No wonder they call it Pittsburgh.No wonder they call it Pittsburgh In 1982, excavations for the Pittsburgh subway uncovered a series of early 19th-century water wells containing bottles, pottery and foodstuffs foodstuffs npl → comestibles mpl foodstuffs npl → denrées fpl alimentaires foodstuffs food npl → . Scientists who recently analyzed organic material from four of the wells -- apparently built for private homes in the 1830s -- report finding nearly 100,000 pits and seeds from muskmelons, cucumbers, peaches, pumpkings, squash squash: see gourd; pumpkin. squash Any of various fruits of the genus Cucurbita in the gourd family, widely cultivated as vegetables and for livestock feed. The principal species are C. maxima and certain varieties of C. pepo. and similar foods. Protected from bacterial decay by immersion immersion /im·mer·sion/ (i-mer´zhun) 1. the plunging of a body into a liquid. 2. the use of the microscope with the object and object glass both covered with a liquid. in water for more than a century, the organic throwaways appear remarkably well preserved, says Frances B. King, an archaeobotanist at the University of Pittsburgh. In the early 1800s, this site had a large population of German settlers. However, King notes, an abundance of chick peas See Chick-pea. See also: Pea , fava beans, olives and figs in one of the wells points to a family of Mediterranean extraction or one wealthy enough to eat lots of imported foods -- a rarity in the American diet at the time. Extracted teeth found in the same well suggest that one family member might have been a dentist. she adds. "We know that a certain ethnic group was living there, we know the names of the streets, so we don't have to reconstruct re·con·struct tr.v. re·con·struct·ed, re·con·struct·ing, re·con·structs 1. To construct again; rebuild. 2. absolutely everything," King says. "A little information here can tie you in to a much bigger body of data." |
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