University archaeologists thought they had stumbled upon an old well in McCorkle Place.
One even older than the Old Well.
But after a week of digging up a plot of land next to Vance Hall, a team of undergraduates, graduate students and faculty believe what they had originally thought to be a well might actually have been a house and hotel.
University contractors first discovered remnants of historical property while preparing to install a new storm water pipe in October, said Steve Davis, associate director of UNC’s Research Laboratories of Archaeology.
David Cranford, a teaching assistant in the anthropology department, said the contractors notified the department. The contractors stopped working, Davis said, and the group began an excavation of the site Nov. 14.
The excavation, which is still ongoing, is being funded by UNC’s Facilities Planning and Construction.
After realizing that the historical remnants were not of a well, the group speculated that the site could be a large cellar or possibly an outhouse.
Now that they are further into the project, Davis and the group believe they have come across a backyard cellar they suspect was associated with a detached kitchen from a house that stood in the first half of the 1800s.
“As we get more exposed, we’re able to narrow down the likelihood of what it is,” he said.