Mary Ann Hall's House Summary

The Donna J. Seifert and Joseph Balicki’s article, Mary Ann Hall's House, discusses about the archaeological investigations conducted at two vacant lots located at a proposed building site for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. In the archaeological investigations, the archaeologists discovered material remains associated with a mid-nineteenth brothel called Mary Ann Hall’s (Seifert and Balicki 2005:59). In addition to the discovery of the brothel, the archaeologists also discovered other households from the mid-nineteenth century that were built around the same time as the brothel. The two excavation sites provides an interesting case study in North American historical archaeology because, archaeologists working
on the site, cross –referenced the historical records and the material remains to determine that the Mary Ann Hall’s brothel was an high-class establishment (Seifert and Balicki 2005:59). By examining the archaeological deposits from the excavation site, archaeologists were able to classify the households into four types according to their artifact style. Each household represents the resident or owner’s social class (Seifert and Balicki 2005:59). It was determined that the one household in the excavation site with a high number of artifacts such as such as jewelry, porcelain and ironstone tableware was the Mary Ann Hall’s brothel (Seifert and Balicki 2005:65-67).