Abstract: In spring 2023, students in the Historical Archaeology class at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, undertook the first archaeological excavations within and around a late nineteenth century adobe (CA-SDI-4674) in Escondido, California. Nine units were excavated to depths up to 40 cm in this initial session. The adobe is purported to have been the home of Elena and Parker Dear from ca. 1897 to 1904. Elena grew up at Rancho Guajome in Oceanside, California, and Parker became the owner of Rancho Santa Rosa in what is now Murrieta, California. They were well known for their hospitality and generosity, but a series of failed investments cost them their ranch. They moved from their 14-room Victorian home on 48,000 acres to this small adobe that Elena purchased and named Las Violetas in this out-of-the-way enclave known at the time as Aliso. This research presents the preliminary results of the spring 2023 archaeological excavations to determine if artifacts from the time that Elena and Parker Dear are thought to have lived at Las Violetas are present in the assemblage and whether those artifacts relate information about their socioeconomic status at that time. This paper was presented as a poster at the 2024 SCA Annual Meeting.
