• The earliest architectural structure ever identified in New Orleans, a ca. 1717-1726 simple hut, which predates the streetgrid and appears to be a structure associated with the pioneer land-clearing days. A second very early, and well preserved, wood poteaux-en-terre structure dating to the early French period was also found (ca. 1726-1750s).

• The highest percentage of Native American material culture ever found on a colonial era site in New Orleans. Particularly noteworthy is a red-painted pottery newly nicknamed “New Orleans Red.” These ceramics as well as hide scrapers and associated wild animal food remains suggest that Indians were much more involved in the founding of New Orleans than the archival record allows.

• The original street surface, ditch, and banquette of Orleans Street (ca. 1726-1830s) which cut through the space before it was converted to a public garden. This is the first time the old ditch and banquette architecture has been exposed and investigated archaeologically. The ditch was full of the debris and lost items of early New Orleanians, with great potential to inform us about the conditions of daily life in the city, from clothing habits to health and diet.

• Numerous small items associated with religious, recreational, and educational activities that took place on the site, the highest concentration of any known site in New Orleans. A silver crucifix possibly associated with Pere Antoine is the most spectacular small artifact found at the site, but others such as votive statuary, children’s toys, coins, and evidence of past barbeques and picnics speak to the special place this garden area had in the lives of New Orleanians. If Jackson Square was their formal outdoor parlor, St. Anthony’s Garden was their informal outdoor family room.

• As part of the research design, over 20 targeted phytolith samples were collected. These microscopic remains of plant cells will help researchers identify which plants were cultivated on the site over several phases of its use as a garden. To our knowledge, this is the first time this technique has been has on a historic urban garden in North America.

• The site revealed several episodes in the disaster and recovery cycle of New Orleans’s history, from evidence of the catastrophic 1788 fire that wiped out the French Quarter to the 1914 temporary “Hurricane Chapel” that occupied the site after the cathedral was badly damaged during an unnamed storm that year. One unexpected feature encountered was what appears to be a henhouse that probably belonged to one of three free women of color who occupied the site after the fire, suggesting her means of livelihood.

• In addition to the Hurricane Chapel, other features and small finds suggest that residents and visitors have long viewed the site as a place set aside for religious practice, from an early 20th-century pet cemetery, to the likely remains of St. Joseph’s altars or saints feasts, and surface finds of votive candles and offerings passers-by still today insert through the surrounding iron fence. These activities co-existed with more worldly uses of the site for habitation, cooking, food gardening, and livestock raising, as well as commercial activities, prior to the Civil War. In the late nineteenth century, the site came to acquire a more exclusively religious and contemplative character at the same time that public access became more restricted.

• The archaeological investigation has confirmed the brief but intense episode of the garden’s use as a flower market and ice cream pavilion in the antebellum era, with ample evidence of a glass house, patio chairs, flower pots, and ice cream dishes. This episode of leisure and public entertainment on the site indicates that the French Quarter’s heritage as a pleasure destination is almost as old as the architecture vaunted in tourist brochures today. It began at least a generation earlier than the Victorian period, which most historians credit as the era that begat tourism.

In July, the artifacts and soil samples were transported to the University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology for analysis. Flotation processing and wet screening to recover botanical seeds, tiny bones and small artifacts such as beads, has been completed. Washing and basic sorting of the dry-screen artifacts (primarily ceramics, glass, animal bone, metal, architectural material and small items such as buttons, toys, and smoking pipes is 80% complete as of November 1, 2008. The next step will be to identify, describe, and count all of the estimated 30,000 diagnostic artifacts and enter this information into data sheets.

• Lab Photos