ICA To Analyze Relics

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) will provide funds for the analysis of artifacts recovered last August from excavations in Harvard Yard by staff members from the Peabody Museum's Institute of Conservation Archaeology (ICA), Charles Steward, Environmental Coordinator of the MBTA Red Line extension project said yesterday.

Sperdrup, Parcel, and Associates, Inc., one of the firms working on the construction of the Red Line extension contracted ICA to carry out an investigation of the impact of construction on possible historic and archaelogical sites along the route, but the original contract with ICA did not include the excavations in the Yard, Michael E. Roberts, director of the ICA said Thursday.

An ICA archaeologist, Randy Moir, noticed the yard excavations last August while walking past Harvard Hall. Further investigation uncovered bits of glass and ceramic dating from the colonial era, along with several other important artifacts, Moir added.

Moir contacted the ICA and immediately workers began altempting to salvage some of the excavated artifacts.

"The materials were recovered in what was strictly a salvage situation," Roberts said yesterday. "The people who worked on that were paid through other projects which they were working on at the time," he added.

Roberts said that now the ICA is waiting for funds which they requested of the MBTA after the salvage operation for laboratory and historical analysis of the artifacts. He added he hopes to see the analysis completed over the winter moths, if the funds are approved in the coming weeks.