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

Author(s): Ranjith M. Jayasena

Year: 2016

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.

Cite this Record

The Privy of ‘ Our Lord in the Attic’, The Archaeology of an 18th-century Artifact Assemblage in Amsterdam. Ranjith M. Jayasena. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434509)

Keywords

Temporal Keywords
18th Century

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 416