When archaeologists excavated the future site of Wadaag Commons before construction began, they recovered more than 11,000 artifacts representing generations of families who lived in this corner of Minneapolis.

At first glance, the collection doesn’t look extraordinary: broken dishes, medicine bottles, children’s toys, rusted tools, discarded household goods … In fact, most of it is literally trash.

But that’s exactly what makes it so valuable.

Archaeologists often say they aren’t uncovering what people wanted future generations to remember. They’re uncovering what they left behind. Unlike family photographs, memoirs, or museum collections, trash isn’t curated. It captures everyday life without the filter of memory.

The deposits uncovered at Wadaag Commons weren’t simply random piles of garbage. Many represent moments of transition: a family moving away after years in the same home, a property changing ownership, a death in the family, or a long-occupied house being cleared out all at once. These weren’t everyday trips to the trash bin. They were major cleanouts that marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

When families emptied cupboards, cleaned out bedrooms, filled abandoned privies, or discarded years of accumulated belongings, they unintentionally created archaeological time capsules. Matching sets of dishes remained together. Medicine bottles sat beside children’s toys, worn shoes, broken tools, and kitchenware. Rather than preserving a single day, these deposits captured entire households at pivotal moments in their lives.

That is why archaeologists can learn so much from them.

The people who once lived here never intended to leave behind a record of their lives. Yet together, their discarded belongings became what the archaeological team described as “one of the largest diagnostic sets of information collected within the Twin Cities.”

History often remembers the exceptional. Archaeology remembers the ordinary.

Here are nine things these 11,000 artifacts reveal.

1. Yesterday’s Trash Became Today’s Time Capsules

As Minneapolis neighborhoods connected to the city’s sewer system in the early 20th century, backyard privies gradually became obsolete. Instead of immediately filling these underground vaults with soil, many families found a practical new use for them. Old privies became convenient places to dispose of broken dishes, bottles, toys, food scraps, ash, and other household debris during major cleanouts.

To the families, they were simply getting rid of unwanted items.

To archaeologists, they became time capsules.

Unlike objects lost one at a time or scattered across a landscape, the contents of abandoned privies often remained largely undisturbed for more than a century. They preserved concentrated snapshots of everyday life, revealing what people bought, cooked, repaired, collected, valued, and eventually discarded.

The transition to indoor plumbing unintentionally preserved hundreds of stories that might otherwise have disappeared. Yesterday’s trash became today’s time capsules, giving archaeologists an unusually complete picture of the people who built this neighborhood.

2. Minneapolis Was Already Connected to the World

Families living on Snelling Avenue purchased German stoneware, English ceramics, imported mineral water, Swedish commemorative medals, nationally distributed foods, and products manufactured hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

These discoveries reflect an era when expanding railroads, steamship travel, and international trade were transforming everyday life. Minneapolis had become an important transportation and milling hub, linking local neighborhoods to manufacturers across the United States and Europe.

Even before the age of globalization, Minneapolis was connected to an international network of people, products, and ideas. The artifacts simply make those connections visible.

3. Immigrant Communities Have Always Built New Lives While Holding Onto Home

One of the most striking lessons from the Wadaag Commons excavation is how familiar the immigrant experience feels.

The artifacts and historical records reveal families doing many of the same things that newcomers to Minneapolis do today. They looked for work. They started businesses. They relied on family and community networks. They sought out familiar foods, medicines, languages, and traditions while building new lives in an unfamiliar city.

In other words, they didn’t choose between preserving their culture and becoming part of Minneapolis. They did both.

The Carlson family offers an illustrative example.

Swedish immigrants who lived at 2121 Snelling Avenue between 1906 and 1908, the Carlsons embraced life in Minneapolis while maintaining strong connections to their cultural community. Archaeologists traced medicine bottles recovered from their household to J.O. Peterson’s Drug Store, a Swedish-owned pharmacy in what is now the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Rather than simply visiting the closest pharmacy, the family appears to have sought out a business where they could find familiar products and, perhaps, speak their own language.

Other discoveries tell a similar story. Archaeologists recovered German-made dolls and doll accessories connected to the Deblon household. Historical research revealed that the family’s daughters, Barbara and Josephine, worked at Holtzermann’s Chicago Store, a retailer known for importing authentic German toys. The artifacts suggest that cultural connections extended beyond the neighborhood and remained an important part of daily life.

These discoveries remind us that culturally specific businesses have long served purposes far beyond commerce. They were places where newcomers could find trusted products, hear familiar languages, maintain traditions, exchange news, and build relationships with people who shared similar experiences.

These stories also challenge a common misconception about immigration. We often remember earlier generations as people who arrived, quickly assimilated, and effortlessly became part of American society. The archaeology tells a more nuanced story. Earlier immigrant communities often maintained their languages, traditions, and cultural networks while gradually putting down roots in Minneapolis. They supported one another, opened businesses, raised families, and contributed to the city’s economic and cultural life.

Walk through Minneapolis today and you’ll find East African restaurants, Latino markets, Hmong-owned businesses, Mexican bakeries, and other community gathering places serving many of the same functions that Swedish pharmacies, German retailers, and immigrant-owned businesses did more than a century ago.

The names, languages, and cultures have changed. The pattern has not. For more than a century, newcomers have carried pieces of home with them while helping shape Minneapolis into the city it is today.

4. Small Businesses Have Always Been the Heart of the Neighborhood

Historical records and archaeological evidence point to a remarkable variety of enterprises operating in and around the site over the decades. Grocers. Bakers. Confectioners. Cigar makers. Shoe repair shops. Street vendors. Popcorn sellers. Together, they paint a picture of a neighborhood where entrepreneurship was simply part of everyday life.

One of the most fascinating discoveries was a business that had nearly disappeared from memory.

Around 1905, Swedish immigrant brothers Alfred and John Youngstrom opened the Youngstrom Brothers Brewery at 2119 Snelling Avenue. Before the excavation, very little was known about the business. A 1906 brewing trade publication listed it among Minneapolis’ “new breweries,” but within a year, city directories showed the brothers had moved on. John was working as a laborer. Alfred had become a teamster. The brewery had seemingly vanished from history.

The artifacts helped bring it back into view.

Beneath later layers of fill, archaeologists uncovered a deposit containing numerous beer and liquor bottles dating to the same period as the Youngstrom Brothers Brewery. While the evidence cannot definitively explain how the business operated, the bottles and other artifacts strongly suggest a connection to the brewery or to John Youngstrom, who continued living at the property after the business closed.

Without the excavation at Wadaag Commons, the Youngstrom Brothers Brewery might have remained little more than a passing reference in a century-old trade journal.

It is also a reminder that the neighborhood’s history was shaped not only by the businesses that became successful or well known, but also by the countless small enterprises that served their communities for a few years before giving way to the next generation.

Some businesses remained for decades. Others lasted only a short time before changing hands or closing their doors.

Collectively, they gave the neighborhood its character. Residents didn’t simply buy groceries or repair shoes. They saw familiar faces, exchanged news, and built relationships that made the neighborhood feel like home.

These businesses did far more than sell goods and services. They gave people places to gather, exchange news, build relationships, and create a sense of belonging. The local grocer knew your family. The baker recognized regular customers. The repair shop owner became a familiar face on the block. A visit to a neighborhood business often meant running into friends, meeting new neighbors, or simply feeling connected to the place you called home.

In many ways, these businesses became the neighborhood’s living room.

That role has not changed.

Today, we instinctively recognize the difference between a thriving commercial corridor and one lined with vacant storefronts. Busy sidewalks, welcoming storefronts, familiar shop owners, and people lingering to talk all contribute to a sense of place that buildings alone cannot create.

Long before anyone used terms like “placemaking” or “vibrant commercial corridors,” neighborhood businesses were already doing exactly that. They created places where relationships could grow, where newcomers found opportunity, and where a collection of houses became a community.

The names on the storefronts may change. The products they sell may evolve. New generations of entrepreneurs may arrive with new ideas and new cultures. But the role they play remains the same, transforming streets into communities and neighborhoods into places that felt like home.

5. Archaeology Gives Ordinary People a Voice

If you searched only the historical records of the neighborhood, you might conclude that it was built almost entirely by men who owned businesses or property.

City directories list brewery owners, grocers, laborers, bakers, teamsters, and merchants. Property records identify owners. Newspapers announce business openings and civic events. Again and again, the names that survive are overwhelmingly those of men with public roles.

But those records tell only part of the story.

Behind every household was an entire network of people whose contributions rarely appeared in official documents. Women prepared meals, mended clothing, managed household budgets, cared for children and aging relatives, treated illnesses, operated boarding houses, and kept families running through countless daily tasks. Children played, learned, and grew up in these homes. Laborers and boarders came and went. Renters moved frequently. Immigrant and Black families (including the Thomas and Royster families) built lives that often left few written records behind.

Many of these people are difficult to trace today. Before modern recordkeeping, city directories often listed only the head of household. Married women typically adopted their husband’s surname, making it challenging to follow their lives over time. Renters rarely generated the property records that help historians reconstruct the past. Unless someone owned a business, held public office, or appeared in the newspaper, they might leave behind only the faintest documentary footprint.

Archaeology tells a different story.

A mixing bowl worn smooth from years of use. Children’s toys discarded during a household cleanout. Medicine bottles used to care for sick family members. Sewing supplies, canning jars, dishes, food containers, and well-used household tools all speak to the work of everyday life. They remind us that history unfolded not only in businesses and government offices, but around kitchen tables, backyard clotheslines, wash tubs, and family meals.

These artifacts cannot tell us every name or every story. But they reveal the lives of people who rarely appear in history books and remind us that neighborhoods are built by far more than the individuals whose names appear on deeds or storefronts.

Archaeology fills in the spaces where written history falls silent.

It helps us see not only the business owners and property holders, but also the women, children, renters, laborers, immigrants, and working families whose everyday lives shaped this neighborhood just as profoundly. Their stories may not have been carefully recorded, but they were preserved in the ordinary objects they left behind.

6. People Repaired, Reused, and Made Things Last

The artifacts uncovered at Wadaag Commons reveal a relationship with material goods that feels surprisingly different from our own.

For many families living in the neighborhood during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, replacing everyday household items was rarely the first option. Dishes were used until they chipped or broke beyond repair. Glass bottles were reused. Clothing was mended. Shoes were resoled. Furniture was repaired. Household objects often remained in use for years, sometimes decades, before they were finally discarded.

The archaeology reflects these choices. Many of the objects recovered show signs of long use before they ultimately found their way into privies or ash pits during household cleanouts. People extracted as much value as possible from the things they owned.

This wasn’t about nostalgia or environmentalism. It was about practicality.

Many neighborhood residents were immigrants or first-generation Americans building new lives with limited resources. Repairing an object was almost always less expensive than buying a new one, and neighborhood businesses often existed specifically to provide those services. Historical records from the area document shoe repair shops, tinsmiths, and other trades that helped extend the life of everyday possessions. Repair wasn’t a niche hobby. It was part of the local economy.

Over the past century, that relationship with material goods gradually changed. Mass production made many products less expensive to replace than to repair. Manufacturers increasingly designed goods that were difficult or impossible to fix, a practice now widely associated with planned obsolescence. As repair became less common, it also began to carry an unfair social stigma. Buying something new came to symbolize progress and prosperity, while repairing or reusing old items was sometimes viewed as something people did only if they could not afford otherwise.

Today, concerns about climate change, overflowing landfills, resource consumption, and the environmental costs of manufacturing have sparked renewed interest in repairing, reusing, and maintaining the things we own. “Right to Repair” legislation, repair cafés, thrift stores, refill programs, and the growing circular economy all reflect a shift toward practices that earlier generations would have found entirely ordinary.

The artifacts from Wadaag Commons remind us that this way of living is not a new invention. Long before sustainability became a global conversation, neighborhood families were already practicing it out of necessity, ingenuity, and respect for the value of their possessions.

Perhaps one of archaeology’s most unexpected lessons is that some of the solutions we are rediscovering today are, in fact, old ones. The past reminds us that caring for what we own, repairing what we can, and finding new uses for old things are not signs of scarcity or failure. They are time-tested practices that helped communities thrive for generations, and they may prove just as valuable in building a more sustainable future.

7. Medicine Reveals a Very Different World

Medicine bottles and medical devices uncovered during the Wadaag Commons excavation offer a fascinating glimpse into everyday health care before modern medicine.

Archaeologists recovered bottles for cod liver oil, baby oil, cough syrups, earache remedies, disinfectants, laxatives, and dozens of other products that once filled household medicine cabinets. Some reflected the best medical knowledge of the era. Others promised far more than they could deliver.

One discovery was bottles of Knoxit, an over-the-counter medicine advertised as a guaranteed five-day cure for gonorrhea, along with two urethral syringes used to administer the treatment at home. Today we know Knoxit didn’t cure the disease. It often reduced symptoms temporarily while infected individuals unknowingly continued spreading the infection.

The deposit offers a remarkable glimpse into a public health crisis unfolding during and after World War I. Nearly one in four American recruits was found to have a venereal disease, yet effective antibiotics were still decades away. Minnesota responded by creating one of the nation’s first Divisions of Venereal Disease in 1918, opening free clinics, regulating questionable patent medicines, and launching public education campaigns.

Other artifacts reveal how quickly medical understanding has changed.

A bottle of Lysol reminds us that the disinfectant was once marketed to women as a feminine hygiene product and even as a contraceptive, claims that were both ineffective and dangerous. A bottle of Auralgan ear drops reflects another chapter in medical history. The product was intended to relieve children’s ear pain by numbing the ear, but it contained no antibiotics to treat the underlying infection and was eventually removed from the U.S. market because its safety and effectiveness could not be demonstrated.

These discoveries remind us that archaeology doesn’t just uncover what people owned. It reveals what they worried about, how they cared for their families, and the hope they placed in the medical knowledge of their time.

8. From Neighborhood Shops to National Brands

One of the most interesting stories hidden in the artifacts isn’t just what people bought. It’s how American shopping habits were changing.

The earliest deposits contain evidence of a neighborhood economy built around local businesses. Archaeologists connected families to nearby pharmacies, grocers, breweries, confectioneries, and other immigrant-owned businesses that served people who often shared their language and cultural background. The report notes that many immigrant families remained loyal to merchants from their own communities because they trusted the products, the service, and the familiarity those businesses offered.

Over the next several decades, that began to change.

As manufacturing expanded and national distribution networks grew, recognizable brands increasingly appeared in household trash pits. Archaeologists recovered bottles and containers from products such as French’s Mustard, Mazola, Maxwell House Coffee, Crisco, Spry, Dr Pepper, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, and Lysol, capturing the rise of a new kind of consumer culture.

The shift was intentional. National advertising promised consistency. Whether you bought a product in Minneapolis or Milwaukee, companies assured customers it would taste, look, and perform the same. For many shoppers, that predictability became part of the appeal.

After World War II, rising incomes gave many American families greater purchasing power, accelerating the popularity of nationally marketed goods. At the same time, advertising often reflected the inequalities of the era. National campaigns overwhelmingly targeted white middle-class consumers, while Black Americans and many immigrant communities were frequently overlooked or excluded, even as they participated in and helped build the country’s growing consumer economy.

The archaeology at Wadaag Commons captures that transition one bottle at a time. Early deposits reflect a neighborhood sustained by local businesses and immigrant entrepreneurs. Later ones reveal the growing influence of national brands that reshaped shopping habits across America.

9. Neighborhoods Have Always Been Places of Change

One of the clearest lessons from archaeology is that neighborhoods are never frozen in time.

It can be easy to look at a familiar street, a historic building, or a longtime business and imagine that things were once more stable. But the artifacts uncovered at Wadaag Commons tell a different story. The neighborhood has always been changing.

Families moved in and moved out. Businesses opened, struggled, and closed. Buildings changed hands. Homes were renovated, expanded, or eventually replaced. Each generation adapted the neighborhood to meet its own needs.

The archaeological deposits at Wadaag Commons captured some of these moments of transition. A household cleanout might represent a family leaving after many years in the same home. A collection of bottles and business-related artifacts might mark a short-lived enterprise. Discarded household goods might reflect a property changing ownership or a building entering a new chapter.

These moments of change are not unique to today. They have always been part of neighborhood life.

The same streets that once welcomed Swedish immigrants opening small businesses later became home to new waves of residents, entrepreneurs, and families from different backgrounds. The languages spoken, the businesses operating, and the people walking those streets have changed over time. That movement is part of what has made Minneapolis neighborhoods vibrant.

Archaeology also reminds us that every generation experiences change differently. For some people, a changing neighborhood represents new opportunities, new connections, and new energy. For others, change can bring uncertainty and concern about losing familiar places, relationships, or a sense of belonging.

The artifacts of Wadaag Commons do not tell us that change is always easy. They show us that change is constant.

The history beneath our feet shows that neighborhoods survive not because they remain exactly the same, but because people continue to invest in them, adapt to them, and make them their own.

See the Stories for Yourself

The artifacts recovered from Wadaag Commons are not made of gold or precious stone. Most are broken dishes, medicine bottles, children’s toys, rusted tools, and other ordinary household objects.

Yet together they remind us that neighborhoods are built not only by famous people or grand buildings, but by families raising children, immigrants starting businesses, neighbors supporting one another, and countless everyday decisions that rarely make it into history books.

We invite you to visit Redesign’s office to see a selection of these artifacts in person.

They may look like ordinary objects.

Once you know their stories, you’ll never look at them the same way again.