Object Histories: A Lead Kosher Seal From New York City’s Five Points

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology of Marginalization and Resilience in the Northeast", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In the 1840s, Jewish Five Points resident Harris Goldberg discarded trash behind his 472 Pearl Street home. 150 years later, archaeologists recovered remnants of a roast beef dinner, fragments of glass tableware, and even the skull of a household pet parrot. Another interesting discovery was that of several lead plumbes or seals that were traditionally affixed to the legs of slaughtered chickens to reassure Jewish buyers about freshness and proper kosher procedures. This paper discusses these seals—the photo slides of which are housed at the NYC Archaeological Repository—and contextualizes them within a broader international history of plumbe usage. The author hopes that this paper and related research will allow New York City's Jewish community to tap into a past of pre-war immigration and the persistence of tradition in the city's most notorious 19th-century working class neighborhood.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Archaeology of Marginalization and Resilience in the Northeast

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow