North America (Geographic Keyword)
1,101-1,125 (3,610 Records)
Feminist critical intersectional theory emancipates constructions of the past from the symbolic violence of minority group exclusion perpetrated by historical narratives and archaeologies focused on the dominant social group of elite white men. Social justice and equality are empowered by historical markers, districts, heritage trails, statues, conferences, and K-college lesson plans that bring to light historic sites, experiences, and voices of minorities and women who were lost to history....
The Empty Cup: Identity, Alcohol, and Material Culture in the Civil War Era (2013)
During the Civil War, alcohol use and abuse took on a new life. Soldiers went on drunken rampages, civilians took "sprees" sometimes ending in death, the Union imposed a whiskey tax, and the Confederacy experimented with prohibition. But what did it really mean? From a general’s beloved brandy flask, and a southern lady’s wineglasses, to a disheartened soldier’s identifying himself as an empty cup, gendered attachments to the material culture of alcohol show how Civil War era Americans...
Encountering Mannahatta: The Archaeological Search For New York's Past (2016)
Considering the archaeological process within the City of New York and comparing two excavations from lower Manhattan landfill sites excavated thirty years apart, this paper analyzes how New York archaeology is carried out in practice, how the process has changed over time, and the capacity for the vast accumulation of material to (re)instantiate contemporary understandings of the past. How does archaeological research reflect a sociocultural disposition of the present? The dominant narrative of...
Encounters or Exposures? A Methodical Approach to Coastal Resiliency. (2016)
Climate change is unequivocal and recently the federal government has developed collaborative initiatives between the Departments of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to identify natural and historic resources that require conservation and restoration to ensure they are more resilient to changing climate. Coastal resiliency, in particular, implies the need to maintain appropriate storm barriers, such as sand...
Encouraging Social Theory, Diversity, and All That Jazz (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Although perhaps best known for his research and mentorship in archaeological science and African archaeology, David Killick has also mentored students who do more humanistic research and broadly encouraged diversity in the sciences, with far-reaching effects. For decades, his support of women and...
End-of-Life Choices and 19th Century North Georgia Cemeteries (2015)
In 1835, Carmel Baptist Church was established in the rural town of BrickStore, Georgia. Though not a large settlement by modern standards, Carmel drew from a dense population and was located in a built-up and developed area. Only 16 years later, the church combined with another congregation and instead of staying in BrickStore, the new Carmel Baptist Church was moved outside of the settled zone and into an unpopulated area marked only by the junction of two country roads. The cemetery...
End-of-Life Purges of Massive Domestic Assemblages: Staging Archaeological Interventions and Reanimating the Social Lives of Discarded Belongings (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. North American houses are among the largest in the world and, for the better part of a century, their occupants have been accumulating and storing possessions at a rate and volume unlike any other period in human history. These lifelong-amassed assemblages are rarely kept or valued by descendants, and at the conclusion of homeowners’ lives, the bulk of...
The Enduring Expression of Historic Memory: The Role of Artistic Works in the Understanding, Protection, and Promotion of Cultural Resources (2017)
Maritime disasters, military battles, and other significant traumatic events can develop enduring bodies of creative expression that work to preserve their memory, impact, and sense of place, and transforms them into shared social experiences even well after the events occurred. It may take the form of song, paintings, physical models, exhibitions, memorials, devotionals, novels, and/or film. In this symposium, archaeologists and historians discuss examples of these forms of artistry as they...
An Enduring People: The Grand Portage Ojibwe and Expanding the Historical Narrative of the Post-Fur Trade Era. (2016)
The North West Company at Grand Portage defines the colonial narrative on the north shore of Lake Superior. A more inclusive historical narrative recognizes the lasting presence of the Grand Portage Ojibwe. After the 1854 Treaty of LaPointe, the Grand Portage Ojibwe entered the Reservation Era. Over the next century, the Grand Portage Ojibwe utilized traditional lifeways mixed with wage labor jobs while enduring U.S. Government policies of assimilation. Today, the Grand Portage Ojibwe co-manage...
"The enemy are in full march for Washington": The Search for the 1812 British Encampment at Nottingham (2016)
On the night of August 21st, 1814, British troops under the command of General Robert Ross camped at Nottingham in Prince George’s County, Maryland, while on their march to burn Washington, D.C. Nearly 200 years later in 2010, The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission began a multi-year survey at Nottingham with the goals of finding evidence of the encampment and of the nearby colonial town, established in 1706. Using a map drawn by a British engineer travelling with the troops,...
Engaging the Past for a Warming World (2018)
Increasing the public benefits of archaeology involves more than increasing our assertions of relevance. Relevance is a vague term that is easy to assert because it is difficult to disprove. Likewise, archaeology is not a predictive science and promoting "lessons from the past" creates unrealistic expectations of archaeologists and our work. If we are to connect the past to efforts to address climate change, we need to provide specific, archaeologically-informed examples that demonstrate how the...
Engaging Veterans in North American Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Touching the Past: Public Archaeology Engagement through Existing Collections" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As professional archaeologists who are charged with carrying out meaningful research and long-term collections care, one of our ethical and professional obligations is to inform and engage the public in what we do and why it is interesting and important. Our attempts at this are often uneven, but we recognize...
Engaging with NAGPRA at the Veterans Curation Program (2024)
This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part IV): NAGPRA in Policy, Protocol, and Practice" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Veterans Curation Program (VCP) is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) funded program with a dual mission to rehabilitate USACE administered artifact and document collections and provide temporary employment and vocational training to veterans....
Engendered Death: A Comprehensive Analysis of Identity in the Mission System of 17th Century Spanish Florida (2015)
Personal identity, while always fluid, was especially so in the borderlands that made up seventeenth-century Spanish Florida due to the collision of many different cultures within the colonial system. The Spanish missions set up by the Franciscans who travelled to the frontier of Spanish territory in Florida served as places wherein the Apalachee, the Guale, and the Timucua could negotiate issues of identity such as gender, social status, and age. Analysis of cemetery populations excavated from...
Engine at Full Power: How the conservation of USS Monitor’s main engine has become an avenue for outreach. (2013)
In 1987, The Mariners’ Museum (TMM) became the official repository for all objects recovered from the wreck of the USS Monitor. Starting in the 90’s, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began recovering large portions of the ironclad, which led to the retrieval of engineer John Ericsson’s 20-ton steam engine in 2001. Over the last decade, the conservation process has enabled experts to collaborate and provide insight into where and how the engine was fabricated, how it...
English ceramics in the Mexican Pacific: notes from two port (2018)
This paper presents the analysis of English earthenware that has been recovered from two of the most important Mexican Pacific ports: Acapulco, in Guerrero, and San Blas, in Nayarit by the Underwater Archaeology Office of INAH Mexico. It also presents a proposal for the distribution and routes of this material in the Pacific Ocean, relating to the information obtained from this project as well as those of other colleagues. The context of this ceramic type in the Americas is intertwined with...
Enigmatic Toyah: Archaeological and Historical Evidence of Ethnic Diversity on the Southern Plains, 1350-1600 CE (2018)
In 1528, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked of what is now Texas and recorded the very first European account of the diverse native peoples of the Southern Plains. I present the evidence from the concurrent archaeological phase, Toyah (1350-1600 CE), arguing that the archaeological record is not granular enough to identify ethnic designations such as Cabeza de Vaca witnessed. Rather, the archaeological record reflects likely social structures in which Cabeza de Vaca traveled—a fluid...
Enriching Archaeological Interpretations with Tales from the Rez: Braiding Indigenous Knowledge into Archaeological Praxis (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Hood Archaeologies: Impacts of the School-to-Prison Pipeline on Archaeological Practice and Pedagogy" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “In order to know yourself and find your way in this life, you need to know where you and your People come from and understand their relationship with the land.” This insight formed critical foundational knowledge that guides my Indigenous archaeological praxis. My experience and...
The Enslaved Laborer Settlement at Trents Plantation, Barbados: 1640s-1834 (2016)
Trents Plantation, Barbados has provided a wealth of new information on early plantation life in Barbados. In 2013 I reported on the recovery of the early settlement at Trents Plantation and briefly mentioned the identification of an enslaved laborer settlement on the plantation. This paper focuses on findings related to the enslaved laborer community that was established on the property beginning in the late 1640s. The site was occupied trough the period of slavery and abandoned upon...
Enslavement at Liberty Hall: Archaeology, History, and Silence at an 18th-Century College Campus and Ante-Bellum Slave Plantation in Virginia (2016)
Liberty Hall Academy, the forerunner of Washington and Lee University, operated outside of Lexington, Virginia from 1782 until 1803. When fire consumed the institution’s academic building, the school relocated a half-mile closer to town. Following the move, Andrew Alexander and Samuel McDowell Reid, wealthy local residents and trustees of the school, operated their family farms at the site. Alexander owned between twelve and twenty-four slaves, and on the eve of the American Civil War, Reid...
Entangled at the World's Edge: European Relations with the Aru Islands, Eastern Indonesia, during the Colonial Period (2015)
The Aru Islands of the Maluku region in eastern Indonesia have received little attention from historical archaeologists. However, Aruese people and products played a significant role in Maluku before and after European contact. Aruese trade in staples and luxuries often intersected with much larger, better-known trade networks. Each of these larger networks has left a mark on Aruese culture. In this paper, an archaeological survey and an examination of Aru’s post-contact history reveal important...
The Entanglement of Health, Race, and Resistance at the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Childhood illness and death at Federal Indian Boarding Schools are one of the most tragic aspects of these failed institutions. Preventable communicable diseases spread like wildfires in the close-quarters and overcrowded conditions of dormitories. Racist policies maintained poor nutrition and hard physical labor also contributed to illness...
"Entering this bay was the fatal error of our voyage": The Abandonment, Loss, and Discovery of HMS Investigator in Mercy Bay, Canada (2013)
Penetrating into the Western Arctic in 1850, HMS Investigator and its crew enjoyed initial success -- the charting of Prince of Wales Strait heralded at the time as the long-awaited discovery of the elusive Northwest Passage. A year later, however, the fortunes of the expedition would take a downward turn when Investigator was navigated into the confines of Mercy Bay and the regrettable decision was made to overwinter. The arrival of freeze-up would seal the fate of the ship, as it would remain...
The Enterprising Career of Tom Savage in Los Angeles’ Red-Light District, 1870-1909 (2016)
In 1909, the "closure" of Los Angeles’s "tenderloin" represented the influence of progressive reform ending an era of the "tacit acceptance" of municipal red-light districts nationally. Existing scholarship has focused on progressive reformers who helped launch the new policy, but there has been scant examination of the male subculture that helped transform the business of prostitution even as the era of regulation came to a close. This paper examines Tom Savage, a saloon-owner, prize-fighter,...
Environmental Change and Capitalism: Profit and Exploitation of the Natural World in Colonial Context (2016)
The emergence of capitalism was a driving force in colonial Caribbean development. The institutionalization of slavery, which sustained the economy was but one manifestation of the phenomenon. Environmental exploitation and degradation was another. The Caribbean is a patchwork of non-native plants, damaged ecosystems, transplanted cultures, syncretic identities, and subaltern economic systems, all of which are a legacy of policies that co-evolved with the emergence of mature capitalism as an...