1997 Excavation at Madame John's Legacy by Shannon Dawdy and GNOAP/UNO
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In 1997, Dr. Shannon Dawdy directed the second series of excavations at Madame John’s Legacy under the auspices of the Greater New Orleans Archaeological Program, a state program then based at the University of New Orleans. These investigations focused entirely upon areas e exterior of the primary structure and planned to mitigate impacts to archaeological resources in the rear courtyard associated with the installation of a new air conditioning system. This project was planned in part to comply with Louisiana’s Archaeological Resources Act (R.S. 41:1606), which mandates that significant archaeological remains on a state-owned property be considered during work that might negatively impact them.
Most of the images here are scanned from 35 mm slides taken for use in public presentations. In a very short period of time, digital photography has revolutionized the way that archaeologists can document objects recovered on excavations, in that now thousands of photographs of finds can be taken very quickly. However, at the same time, these innovations in photography generate new issues, as digital formats change rapidly, and the space to archive large bodies of data and guarantee that it is available in perpetuity itself can become a problem.
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Plan showing locations of previous excavations at Madame John’s relative to floorplan, with Dawdy’s excavations in green.
Source: Reproduced from Gray 2015. Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
Group of four units at completion of excavations.
Dawdy’s excavations, totaling six square meters of horizontal area, documented a complex stratigraphic sequence, with numerous artifact-rich midden deposits, features (mainly related to resurfacings of the patio/courtyard area), and a trash pit seemingly related to the 1788 fire that damaged or destroyed the Colonial period structure on the lot. | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
Artifacts from Midden Deposits at Madame John’s.
On French Quarter sites, midden deposits, or layers of household waste that build up in the ground over time, typically contain small fragments of pottery, glass from bottles and tablewares, animal bone, occasional pieces of iron hardware, architectural debris (like brick, mortar, and nails), and small everyday items, like buttons, beads, smoking pipes and pipe stems, and even specialized items like gunflints. Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology. | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
Pre-1788 fire ceramic materials from Dawdy excavations.
Ceramics make great temporal markers on archaeological sites. Most of the wares shown here are varieties of French tin-enameled pottery, called faience, which are indicative of the French Colonial era in the city. | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
Post-fire artifact assemblage from Dawdy excavations.
Large quantities of English pottery weren’t imported to the city until the latter part of the 1760s, so the presence of refined earthenware tablewares of English creamware and pearlware help archaeologists date assemblages to the Spanish Colonial era or after. In this case, the decorated pearlwares help to identify this assemblage as having been deposited after the 1788 fire. | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
English creamware from trash pit at Madame John’s.
A trash pit with dense historic fill was one of the most exciting discoveries of Dawdy’s investigations. While ‘midden’ deposits often consist of small fragments of household debris, broken and trampled into yard surfaces, large fragments like the ones shown here typically represent material discarded rapidly over a short length of time. Many of these creamware vessels were unburned, but melted window pane glass and charcoal in the same layer led Dawdy to suggest that the pit’s contents included material broken during the collapse of a wall or shelf in an unburned dportion of the building destroyed in 1788. | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
Native American pottery from pit.
The trash pit’s contents were also noteworthy for the presence of numerous fragments of Native American pottery, including at least one vessel identified as having been of historic period Creek origin, designated as ‘Ocmulgee Fields Incised’ in type-variety classifications. It is tempting to see such vessels in light of DeLanzos’s official roles as an official of the Spanish military; in 1792, he was eventually promoted to the position of Commandant of the Mobile post, where records give detailed account of DeLanzos’s role in the negotiations with Native groups at the Mobile post and surrounding territory. | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
Other materials from trash pit, including bone button blanks.
The pit contained large quantities of butchered animal bone, and it was thought to represent domestic debris potentially associated with the rear kitchen dependency at Madame John’s. It also contained 22 bone button disks, presumably associated with discarded smoke-damaged clothing. Those enslaved by the DeLanzos household likely would have lived and worked in the detached kitchen. At the time of Manuel DeLanzos’s death, an inventory of the estate lists six enslaved individuals belonging to him, including “a Creole mulatto named Pierre, cook, servant, and coachman; Joseph, Creole negro aged 18 years, servant; a creole mulatress named Prudence, aged 18 years; a negress named Claire, excellent laundress and ironer aged 35 years; a negress named Guiny aged 23 years, servant; and a negress named Charlot, aged 48, servant” (New Orleans NOtarial Archives, N. Broutin, 3/29/1813, cited in Dawdy 1998:43). | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.
Comparisons table, reproduced from Dawdy report.
Dawdy’s work at Madame John’s Legacy provided important data on consumption and the use of space in the Colonial period in New Orleans’ Vieux Carré. She used this in conjunction with a detailed reading of historical documents to examine the formation of a ‘Creole’ identity in the eighteenth century, particularly looking at the material changes between the Pascal-Real and the DeLanzos periods. However, coupled with new data from the interior of the main house (from the 2013 excavations), it now appears that the contents of the trash pit may also reflect the material lives of those enslaved by the DeLanzos family. | Source: Courtesy of UNO Department of Anthropology and Sociology.Map
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