Students Unearth Relic of Campus History

UC Berkeley anthropology professor Laurie Wilkie and the students of her Anthropology 133 class led a guided tour Thursday of the unearthed remains of the UC Berkeley Conservatory, after an archeological dig of the site yielded some surprising results.

For the past four months, Wilkie and her students have been hard at work excavating the remains of the Victorian-style conservatory, built in 1894 to house exotic plants and soil experimentation projects.

The site, which lies beneath the former parking lot near Memorial Glade and across from McCone Hall, will eventually house the new C.V. Starr East Asian Library.

The team found pots, glass and a number of walls and pipes whose locations did not match up with the original plans for the conservatory, in addition to a completely unanticipated discovery of a cellar that was filled with debris when it was destroyed in 1924.

Jenna Tower, a student in the class, said one of the fascinating parts of excavating this particular site was comparing the original plans to the actual building. The fact that the two differed significantly shed light on the potential inaccuracy of historical documents, she said.

Conservatories were extremely popular among people of the Victorian era, who were "obsessed with collecting things," Wilkie told a crowd of about 50 during a lecture after the tour.

But by 1924 the flair for conservatories was all but dead, and the conservatory, already fallen into disuse, was leveled and replaced with a parking lot, she said.

Wilkie said the building was originally built after UC Berkeley agriculture professor E.W. Hilgard campaigned for its addition. Hilgard had traveled to Europe and insisted that in order for Berkeley to keep up with the most distinguished universities abroad, it was essential that it add a conservatory to its campus.

This is not the first time Wilkie has led an excavation at Berkeley. She started the dig in 2003 at the same site before the parking lot was removed. She also worked on the excavation of the former Zeta Psi fraternity house on College Avenue, the oldest fraternity house west of the Mississippi, in 1996.

Although Wilkie and her students gathered a great deal of data, they are only just beginning to put together the pieces they have gathered.

With lab results still pending, most students agreed that they have unearthed more questions than answers.

When asked whether they resented that the dig would remain unfinished because of the library's construction,

students said that the project's close was bittersweet.

The project would never have been funded without the construction of the library, they said.

Wilkie said historical sites are "a powerful window into the past" and a means by which to create an "integrated presence of the past" on campus.

She said she would like to give students a greater understanding of the history just beneath their feet.

Wilkie added that the university has begun to better recognize the value of understanding the campus's past through archaeology.

"Development and preservation do not have to be in opposition," she said.

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