10/20/2025
: One of the privies excavated during the Renaissance Center project was this wooden two-seater from Sector G, associated with the homestead of Lambert Beaubien. Diagnostic pottery and a newspaper fragment dating to April 3, 1833 dated the privy deposits to the early 1830s. Archaeologists interpreted the newspaper as a fragment of “bum fodder”, an ingenious predecessor to toilet paper. To learn more about the ceramics uncovered from the Beaubien privy, see Ellens, Samantha, Susan Villerot, and Don Adzigian (2021) “Interpreting the Sherds: Ceramic Consumption Practices in a Nineteenth-Century Riverfront Neighborhood”, Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 46(1).
Join us at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center next January 7-10 for ! Registration is open online at https://monkeylink.co/7374af until Monday, December 15, 2025. After December 15, all registrations must be done onsite.
Photo source: Gordon L. Grosscup Museum of Anthropology, Wayne State University
