That calm was disrupted when Saints’ Rest dormitory went up in a blaze, destroying the college’s first residence hall and forever changing the architectural landscape of what would become MSU 88 years thereafter.

Now, 130 years since the site was cleared, the next phase has begun in uncovering what remains of MSU’s first residence hall.

Students and faculty in the Department of Anthropology are in the process of recovering and studying the artifacts of this historic site, long ago covered and tread upon by countless green and white feet as SAC became MSU, and inviting the community to catch a glimpse of Spartans past.

Now in her 12th year at MSU, Goldstein proposed the project for the university’s sesquicentennial with the help of Jodie O’Gorman, associate professor of anthropology, and other faculty.

“It’s an interesting history and a history that matters,” O’Gorman said. “And if archaeology doesn’t uncover it, that story doesn’t get told.”

The birth of dorm life

The dormitory was built in 1856 and christened Saints’ Rest after a 1652 Christian devotional. At most, the all-men’s dorm could accommodate 80 occupants.

Saints’ Rest was a three-story brick structure, located between what is now the MSU Museum and Linton Hall, and the second building to be erected on campus.

While the cause of the fire remains unknown, there is evidence that the blaze began in the basement. O’Gorman said workmen were in the basement when a fire broke out, while other theories suggest the fire began in the pipes. No one else was there at the time.

All that remains visible now is the northeast corner, marked by an engraved piece of concrete, displaying the name of the building, when it was built and the date of the fire.

The first dig began in 2005, examining the north end of the structure. About 21 undergraduates, six graduate students and four professors helped with the dig, excavating, cleaning and logging artifacts.

“People don’t realize that these materials are not far below the ground,” Goldstein said. “People got very interested and very engaged because it was something that everyone could understand.”

Megan McCullen, an anthropology graduate student who has been on digs around the country, was a graduate supervisor on the original dig and has stayed on to work on the project.

“I just think it’s a really interesting site,” she said. “I’ve never seen a project that so many people are interested in before. Everyone seems really tied to the project.”

The newest dig was more of an unexpected opportunity beginning in August. As part of the construction projects occurring around campus, the sidewalk above the southern end of the site was removed for replacement, and the university allowed it to be examined.

Revisiting Saints’ Rest

Now the task of the current dig has been left to a group of six students and additional faculty volunteers. The first day of the dig, Oct. 11, revealed a wood-burning stove used for heating, a knife and a fork.

It is the low acidity of the soil and the manner in which the building collapsed, creating pockets, that resulted in the preservation of such objects as toothbrushes and ink wells.

McCullen said the first day consisted of a lot of digging through a foot-and-a-half of brick rubble, in an attempt to reach items on the basement floor.

One of the ongoing questions is the location of the kitchen, if one existed. That would explain the recovered eating utensils.

“It’s very hard to know for sure that something happened the way (you thought) it did,” McCullen said. “It’s like trying to put together a 500-piece puzzle with 45 pieces.”

Other objects identified over the course of the project were a tie pin, a soap dish and a shaving mug, along with banned vices like wine bottles and remnants of a pipe.

“The stoves were pretty interesting to see. It’s not terribly surprising that those would preserve with the cast iron,” O’Gorman said. “The most surprising is the ceramic stuff. There were a lot of medicine bottles and ink bottles — a lot of those are intact.”

Preserving the items requires a specific process. Once the items are removed from the site, they are placed in bags, labeled with details about where the artifact was found. They are then brought to the lab to be cleaned, reconstructed, stabilized in an electrolysis bath and logged in the inventory.

Domi Oikarinen, an interdisciplinary studies in social science senior, began working in the lab at the beginning of the semester. He works in the lab — located in the basement of McDonel Hall — once a week, cleaning, organizing and studying the items stored there.

“There are some things that you can’t identify at first,” he said.

One of the items that stumped viewers of the Saints’ Rest exhibit at Archaeology Day in East Lansing, Michigan October 13 was a half of a pair of scissors, an item easily identified by the children present.

Many of the differences, Oikarinen said, lie in technological variations visible in the recovered artifacts. For example, there was no running water, so wash bins and chamber pots were utilized.

His first experience with this work, Oikarinen said students can learn a lot from projects like this one that they could not in a classroom.

“Preserving the sites is important,” he said. “It’s like having a glimpse into the past.

“Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.”

New questions

Throughout the process, Goldstein said they have learned a lot about the structure of the building, discovering a room with a cobblestone floor used for washing, a hallway and a room that contained the materials for creating mortar.

“One of the questions that we still have is how the function of the dorm changed,” O’Gorman said. The dorm was undergoing repairs when the fire happened, with the construction of new dormitories going on in that period as well.

While no formal museum exhibit has been held, it is a hope for the future. For now, items can be seen during special displays, on a Web site designed by the students of the dig and used in classes.

“What I get out of it and I would like people to get out of it is learning about the actual purpose and goal of the university,” McCullen said. “It’s sort of a neat way to see where the university is coming from.”

Learning from the past can do more than improve the quality of building construction.

“You can’t assume that once something is built that the past is gone. Archaeology is everywhere, history is everywhere,” Goldstein said. “The past is right under our feet — we have an obligation to the past because the past tells us so much about our lives. We are supposed to be stewards of the past.”