New Orleans City Archaeology Initiatives

Summary

This is an abstract from the "*SE New Orleans and Its Environs: Historical Archaeology and Environmental Precarity" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In 2018, the City of New Orleans hired a full-time archaeologist as part of their $2 billion FEMA partnership for infrastructure work stemming from the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Monitoring projects have unearthed data concerning the construction of the city’s roadways, especially historic paving types and streetcar infrastructure. Colonial or earlier sites within New Orleans’s geographical footprint are targeted and given special preference in the federally funded monitoring endeavors, although their identification has been challenging in an environment of heavy disturbance from prior utility and roadway construction. The archaeologist’s current priority is administering these 200+ grant-related projects; however, issues involving Section 106, or archeological resources in general, arise on a regular basis, lending credence to the potential for this position even after this grant. This paper documents the findings from these infrastructure projects: patterns of precontact and postcontact land usage and development, identification of additional target areas with unique historical value, and suggested approaches to better protect or mitigate archaeological resources within the City of New Orleans in the future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• *SE New Orleans and Its Environs: Historical Archaeology and Environmental Precarity   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40060.0