottom row: medicine vial fragments
In an important final step after each season, Warfel published
his findings in accessible booklets (still available at the Cloister gift shop)
detailing the remains of structures discovered and their associated artifacts,
in order share insights gathered with parties interested in this special piece
of colonial American history.
This week’s post serves as a mere introduction to the Cloister and a number of interesting facets about its members and their
interactions with each other and with non-members locally and regionally. Outside
of Warfel’s archaeological booklet series, numerous books have been written
about Ephrata, If your curiosity has been piqued, please refer to the suggested
reading list below to dig a little deeper.
Bach, Jeff. Voices of the turtledoves: the sacred world of Ephrata. Penn State University Press, 2003
Benson, Cynda. Early
Illuminated Manuscripts from the Ephrata Cloister. Northampton,
Mass.: Smith College Museum of Art, 1995.
Garvan,
Beatrice B., and Charles F. Hummel. The Pennsylvania Germans: A
Celebration of Their Arts, 1683-1850. Philadelphia: Philadelphia
Museum of Art, 1982.
Lamech
and Agrippa. Chronicon Ephratense: A History of
the Community of the Seventh Day Baptists at Ephrata. New York:
Lenox Hill Publishing, 1972.
Reichmann,
Felix, and Eugene E. Doll. Ephrata as Seen by Contemporaries.
Allentown: The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1953.
Sangmeister,
Ezechiel. Leben Wandel: Life and Conduct of
the Late Brother Ezechiel Sangmeister. Ephrata: Historical Society
of the Cocalico Valley, 1979-1985.
Secor,
Robert, ed. Pennsylvania 1776.
University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975.
Warfel,
Stephen G. Historical Archaeology at Ephrata
Cloister. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum
Commission, 1993-2003.
Weiser,
Frederick S., and Howell J. Heaney. The Pennsylvania German Fraktur of
the Free Library of Philadelphia. Breinigsville: The Pennsylvania
German Society, 1976.
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