The Privy of ‘ Our Lord in the Attic’, The Archaeology of an 18th-century Artifact Assemblage in Amsterdam

Summary

Cesspits are a typical urban phenomenon and in Amsterdam these were usually brick structures beneath a latrine house. In addition to their primary sanitary function, they also became repositories for household waste, resulting in a record of domestic artifacts as well as faunal and botanical debris. Six decades of archaeology in Amsterdam have revealed over 300 cesspits, opening a window on the material culture and diet of the city’s population from the 14th-century onwards. This paper will focus on a cesspit found during renovation of the Museum ‘Our Lord in the Attic’ and excavated in 2013 by the Amsterdam office for Monuments and Archaeology. In the 17th- and 18th century this building had a beer house on the ground and a clandestine Catholic church upstairs. The archaeological assemblage from the building’s cesspit includes more than 3,000 largely-complete objects of ceramics and glass from c. 1675-1750.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Historical Archaeology in Europe: Current Research and Future Directions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 416