Photos: Excavating undisturbed contexts (left) and the completed excavation showing the cellar and drain (right).
During renovations of Vance Hall in 2011, construction workers uncovered a deposit of ceramic fragments and broken glassware. Work was temporarily halted while UNC archaeologists excavated a 3×3-meter area between the building and the adjacent brick walkway. This excavation revealed that the construction trench had cut through a nineteenth-century stone drain (See McCorkle Drains) and cellar pit.
The cellar pit likely was associated a detached kitchen for the private dwelling that stood on the north edge of the lot from the mid-1790s through most of the nineteenth century. The artifacts found in the cellar indicate that it was filled sometime after 1840. Excavation yielded significant information concerning antebellum Chapel Hill, especially mid-19th century foodways due to large quantity of kitchen and dining debris in the form of animal bone and historic ceramics.
3D model of excavation 
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