Crucibles in the Antebellum Assemblage and Imagination: Unique Finds from a French Quarter Archaeological Investigation

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 2017, the University of New Orleans located two privy shafts in a French Quarter house lot: one brick-lined privy shaft superimposed upon the other unlined privy pit. The contents of the two fill episodes were temporarily distinct, one from the early-nineteenth century and the other from the mid-nineteenth century. Mixture between the contents from the two privy shaft features limited in-depth interpretation of the features and their tangled assemblages, but identification of multiple crucibles from the younger deposit are interpreted as unique artifacts from this antebellum household. Without clear avenues of comparative artifact analysis, we reverted to asking basic research questions about why the crucibles could have been in the assemblage in general. By examining data from portable X-Ray fluorescence scans, anecdotes from historical newspapers, and historical primary source documents, this paper examines the role of the crucible in antebellum America—its uses, its potential, and its multiple connotations in a period marked by capital development and risk, Victorian obsession with morality and crime, and rapid technological advancement. Combined with the transition of commercial cottage industries to industrialized factories, these crucibles are part an integral transformation of the material culture of the antebellum period.

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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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40094.0