North America (Geographic Keyword)
1,176-1,200 (3,610 Records)
Vasa was a 64-gun Swedish warship in the service of King Gustav II Adolf . The vessel sank on its maiden voyage in 1628, taking at least 16 of the approximately 150 persons on board to the depths of Stockholm Harbor (Vasamuseet 2013; Vasa I 2006:36-55). Amongst the cannon, figureheads, and skeletons are a collection of artifacts that can tell us how the crew lived, not just while aboard Vasa, but also ashore. These artifacts include chamber pots, glass bottles, and other assorted health and...
Examining Archaeology, Society, and the Promise of Integrating ‘Big’ Data from Archaeological and non-Archaeological Sources. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In order for digitally published data to be useful it has to be useable, and in the case of big-data, interoperable with other data sources. This paper explores one way in which this can be accomplished through an examination of how archaeological site densities across the eastern and midwestern United States relate to social factors such as...
Examining Cemetery Investigations At The First Presbyterian Church Of Elizabeth And First Reformed Dutch Church of New Brunswick, New Jersey: A Discussion Of Remembrance and Regulation (2016)
Unique circumstances have provided the opportunity to carefully investigate two historic New Jersey cemeteries as archaeological sites: the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth (founded in 1668) and the First Dutch Reformed Church of New Brunswick (founded in 1765). In Elizabeth, a grave marker conservation effort involved excavations that yielded insights into the evolving cultural landscape of the property. In New Brunswick, a monitoring program employed during new construction at the...
Examining Child Mortality in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Northern Idaho (2018)
This poster documents infant and child mortality in northern Idaho during the late 19th and early 20th centuries using historic cemeteries as a starting point for data collection. This project involved locating and photographing the oldest headstones associated with children and infants interred in Idaho’s Moscow Cemetery. The sample was limited to children and infants under 11 years old who died prior to 1921. By examining Moscow Cemetery’s headstones, the project researchers were able to...
Examining Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century New York City through Patent Medicines (2016)
Patent medicines were immensely popular in the 19th century. They promised astounding cures, were unregulated and relatively inexpensive, and permitted individuals to self-medicate without an interfering physician. Archaeologists have often begun their interpretations of these curious commodities with the premises that they were lesser quality alternatives to physicians’ prescriptions and thus more appealing to poorer alienated groups (who used them passively as advertised) than to the...
Examining Golden Age Pirates as a Distinct Culture Through Artifact Patterning (2016)
Piracy is an illegal act and as a physical activity does not survive directly in the archaeological record, making it difficult to study pirates as a distinct maritime culture. This paper examines the use of artifact patterning to illuminate behavioral differences between pirates and other sailors during the Golden Age (ca. 1680-1730). The artifacts of two early eighteenth-century British pirate wrecks, Queen Anne’s Revenge(1718) and Whydah (1717) were categorized into five groups reflecting...
Examining Lynx and Pride of Baltimore II as Material Culture (2015)
The study of privateers during the War of 1812 and Baltimore Schooners are directly linked to one another because it was during this time that the swift sailing vessel reached the pinnacle of its design, which provided the means for America’s private navy to be successful. The purpose of this essay is to examine the Baltimore Schooner during the War of 1812 and the replica ships Lynx and Pride of Baltimore II, to better understand maritime material culture both then and now. The replica...
Examining Mandan and Arikara Agricultural Production at Fort Clark in the Fur Trade Era (2017)
The Mandan/Arikara earthlodge village adjacent to the American Fur Company’s Fort Clark in North Dakota is well-documented, appearing in the accounts and depictions of Catlin, Maximilian, and Bodmer, among others. The village was originally constructed in 1822 by the Mandans, who occupied the settlement until the widespread 1837 smallpox epidemic, after which the Arikaras appropriated the village. Historical documents suggest the Mandans and Arikaras traded crucial resources, namely maize, to...
Examining the landscape of enculturation at Euro-American Children’s Homes (Orphanages) and Native American Boarding Schools (2016)
Institutions played an important part in American culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, serving segments of society that could not take care of themselves. While asylums, orphanages, and boarding schools have come to have a negative connotation in modern American culture, these places played a formative role in the enculturation and care for multiple generations and ethnicities in the United States. Particularly, children’s homes or orphanages and Native American Boarding...
Examining Wangunk-Hollister Interactions Through Analysis of the Colonial Landscape and Indigenous Pottery (2018)
The first few decades of colonization in southern New England appear to have been markedly different from eighteenth-century colonialism in the region. Specifically, relationships and interactions between English settler-colonists and Indigenous peoples during this time seem to have been complex and characterized by reciprocity. Intersecting lines of evidence at the Hollister site support this, and indicate that complex relationships were fostered between the colonists occupying the site, and...
Excavating Acapulco. Archaeology at the fortress of San Diego. (2017)
In 2015 and 2016 archaeological work was carried out at the historic fortress of San Diego, Acapulco, in the Pacific coast of Mexico by the project "Maritime Archaeology of the Port of Acapulco". Excavation on the outer wall yielded materials from pre-Hispanic times, all the way to the XX century. Diverse ceramics such as local wares, majolica’s from many parts of Mexico and porcelains from China and Europe, were recorded. Glass, metal and a variety of animal and human bones were also collected....
Excavating an Ephemeral Assemblage: An Archaeology of American Hoboes in the Gilded Age (2016)
Hobos and other transient laborers were integral to the development of industrial capital in the United States. They traversed the country filling essential temporary positions at the behest of capital interests. Yet, they frequently utilized alternative market practices in their labor arrangements, relying partially on direct trade over monetary payment. They likewise maintained intricate social networks, the material remains of which lay extant in past hobo campsites. Despite fulfilling a...
Excavating Emotion on a Maryland Plantation (2016)
Due to their ephemeral, intangible nature, affect and emotion are difficult to capture and interpret from the archaeological record. However, to be human, feel emotion, and interact with one’s environment is a common experience that connects people across space and time; therefore, presenting affect and emotion is a powerful means of connecting people to the past. This paper uses a 18th-19th c. plantation context to explore the importance of sense perception, materiality, and the landscape to...
Excavating Personhood in the 19th-Century Graveyard (2016)
The St. George’s/St. Mark's Cemetery in Mount Kisco, NY, offers an ideal site in which to investigate the construction of 19th-century middle-class personhood. Previous studies have generally conceptualized the gravestone either as a passive reflection of social realities or as a site of the momentary suspension of social difference. The proposed study will marshal historical and archaeological evidence in demonstrating how gravestones functioned as active participants in the articulation of...
Excavating the Motor City: Structural Racism and the "Archaeological Record" in Detroit (2018)
In 2012 the Detroit Housing Commission received funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demolish the long-neglected public housing development known as the Douglass Homes, a collection of townhouses and mid- and high-rise apartment buildings in mid-town Detroit. The Douglass Homes had been built on top of an earlier residential neighborhood on the edge of Paradise Valley, a once-flourishing center of African American commerce and social life in the city. Pursuant to...
An Excavation of Data from Dusty File Cabinets: Carolina Artifact Pattern Data of Colonial Period Households, Kitchens, and Public Structures from Brunswick Town (2016)
Between 1958 and 1968, archaeological pioneer Stanley South excavated a total of 13 colonial era primary households and associated structures, as well as the courthouse, jail ("gaol"), and church. While these excavations were designed to interpret these structures for public visitation, it was the tens of thousands of artifacts from these ruins that led South towards the development his pattern-based, scientific archaeology. However, the artifact data from only three of these structures—Nath...
Excavation to Exhibition: Archaeological Research and Stories of the African Diaspora (2013)
In 1720, Scotsman Alexander Nisbett boarded a ship bound for Charles Town. Three thousand miles away, captive Africans were forced onto ships bound for a place unknown to them. The lives of Europeans and Africans converged in South Carolina. At a place called Dean Hall, Alexander Nisbett and his enslaved laborers built a plantation to grow rice. Two hundred and eighty years later archaeologists came to the site of the old plantation to unearth the history of the people who created Dean Hall. ...
Excavation to Exhibition: Archaeology and a New Narrative for Plantation Museums (2013)
From 1730 until 1865 Charleston, South Carolina was home to some of the richest people in the New World. Their fortunes were created from rice, indigo, and cotton grown with the labour of enslaved Africans who made up over 50 percent of the Lowcountry population. Planters showcased their wealth in elegant plantations and townhouses filled with European fashions and furniture. Today this historical landscape is represented at the region’s popular plantation and house museums. As reflections of...
Excavations at Historic Jacksonport State Park (3JA53) (2015)
The town of Jacksonport, Arkansas was established in the late 1830s near the confluence of the White and Black rivers, and rose to prominence during the 1850s to 1870s as a key steamboat town and as the Jackson County seat. However, after being bypassed by the railroad the town declined and by 1892, it was largely deserted. In 2009, the planned construction of a collection management facility lead to data recovery excavations within two town lots, as well as the recovery of detailed...
Excavations at Historic Neelsville: life as a tenant blacksmith (2016)
From 2014 to 2015, excavations within the historic crossroads town of Neelsville in Montgomery County, Maryland, now a residential neighborhood, revealed a complex of features including a structure with a stone foundation. Initially identified as a blacksmith shop based on historic research, the structure was later revealed to be an adjacent domestic structure, presumably where the blacksmith and his family lived. A nearby sheet midden showed evidence of shared usage between the household, the...
Excavations at the Howe Pottery: A Late Nineteenth-Century Kiln in Benton, Arkansas (2016)
This poster presents the results of Phase III archeological mitigation (data recovery) excavations at the Howe Pottery (3SA340) on Military Road in Benton, Arkansas. The Howe Pottery is a National Register of Historic Places eligible archeological site that is significant because of its unique state of preservation, coupled with a general lack of archeological data for the late nineteenth-century pottery industry in the Benton area. Archival records suggest the pottery was established before...
Excavations in the carriage house basement of the Sorrel-Weed House (2018)
The Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah is one of only a handful of antebellum homes in the city's tourism industry to undergo archaeological studies. In spring 2017, excavations were conducted in the basement of the carriage house, where a depression in the floor was thought to be caused by the remains of a former enslaved woman. Completed in ca. 1841, the Sorrel-Weed House was built for merchant Francis Sorrel and is now the focus of a public interpretation program that involves infidelity,...
Exhibit Development Through Partnerships with American Indian Tribes and Museums (2018)
Decisions regarding the use of museum collections in exhibits that interpret the history and culture of American Indians have often been made by non-natives, without the input of the people the exhibits are about. History Colorado was recently presented with a situation that allowed the museum to do the opposite. The Ute Indian Museum is one of History Colorado’s community properties and is one, if not the only, state-owned museum dedicated to an American Indian group-the Ute people. In 2013,...
Exhibitions of Gentility at George Washington’s Boyhood Home (2013)
The examination of personal accessories recovered from George Washington’s boyhood home (1738-1774) reveals the family’s efforts to portray their respectability and gentry class identity despite the economic and social anxieties they experienced after the death of their family patriarch. Dedicated analysis of small finds artifacts demonstrate the family’s commitment to genteel behavior and display. Clothing accessories such as powdered wigs and sleeve buttons proclaimed their class, and, on...
Expanding KOCOA’s Potential: The Role of a West Point Military Academy Education on the Second Seminole War Florida (1835-1842) (2015)
The field of conflict archaeology has begun embracing KOCOA as a regular part of battlefield analysis. However, I argue KOCOA can be further expanded to include indirect expressions of warfare and incorporate them into a meaningful discussion of their role in the outcome of conflict. To accomplish this, I develop a model that allows for the investigation of hypotheses about decision-making processes and their effectiveness using the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) in Florida as a case study. In...