Archaeologists uncover 15,000 unexpected artifacts beneath Tulsa cemetery

Fifteen thousand. That’s how many bits and pieces of pre-1915 Tulsa have been uncovered, catalogued, in many cases photographed, and in some cases archived since the search for unmarked graves from the city’s 1921 Race Massacre began in 2020.

That figure may startle casual observers whose expectations are geared for human remains and massacre victims, but it turns out the professionals have been pretty surprised, too.

The project to help Tulsans better understand the darkest moment in its history is also, unexpectedly, yielding a better understanding of everyday life in early Tulsa.

These bits of glass and ceramics and fragments of bone and leather are identified as “non-mortuary.” They have no direct connection to this site’s use as the city’s primary cemetery in the early 20th century, nor to the search for Race Massacre burials.

But that does not mean the artifacts are not useful.

“They absolutely help,” said state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck, who has directed most of the field work. “What (the artifacts) help us do is tell the story of the landscape, not just the cemetery as we see it today. There has been tremendous modification of the landscape here in Oaklawn Cemetery over time, and so we know those artifacts help us to tell that story.”

Unexpected artifacts foreshadowed these discoveries in 2020 on the very first day of excavations. An iron door, likely to an old boiler or stove, and what appeared to be construction scrap tipped researchers to the fact the terrain was not as it seemed.

This was true above ground and below it.

The first excavation site was chosen because local tradition held that massacre victims might have been buried near some crepe myrtles along the cemetery’s western boundary, and because Regnier and colleague Scott Hammerschmidt detected a significant anomaly with their subsurface imaging equipment.

Regnier thought the imaging would be largely the extent of her involvement in the Oaklawn project. She is not a “cemetery archaeologist.” But she is an expert on old glass, crockery and cookware, skills that proved useful when the tracked excavator started unearthing artifacts without any sign of human remains.

“One of the things that we’ve had to figure out with Oaklawn is, how do we get a methodology that doesn’t slow down the goals of the main excavation — which is, of course, to expose burials — but also gets the most information that we can from the artifacts and recovers as many artifacts as we possibly can,” Regnier said.

The promising anomaly turned out to be a long-forgotten fill site, apparently built up for aesthetic and drainage reasons.

Over time, analyses of non-mortuary artifacts, soils, maps and records allowed the researchers to sketch out contours much different than seen along the western and southern edges of Oaklawn Cemetery today.

Streams, they learned, flowed — and still flow, below ground — along these borders. Besides the fill in the original excavation site, they learned that what became the cemetery’s Black potter’s field in 1917 had previously been a common dumping ground for all sorts of refuse.

Dirt had been layered on top of this to raise the ground horizon and make the piece of land suitable for burials.

Beyond giving the researchers a better feel for what Oaklawn was like in the early 20th century, the artifacts have given a Regnier a better feeling for what Tulsa was like.

“So 1895 to about 1905, we’re getting a lot of patent medicine bottles,” she said. “In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act is passed, but prior to that you get these crazy patent medicines being sold.”

Among such items listed in Regnier’s 2024 field report is Charles Hood’s Sarsaparilla Extract, which allegedly “purified the blood” while curing weakness, loss of appetite, constipation, syphilitic lesions and bone cancer.

Also found at Oaklawn: Dr. J. H. McLean’s Strengthening Cordial and Blood Purifier; The Great Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root Kidney, Liver, and Bladder Cure; Five Drops cough medicine; Paracamph Company first aid medicine; Dr. Caldwell’s Syrup of Pepsin; Lane’s Emulsion cold preventative; Warner’s Safe Liver & Kidney Cure; Chamberlain’s Colic, Cholera, and Diarrhoea Remedy; and Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.

As Regnier pointed out, most of these were useless if not outright dangerous. At 18% alcohol, Hood’s was not exactly a soft drink. And the Oaklawn inventory includes about a dozen bottles for Dr. Samuel Brubaker Hartman’s Peruna, a patent medicine made with 28% ethanol.

Peruna was so widely popular that Southern Methodist University gave the name to its mustang pony mascot — and so dangerous it was one of the substances that prompted the aforementioned Pure Food and Drug Act.

Regnier’s report includes similar analyses for other glass goods, ceramics, metals and other materials. A separate report, by the private contractor Stantec’s Brooke Drew, covers artifacts such as coffin and casket hardware related directly to the burials.

The large amount of discarded tableware and bottles of various types causes Regnier to speculate that one or more rooming houses dumped their refuse in the little ravine that at the time would have been southeast of town. She says she’s thought about trying to put together an exhibit of the preserved artifacts — and not just colorful dishes and bottles.

“One of the other things that we find a lot is … animal bone,” Regnier said. “Butchering cuts on cow bone. We have mutton. We have some horse bones, but I don’t think they were eating the horse. A lot of chicken bones.

“You can tell sort of what the socioeconomic status of people based on what bones are being deposited. What’s interesting is that what we’re seeing … a cross section. We’ve got both expensive cuts of meat and very cheap cuts of meat. So it looks like there’s a wide range of people from different socioeconomic groups who are using (what became) Oaklawn as a place to dispose of their trash.”

Regnier said the artifacts indicate that came to a complete stop around 1915, about the time that section — Section 20 — was added to Oaklawn.

Regnier said she’s beginning to sort out phases and transitions of consumption patterns from about 1895, through Tulsa’s first big oil boom beginning in 1905, into its second big boom with the opening of the Cushing and Osage fields.

“Is there a difference in that time period when Tulsa really starts to boom in population in the early 20th century, in what people have access to and what they can trade, and what the commercial commercial sales of goods are. So there’s a lot of really interesting stuff.”