Article ID: CBB088725208

Trace Element Time Markers as Proxies for the Calibration of Civil War-Era Sediment Accumulations at the West Point Foundry (2016)

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Between 1989 and 1995, Joel Grossman and his team were selected by the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers to conduct the first major archaeological excavation of the contaminated Superfund and National Register site of the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, New York. The project included both a terrestrial and a marine aspect. The team needed to determine the depth of the buried and submerged Civil War-era surface within the shoreline coves that were to be dredged to remove cadmium deposits deposited by a twentieth-century nickel-cadmium battery plant. The trace elements of copper (Cu), lead (Pb), and cadmium (Cd) were used to calibrate the depth of historic and modern marine sediments as part of the remediation process. We selected copper and lead because both metals represent industrial byproducts of military smelting. Six cores were successfully recovered from submerged Hudson River and marsh sediments. We used the depth of recorded increases in the levels of both metals to demarcate the onset of foundry operations in 1817. Increases in mid-level readings of Pb and Cu suggested a major increase in effluents during the Civil War. Twentieth-century fluctuations are tied to the advent and elimination of leaded gas.

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Authors & Contributors
Walton, Steven A.
Gordon, Robert B.
Paul J. White
Dan Trepal
Katherine L. Irwin
Elizabeth Grennan Browning
Concepts
Industrial archaeology
Iron Foundries
Excavations (archaeology)
Research methods
Chemical analysis; Trace analysis
Slag
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
18th century
17th century
Places
United States
New York (U.S.)
Connecticut (U.S.)
Tooele, Utah
New Iberia, LA
Cold Spring, NY
Institutions
West Point Foundry
Anaconda Copper Mining Company
U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record
United States Navy
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