It might be trash, but it’s also history

Kevin Boyce raised the plastic bag close to his eyes, squinted and then joked, “This doesn’t look like the tooth of a tyrannosaurus rex.”

Boyce, a Franklin County commissioner, was staring at a shard of bone excavated in 2007 on the spot where the new county courthouse now sits. The bone fragments and other artifacts were among items unearthed in preparation for that construction.

The county is donating them to the Ohio History Connection even though all involved admit they’re not particularly significant.

“They’ve been sitting in a box in my office since I got here” 10 years ago, said Jim Goodenow, the county’s facilities manager. “They’ve been bagged up all this time. These are fragments. Run of the mill.”

The unearthed fragments date from the 1880s or older.

They include bits of bone, teeth and skulls of unspecified mammals. Some of the bone fragments are identified as “domestic pig.” They also include smoking pipes, pieces of flower pots, bottles, buttons, dishes, glass, nails and tools.

The site — bounded by Main Street to the north, Front Street to the west, Mound Street to the south and High Street to the east — was a parking lot in 2007. In the 1880s, it was the site of eight houses and eight outbuildings. Archaeologists at the time called it a “typical 19th century middle class” site.

Because there weren’t municipal garbage dumps then, families often used outhouses to get rid of garbage and, apparently, pork bones.

“Privies are good reservoirs for information, I found out,” Goodenow said.

The Ohio History Connection, formerly called the Ohio Historical Society, was chartered in 1875, about the time owners of the unearthed artifacts were living on the site. That agency wants them.

“Preserving artifacts like this is part of our mission,” agency spokeswoman Emmy Beach said, adding the Ohio History Connection has 2 million artifacts.

“Often, we are the repositories for excavations like this.”

The items can be used for research, she added, on what life in Columbus was like 130 years ago to show how people lived.

“Potentially,” Beach said. “They could be used for an exhibit.”