North America (Geographic Keyword)
3,326-3,350 (3,468 Records)
In the early 19th century, James Madison's plantation in Orange County, VA was undergoing a number of dramatic changes as the house and grounds were extensively modified. At some point during this period, an unusually complex water supply system was constructed in what is now called the South Yard, an area near the main house where enslaved families lived and worked. This paper examines the evidence for this system, along with other water sources within the formal grounds, to consider not only...
Way Hay and Up She Rises: The Recovery, Conservation, and Documentation of a Historic Admiralty Anchor from the Gulf of Mexico (2018)
In 2013, a historic anchor was recovered from the Gulf of Mexico by a contractor working for an offshore energy operator. Because the operator failed to notify the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) of the discovery, the operator was in violation of regulations protecting submerged archaeological resources. A compromise was reached between the bureau and the operator resulting in the transportation of the anchor to the University of West Florida (UWF) for conservation and...
We All Need to Talk about Archaeology in the CRM Power Nexus (2018)
The archaeological component of the National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 consultation embodies an intersection of power that has privileged archaeologists and their work at the expense of accomplishing all legal mandates and has elevated the practice of archaeology as a science above any need for negotiation for project-specific approaches. This cross-disciplinary conversation is necessary as the current situation increasingly affects the ability of other Cultural Resource Management...
"We can do better, we have to do better": Reevaluating and Remounting a Traveling Exhibit (2018)
When approaching the evolving horizons of interpretation and presentation, it is important to reevaluate our own efforts. In 2013, archaeologists from the University of Maryland mounted an exhibit based on their research at the Wye House Plantation. The exhibit ran at a museum in a nearby town. It was a culmination of years of excavation and cultivating relationships with descendants. Despite the archaeologists' efforts, the exhibit fell short of their goals. This prompted reflection and...
"We Commenced Replying to a Battery of the Enemy": Locating Turner’s (C.S.A.) Artillery at the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, 8 October 1862 (2017)
The October 1862 Battle of Perryville was the largest engagement fought in the state of Kentucky during the American Civil War. Although inconclusive, the battle was largely considered to be both a tactical victory for the Confederacy and a strategic victory for the Union. Smith’s Mississippi Battery (C.S.A.), under the command of Lieut. William B. Turner, would play a crucial role in the Confederate advance. Historical documents indicate that Smith’s (Turner’s) battery engaged Union forces from...
"We dined with him that day...in the French Manner": Food, identity, and politics in the Mississippi Valley (2016)
Located on the frontier of the French Louisiana colony in the Mississippi Valley, early 18th century colonial fortresses were centers of intercultural exchange and negotiation between the French inhabitants and the powerful indigenous nations they lived among. This paper examines animal remains and ceramic artifacts recovered from colonial outposts dating to this period. Faunal artifacts and locally made colonoware vessels recovered from these sites provides strong evidence of the intimate...
"We have done very little investigation there; there is a great deal yet to do": The changing historic landscape of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. (2017)
For several decades, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA) has used the benchmark year of 1799 for landscape interpretation within the estate’s historic core. Efforts to restore the grounds and dependencies have been a paramount concern, but elements such as a colonial revival garden (1930s), relic house (1928), and porters’ lodges (c. 1818) survive. Along with these features, different generations of historic plantings of trees and shrubberies and associated gravel pathways exist from the...
"We like them just fine": Racializing Hiring Practices and Japanese American Sawmill Labor in Western Washington, 1900 – 1930 (2016)
The populations of many of the sawmill towns scattered across Western Washington state in the early 20th century included a sizable minority of first generation Japanese Americans (Issei). These workers were attracted to the towns by a combination of (relatively) good pay, available work, and sociocultural amenities. But why were town managers willing to hire them? And how might their hiring practices have influenced and been influenced by the Issei themselves? This paper will argue that sawmill...
We Might Be Mad Here: An Archaeological Investigation of Institutional Life in the Northeast (2016)
The establishment of almshouses in the United States provided a way for states to offer housing to their poor and destitute populations. Throughout the 20th century, most of these establishments changed their function, with many of them morphing into asylums for the mentally insane. Grave assemblages have been collected through archaeological excavations, typically when significant changes are expected to be made to what was once property of the almshouse. This study compares the artifact...
"We Never Left": Arikara Settlement and Community Construction on the Missouri River (2018)
By the eighteenth century, Arikara villages along the Missouri River in the Dakotas were already in flux, as residents confronted Old World epidemic diseases and powerful enemies. Nineteenth- century allotment policies further transformed the spatial organization of their communities, though they did not undermine the central tenets of Arikara identity; the persistence of corn agriculture, a tradition of resource-sharing, and spiritual communion with the Missouri River. This research...
"A WEAK MAN can now cure himself…" Exploring Sandpoint, Idaho Brothels as Alternative Venues for Treatment of "Private Diseases of Men" – and other afflictions. (2016)
Archaeological excavations of two brothels in the north Idaho town of Sandpoint resulted in the recovery of approximately 100,000 artifacts. The artifacts told rich stories of daily life in brothels yet the materials also provided an opportunity some of the ancillary aspects of the relationship between prostitutes and the men who visit them. Specifically, this work addresses the role of prostitutes in the treatment of some "private diseases," arguing that in addition to being a locale for sex,...
A Wealth Of Data From The Lives Of The Poor – Wringing All The Information Out Of A Historic Archaeological Site (2016)
When presented with the opportunity to fully excavate a site or feature, especially in an area of such historic importance as Philadelphia, there is an obligation to maximize the amount of information you can extract from the dirt. Preservation conditions within a privy associated with the First Philadelphia City Almshouse were excellent, warranting a careful methodological approach to recover as much data as possible. The anaerobic contexts within the water-logged feature yielded thousands of...
The Weapons of Warwick (2013)
At the beginning of the 17th century, Sir Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, christened his most recent venture. The Warwick was a mid-sized English vessel designed to ply the warm waters of the Caribbean and Bermuda. In the fall of 1619 she carried a cargo of supplies into Castle Harbour, Bermuda. While at anchor, a hurricane tore her from her anchors and dashed her against the reefs. Although salvaged after her sinking, recent excavation of the Warwick has revealed a wide variety of armament and...
Wearisome Work: Mapping Labor Routines at a Small-Scale Gold Mill (2018)
Archaeological investigations of industrial workplaces have often revealed the existence of unique technological arrangements, yet a gap remains in translating this to the laboring experience. The difficulty rests partly upon the divide between principles and practice—in which knowing a machine’s operating mechanics is not the same as knowing how to work a machine. This poster summarizes archaeological investigations at the Gold Cord Mine, a small-scale family operated gold mine in southcentral...
Weaving Kin Studies and Multispecies Frameworks into Collaborative Paleoethnobotanical Research (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Multispecies Frameworks in Archaeological Interpretation: Human-Nonhuman Interactions in the Past, Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the last 20 years practitioners, activists, and scholars across disciplines have repeatedly pointed out the importance of incorporating other-than-human kin, relationality and reciprocity, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge into scientific practice when working with...
Weight, Weight . . . Don’t Tell Me: the Assemblage of Weights from the Storm Wreck. (2016)
The Storm Wreck was a British refugee vessel that ran aground off St. Augustine 31 December 1782. As part of the evacuation fleet of Charleston, South Carolina, it was responsible for transporting the Loyalist population and their goods necessary to begin life again in East Florida. An unassuming assemblage of artifacts from the excavation can help elucidate aspects of the refugees’ lives, their thought process during the evacuation, life aboard the ship, and the eventual wrecking event. A wide...
The Weimar Joint Sanatorium: Memory, Movement, and Access (2018)
The towns of Colfax and Weimar in Placer County, California, were once the location of seven different tuberculosis sanatoriums, both privately-operated and government-operated. The Weimar Joint Sanatorium had patients from fifteen counties in California, and operated in collaboration with six nearby, privately owned sanatoriums. During the Vietnam War, the buildings and landscape housed Vietnamese refugees, and today it is used is a religious health institute. This paper explores memory and...
The Welches’ Windows: Exploring Window Glass Analyses (2018)
Strawbery Banke Museum is an outdoor history museum in Portsmouth, NH with over 40 historic houses, most of which are original to the neighborhood. In 2015 we excavated at the Yeaton-Walsh House (c. 1803) in advance of rehabilitation work through the museum's Heritage House Program. The house was built as a rental duplex but was later converted to a single family home. Among its residents were the Welches, an Irish immigrant family whose 50+ years as tenants, and later homeowners, encompassed...
"Welcome to Nowhere": Temporary and Permanent Life in the Remote Black Rock Desert at Granite Creek Station (2017)
Present-day Granite Creek Station is located on the edge of the Black Rock Desert, 10 miles north of Gerlach where the sign welcoming visitors to town says, "Welcome to Nowhere." Described as an "awful gloomy" resting place by one of many travellers, Granite Creek Station was one of several significant stopping places for emigrants, travelers, saddle trains, and stagecoaches passing through the Black Rock Desert region of northwestern Nevada, USA, on their way to California in the mid-19th...
Well, Shoot: Firearm Target Practice as a Recreational Activity on a Rural 19th Century Homestead (2017)
On a poor and rural homestead, an approximated late 19th century tin enamel bucket was found with numerous bullet holes of varying calibers and trajectories. With ammunition costing money the family may or may not have had, what was the purpose of this bucket besides target practice? With very little information on target practice as a possible recreational pastime, the sport could have been done by both men and women, young and old, infrequently or quite commonly. Both experimental archaeology...
The Western Front in the Backyard: The Excavation of Camp Howze, American Training and German Detention in Rural Texas, 1942-1946 (2013)
Created shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Camp Howze located in Gainesville, Texas served not only as a training base for American infantry and artillerymen, but also as one of the many detention centers within the United States for German prisoners of war. The base was quickly built and swiftly dismantled when the Army had no more need for the camp, although some of the buildings still stand today. Archaeological investigations of the site are focusing on defining the layout of extant...
The Western Stemmed Tradition During the Younger Dryas: The Newest Evidence from Connley Caves, Oregon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations at the Paisley and Connley Caves have uncovered coeval Younger Dryas occupations with different but complementary Western Stemmed Tradition artifact assemblages. Whereas the perishable artifact assemblage at Paisley Caves provides important health and subsistence data, the large lithic...
Westward Ho! Down Below: Archaeological Applications of Aerial Photography and Thermography at the Western Outpost of Alkali Station, Nebraska (2018)
During the 1860s, Alkali Station, Nebraska served a brief but colorful role as a Pony Express Station, a post office, a stage station, and a military post during the westward expansion of the United States. With the coming of the railroads, Alkali Station, like so many other frontier outposts, became obsolete, and it was abandoned. Its structures fell into ruin, and soon assorted depressions and rises were all that remained. At ground level, spatial patterning of the site’s visible features is...
The Wetherill Homestead and Trading Post, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. (2015)
The University of New Mexico, in partnership with the National Park Service, is currently conducting research on the first trading post in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Documentary research and test excavations indicate the Wetherill Homestead and Trading Post operated from the mid-1890s to the early 1900s. The site functioned as a center for archaeological research, residence, ranching, and trade. These findings have archaeological and historical implications related to late nineteenth and early...
"We’re Engaging Youth, but are we Meeting the Needs of the Park?": Reexamining the first Four Years of the Urban Archaeology Corps (2016)
Four years ago the Urban Archaeology Corps was created through a partnership between the National Park Service Archaeology Program, National Capital Parks-East, and Groundwork Anacostia/DC. This summer youth employment program broke from NPS tradition, by employing youth to conduct archaeological excavations, historical research, and other cultural resources work, while emphasizing and valuing "youth voice" in the development of the program’s structure and the products the participants create....