North America (Geographic Keyword)
3,226-3,250 (3,468 Records)
Walker Lake, NV, a high desert, perennial lake in the western Great Basin, has been subject to naturally changing water levels for over 15,000 years. Ranging in size from the southernmost branch of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan to a small alkali wetland, Walker Lake provided varying landscapes for people to use and live around through time. Fieldwork during summer 2017 investigated drowned river channels and beach features for depositional history, site presence, and site preservation. Submerged...
Underwater Survey of the Historic Anchorage for Portsmouth, Dominica (2015)
The town of Portsmouth, located on the northwestern coast of Dominica, is bordered by Prince Rupert’s Bay. Utilized as a deepwater port off the Guadeloupe Passage, this coastline was preferred as a watering site by the indigenous Kalinago and by sailing ships entering and leaving the Caribbean Sea. Dominica, originally a British colonial outpost (1763-1977), is strategically situated between the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. From its inception, Portsmouth was a planned...
Understanding Rural and Urban Privy Vaults: An Overview of their Utilization and Morphological Transformation Through Time. (2016)
Until the advent and widespread adoption of modern plumbing, the privy vault played nearly as important a role to permanent occupation as would a sustainable water source. This paper will examine the various construction methods employed while investigating the rationale behind changes in morphology. Special focus will be given to privies within the urban setting of turn of the century East St. Louis, Illinois and comparisons will be made between privy vaults found in various St. Louis, Missouri...
The Undine, A Tea Clipper in the Savannah River (2016)
The Savannah District is proposing to expand the Savannah Harbor navigation channel. Diving investigations identified the remains of the Undine, a historically significant tea clipper built in Sutherland, England by the shipbuilder William Pile. In a class with other famous Clippers like the Flying Cloud and the Cutty Sark, the Undine represents the evolution apex of the sailing merchantman, and is in the class of the most significant clippers, those built specifically for the China Tea or Opium...
Unearthing Narratives from an Appalachian Hollow: The Benefits of Environmental Mitigation Banking in Cultural Resource Management (2016)
Since the creation of the National Historic Preservation Act, a pairing has developed between environmental and cultural resource management. Wetland and stream mitigation banking is a common way to offset the environmental impacts of activities permitted under the Clean Water Act. These projects are intended to create or enhance aquatic resources in order to offset impacts within the same geographic region. Their location within perpetual conservation easements and need for Section 106...
Unearthing Their Lives: Documenting the Evolution of African American Life at Clover Bottom and Beyond (2016)
Recent excavations at Clover Bottom Plantation are contributing new information to a rich documentary record of the lives of enslaved and later freed African Americans who lived and/or worked there. Clover Bottom Plantation was owned by the Hoggatt family for the majority of its nineteenth-century history. At its peak, it was home to 60 enslaved individuals who were listed, but remained unnamed in the 1860 census. Through a comparative study of available primary sources and newspaper accounts,...
Uneven Landscapes, Uneven Histories: Maroons in the American Historical Narrative (2017)
Throughout most of the Atlantic world, Maroons play a critical role in local, regional, and even national histories. In contrast, marronage in colonial America and the early United States is largely absent from the American historical narrative. Thousands of Maroons lived in The Great Dismal Swamp, located in Virginia and North Carolina, from the late 17th century until Emancipation. And, Maroons played a critical role in slowing US expansionism in Florida, once known as a refuge for escaped...
"Unidentified Planes Sighted": The Application of KOCOA Military Terrain Analysis to Aerial Combat (2018)
KOCOA military terrain analysis is a tool used to interpret and analyze terrestrial, and more recently, naval battlescapes; however there has been little experimentation with the application of KOCOA to aerial combat. Renewed interest in the June 1942 attack on Midway atoll (coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the attack) presented researchers with an opportunity to expand KOCOA definitions to incorporate aerial combat into terrain analysis. The resulting terrain features were used to...
Uniform Buttons from the Site of CSS Georgia (2017)
The 2015 excavation of CSS Georgia yielded nearly 30 buttons spanning the time from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. Uniform buttons played an important part of distinguishing between troops, duties, and rank in the military. Changes in design from year to year and manufacturer to manufacturer can inform researchers of the earliest date a button may have been used, where it was manufactured, and where the individual wearing it may have been located during his service. While sourced based...
Unintended Consequences of Digitalization in Archaeology: A Cautionary Tale (2018)
We are hurtling swiftly into the digital realm, finding faster and more complex ways to record and excavate sites, analyze data, and publish results. While most of this wave of increasing digitalization seems a good thing, all is never what it seems. In this paper, I explore some pitfalls of this ever speedier and efficient mode of archaeology. Most will recognize the oft described short lifespan of digital formats and the need to migrate data to new formats. But, it is highly unlikely that this...
Unloading History: Schooner-Barges, Self-Unloaders, and the Development of a Modern Maritime Landscape (2015)
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Great Lakes were at the center of rapid technological advancements in shipping and shipbuilding. The diverse demands for trade and unique geographic characteristics of the region created the necessity for highly specialized vessels and technologies. While the development of steam propulsion and use of metal hulls aided this progress, advancements in unloading systems helped propel shipping into the twentieth century. The emergence...
Unnoticed All His Worth, a Dog Burial at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2017)
One dog (Canis lupus familiaris) was recovered from a six-sided wooden coffin among the human interments identified during the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery Removal Project of 2013. Milwaukee County used the cemetery (ca. 1880 – 1920) to bury people who died at institutions located on the country grounds or to bury individuals with survivors unable to afford burial elsewhere. The cemetery is contemporaneous with the establishment of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to...
Unprecedented Times Lead to New Internship Strategies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the North American Archaeology Lab at the American Museum of Natural History transitioned a long running internship program to a remote micro-internship. We had to consider if offering a remote internship was feasible, what it would require on our end, what projects could be done remotely, what the interns would get out of...
Unraveling the Use of Yards: Synthesizing Data from Monticello’s North and South Yard Excavations (2016)
Over the past thirty years, archaeologists at Monticello have excavated portions of the lawns located on opposite sides of Thomas Jefferson’s home. To date, no comprehensive synthesis of the archaeological data from these excavations has been conducted. Because of the varied tasks undertaken in the structures adjacent to these yards, the areas on the North and South side of the mansion were functionally different. Comparative stratigraphic and ware-type analysis aim to expose stratigraphic...
Unroofed, Uprooted, and Unapologetic: Homelessness in Washington D.C. from 1890-1930 (2018)
Homelessness is a historically contingent condition of the Capitalist Mode of Production. Yet, it is often constructed as a contemporary problem arising from individual failures and misfortunes. Historically, homelessness has proven to be a fluid category, defying institutional definitions and mitigative strategies. In this paper, I explore the socio-economic phenomena of homelessness in Washington D.C. from ca. 1890-1930. Public and private institutions dedicated to converting the homeless into...
Unsettling the Classroom: Teaching Archaeology’s Ties with Settler-Colonialism (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pedagogy in the Undergraduate Archaeology Classroom" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For well over a decade, archaeologists such as Pyburn (2005) and Arnold (2005) have highlighted the need for teaching to engage with the larger, core issues that shape our research. Nevertheless, high-profile archaeological conversations about decolonization have tended to focus exclusively on research theory and practice. Yet Atalay...
Unusual Can Types from the Cortez Mining District, Nevada (2018)
A large mitigation project in central Nevada resulted in the collection of over 3,500 can specimens. Besides the typical, mass-produced, nineteenth and early twentieth-century can varieties that are well-documented, several unusual can types were also identified. These include cans with more than one vent hole, atypical seams, and large filler caps. Archival and archaeological evidence indicates the Cortez Mining District once had a large diverse population, with canned products imported from...
"Unwanted Guests": Evidence of Parasitic Infections in Archaeological Mortuary Contexts (2017)
Parasites have had a significant impact on the course of human history. Activities of a variety of parasites throughout the world can lead to lethargy, dementia, malabsorption of nutrients, bowel obstruction, internal bleeding, blindness, physical disability and deformation, and many other symptoms of disease. Furthermore, parasites have caused the deaths of countless individuals, have resulted in the abandonment of settlements, and have even affected the outcome of wars. The effect that...
Up and Down the Mountain: Exploring differential access within Monticello’s enslaved community (2018)
Recent research at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello demonstrated marked differences between the late 18th century household assemblages of enslaved laborers living in the fields and enslaved domestic and artisan workers living by the mansion. Ceramics from Mulberry Row’s mountaintop quarters exhibited more variety in ware and decoration, while those at the Site 8 field quarter included high proportions of costly decorated Chinese porcelain. Expanding the original analysis, we incorporate additional...
Up Close and Personal: Objects as Expressions of Identity at the Abiel Smith School (2018)
Archeological artifacts discovered at the Abiel Smith School (ca. 1834-1855) include personal objects like jewelry, buttons, combs, and toys. Such items used for adornment, grooming, or leisure can provide insight into how the students perceived themselves in terms of individual, communal, and ethnic identity. This paper will examine these objects as a means to answering the following questions: Can specific personal objects help us understand the students’ cultural backgrounds? To what...
"Up Pops The Monitor": The Battle Of Hampton Roads In Popular Culture (2017)
On March 9, 1862 in the placid waters of Hampton Roads in Virginia, the Union steam-battery Monitor met the Confederate ram Virginia (née Merrimack) in battle. Though this first clash of ironclads was technically a draw, it helped to usher in a new era in naval warfare. It also ushered in over 150 years of popular music, poetry, artwork, alcohol, clothing, sports teams, farm equipment, and home appliances inspired by the meeting of these two vessels. Interest in the Monitor in the 20th and 21st...
Updates and Progress of the Ongoing Public Oriented Cultural Resource Monitoring Program (2017)
Scattered near the coastline of Assateague Island, along the Maryland/Virginia border, hundreds of ships met their demise through harsh weather conditions and treacherous shoals. Similar environmental factors have allowed archaeologists to document and collect data on these sites through the establishment of a Historic Wreck Tagging Program. The author, working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, developed and implemented a system to track the degradation and movement of shipwreck timbers as...
Upland Box Tombs: Southern Variants on a Popular Nineteenth Century Grave Cover (2016)
Box tombs (aka False Crypts) are a common grave cover in late eighteenth and nineteenth century cemeteries. In areas above the fall line in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama, local granites and similar igneo-metamorphic stone were used to form rectangular surface chambers approximating the shape and dimensions of their more formally milled counterparts. While frequently observed, very little is known about the form. Variants include the slot-and-tab and tombs made from milled stone panels...
Urban Archaeology in the City of the Saints and the Growth of a Real Frontier City (2015)
While archaeologist in the western United States survey wide open expanses for federal and state agencies, archaeology in the urban centers themselves are often ignored. The majority of city centers consist mostly of businesses and business is money. Archaeology in these districts cost time and money, so archaeology is almost never undertaken unless it is done for an agency that must follow established laws and regulations that include archaeology. The new United States Courthouse for the...
The Urban Archeology Corps: A partnership between Groundwork Anacostia and the National Park Service (2013)
The National Park Service has partnered with Groundwork Anacostia, a community-based environmental non-profit organization, on a heritage education work experience to introduce local youth to archeology. This paper draws on the outcomes of the work experience as a case study in federal/local partnerships in archeology outside a traditional field school model.