The Roots of Creole New Orleans: Archaeological Investigations at St. Louis Cathedral and Ursuline Convent

FAIN: RZ-50992-09

University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)
Shannon Lee Dawdy (Project Director: November 2008 to July 2013)

Investigation of the interactions among Native Americans, French colonists, and African Americans in colonial period New Orleans through archaeological excavations of the gardens associated with St. Louis Cathedral and the Ursuline Convent. (36 months)

Funding is requested to support a 3-year archaeological research project to investigate the French colonial foundations of New Orleans at two of its most significant historic complexes, St. Louis Cathedral and Ursuline Convent. The proposed work will extend excavations begun in the garden behind the cathedral in 2008 and incorporate the findings into a broader comparative framework that includes new fieldwork at the nearby Ursuline Convent Garden as well as specialized laboratory analyses. The study addresses how African, Native American, and European residents were exchanging knowledge and practices related to architecture, agriculture, cuisine, and medicine, and how these material practices contributed to the creation of New Orleans' unique creole culture. This project represents the first multi-site archaeological research program undertaken in the French Quarter.

Associated Products

Patina: A Profane Archaeology (Book)
Title: Patina: A Profane Archaeology
Author: Shannon Lee Dawdy
Abstract: When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the world reacted with shock on seeing residents of this distinctive city left abandoned to the floodwaters. After the last rescue was completed, a new worry arose—that New Orleans’s unique historic fabric sat in ruins, and we had lost one of the most charming old cities of the New World. In Patina, anthropologist Shannon Lee Dawdy examines what was lost and found through the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Tracking the rich history and unique physicality of New Orleans, she explains how it came to adopt the nickname “the antique city.” With innovative applications of thing theory, Patina studies the influence of specific items—such as souvenirs, heirlooms, and Hurricane Katrina ruins—to explore how the city’s residents use material objects to comprehend time, history, and their connection to one another. A leading figure in archaeology of the contemporary, Dawdy draws on material evidence, archival and literary texts, and dozens of post-Katrina interviews to explore how the patina aesthetic informs a trenchant political critique. An intriguing study of the power of everyday objects, Patina demonstrates how sharing in the care of a historic landscape can unite a city’s population—despite extreme divisions of class and race—and inspire civil camaraderie based on a nostalgia that offers not a return to the past but an alternative future.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo22882603.html
Primary URL Description: press page
Publisher: University of Chicago
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 022635119X
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Profane Archaeology and the Existential Dialectics of the City. (Article)
Title: Profane Archaeology and the Existential Dialectics of the City.
Author: Shannon Lee Dawdy
Abstract: What does it mean to view the landscape dialectically? I here experiment with an approach inspired by Benjamin, the intent of which is to expand our understanding of dialectics beyond the structural Marxism that dominates urban geography. I seek to temper macro-level analyses of political economies with a recognition of micro-level processes of both active matter and human consciousness that can shape, constrain, or undo. In fact, the evidence of urban archaeology demands such attention. Expanding dialectics requires a rapprochement among the followers of Marx, Sartre, and even Latour. I use archaeological evidence from New Orleans, and standard modes of organizing it (the property history, stratigraphy, taphonomy), to critique broader approaches to urbanism and materiality. Archaeology has much to contribute to understanding the city as an ongoing human-object formation full of contradictions, affect, and contingency. Following Sartre, I call this existential dialectics. Humans make cities, but not exactly as they please.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://jsa.sagepub.com/content/16/1/32
Primary URL Description: Journal site, SAGE journals
Format: Journal
Publisher: Journal of Social Archaeology 16(1) : 32-55.

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