Exiting Neon Deli, most students are probably unaware that the dreary parking lot they are walking over is of intense interest to local archaeologists and historians.

Two years ago, Jesse Nasta ’07 wrote an honors thesis examining this triangular plot of land bordered by Vine Street, Cross Street and Knowles Avenue. His research focused on what was apparently a thriving community of African Americans who lived there in the early to mid 19th century.

“What you had was an entirely African American community,” Nasta said. “So, that’s important because a lot of people [when thinking about this period] think about slavery, not free African Americans—especially not free African Americans owning property.”

Nasta, now a PhD history student at Northwestern University, is not alone in his interest in the area. Professor Sarah Croucher, a specialist in African Diaspora archaeology and a new hire of the anthropology department, has been awarded a pedagogical grant to sort through all the material that the University has already uncovered from Middletown, including Nasta’s triangle. This is the first of a multi-step process, one which Croucher hopes will conclude with an archaeological dig that will allow students to experience an excavation first-hand.

In 1828, free African Americans began purchasing land in the plot. By the end of the Civil War, African Americans owned 10 of the 12 pieces of property.

“The African Americans who lived on the triangle in the early 1800s were mostly the children of Connecticut slaves or former slaves themselves,” Nasta said. “So owning property was especially significant for people who had been considered property themselves.”

In 1829, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion church was built where Exley Science Center now stands and later was relocated across from the Freeman Athletic Center. The AME Zion Church was formed in the face of the Methodist denomination’s discrimination against African Americans, and the church on Cross was one of the first churches of this new denomination. Reverend Jehiel Beman, the church’s long-time pastor, was involved in the Underground Railroad.

Today, the University owns five of the woodframe houses that once belonged to these families, in addition to the church itself (the AME Zion congregation recently relocated to a church on West Street).

The University has been aware of the plot’s historical significance for some time now. Several years ago, while installing a new fire safety system, construction workers accidentally uncovered some artifacts in the trenches they built. Following this discovery, in the spring of 2005 and 2006, Professor Douglas Charles taught “Field Methods in Archaeology,” a course in which he conducted some preliminary excavations with students.

Before he introduced the class, Charles used remote sensing technology to conduct a geophysical survey on the plot of land. Such research involves examining electric and magnetic currents in the ground to map any anomalies that could be archaeologically significant.

By excavating one by two meter plots, students tried to determine whether or not the areas mapped by Charles would yield useful artifacts. The class discovered a few privies that had been used as trash depositories, an underground storage area and the foundation of what Charles believes to be a sort of shed.

“This confirmed that there were sub-surface deposits of archaeological interest,” Charles said. “There probably is a lot of material that hopefully dates as far back as the African American community [of the early 1800s].”

Both Charles and Croucher say they need a place to process materials for this specific dig, without which they cannot begin the general excavation. An ideal location, they said, would be the now-empty basement of Cross Church.

“First, we need a lab to wash excavated artifacts,” Croucher said. “Then we can start going forward with more research and hopefully that’ll be a wider community project in the long run.”

Originally, the Archaeology Department planned to begin an expanded dig starting next fall, but according to Charles, this goal will probably not be realized.

“It’s too late,” Charles said. “The University says it does not have the money to convert [the church basement] into a lab, and with the economic situation today it does not seem likely that the dig will start in the fall.”

Beyond the material from the triangle, the University has a large collection of artifacts from a dig in the 70s that was headed by Professor Steve Dyson, who now teaches at SUNY-Buffalo. During that time, Middletown was being rebuilt, and Dyson used this opportunity to start excavating in the downtown area.

“Most of what is downtown now, isn’t what it was back then,” Croucher said. “There was a port in the 18th century, but it got bulldozed down under Route 9.”

These days, the University’s artifacts collection sits in boxes in Exley, and includes site net books, preliminary analyses, maps and plans from the earlier excavation. Croucher is working with Archaeology Collections Manager Juliana Schortell and archaeology major Thea Dearmond ’09 to go through everything the department currently has.

“Historical archaeology is all about [finding] the material from daily life and using these materials to determine what kind of economic status people had, what their gender was,” Croucher said. “Once we start to do work, we’ll be able to talk about African American community identity and we’ll be able to look at what happened when other ethnicities came into Middletown as well.”