North America (Geographic Keyword)
2,201-2,225 (3,610 Records)
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 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 a means to manage...
Monitoring Two Decades of Progress: An Update on the Conservation of USS Monitor (2018)
Between 1998 and 2002, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) archaeologists and experts from the U.S. Navy recovered approximately 210-tons of artifacts from the wreck site of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. Upon recovery, NOAA transferred all objects to The Mariners’ Museum and Park (TMMP) in Newport News, Virginia for conservation, curation, and display. Over the past 19 years, TMMP staff have made much progress in the conservation and stabilization of Monitor...
Mono no Aware: Challenges of Impermanence in the Archaeological Record of a WWII Japanese American Concentration Camp (2018)
From 1942 to 1945, the third largest city in the state of Wyoming was the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, one of ten camps where Japanese immigrants and their Japanese American descendants had been forcibly relocated from their homes along the West Coast for the duration of World War II. During their residence, the incarcerees did everything they could to make the camps their home, establishing gardens and fields, building swimming pools and root cellars, and otherwise trying to make life...
Monsters Of The Gulf Of Mexico: The Impact Of Hurricanes On South Texas History And Archaeological Sites (2018)
South Texas’ coastline has an extensive history ranging from prehistoric occupation to trade and troop movements from both the Mexican-American War and American Civil War often focused on the local ports of Brazos Santiago/Brazos Island and Bagdad. Numerous destructive storms, such as northers and hurricanes, have impacted the south Texas coast and this paper explores the history of these sites and associated archaeological investigations. This includes the maritime site of Brazos...
The Monterrey Shipwrecks: Current Research Findings (2016)
Research on a cluster of shipwrecks known as Monterrey A, B, and C is providing new information on early 19thcentury regional maritime activity in the Gulf of Mexico. The shipwrecks are nearly 200 miles off the U.S. coast, yet rest within a few miles of each other in water over 1,330 meters deep. Although the vessels are quite different from one another, their close proximity and shared artifact types suggest they were traveling in consort when a violent event, likely a storm, led to their...
Montezuma’s Revenge: Re-examining Archeological and Historical Interpretations of a 19th-century shipwreck at Boca Chica Beach, Texas (2018)
On the beach near the Mexican border, the ghostly remains of a shipwreck known as Boca Chica No. 2 periodically emerge after major storm events. This 72-ft. wooden vessel first came to the attention of the Texas Historical Commission in 1999 and has been monitored by the agency since that time. Local folklore has long associated this shipwreck with the Mexican warship Bravo (Montezuma), incidentally the most famous wreck in the area, but archeological evidence from the hull itself suggests...
Monumental Haciendas: The Spanish Colonial Transformation of Pre-Columbian Seats of Power in Northern Ecuador (2018)
Early Spanish colonial accounts of northern highland Ecuador were exceptionally verbose about Inka imperial frontier architectural feats, however these same writings are silent on regional ethnic groups’ pre-Inka monumental earthen platform mound creations, known as tolas. This is in exceptional contrast to the detail provided in then-contemporary Spanish accounts of similar earthen structures in the U.S. Southeastern Woodlands. Tolas could tower over the regional landscape up to 20 m tall and...
Monuments And Memories: Irish, Polish, And Haudenosaunee Engagements With The Heritage Narratives Of The Revolutionary War (2018)
Examining memorializations of the Revolutionary War is fruitful in tracing how important events are crafted into founding national mythologies. However, such analyses underplay the presence of ethnic groups that utilized monuments and commemorative ceremonies to gain wider acceptance in American society or challenge the dominant heritage narratives. This paper examines Saratoga monuments dedicated to Polish-American Engineer Thaddeus Kościuszko, the Saratoga monument to Irish-American Timothy...
Moonshining Women and the Informal Economy in Two Prohibition Era Montana Towns (2016)
One unintended consequence of the Prohibition Era in the U.S. was an unorganized but national collective social resistance movement based in individual civil disobedience. Recent research into the town of Anaconda, Montana during alcohol prohibition has revealed that men and women participated in moonshining activities. Comparison of male and female offenders in Anaconda indicated that the informal economy in which alcohol resided, was formalized by city officials as a legitimate economic...
"A More Difficult Problem:" Adapting the National Park Service Concept of Significance to Archaeological Sites (2016)
First published in 1969, the National Register criteria were based on a thirty year track record of administrative review and historical evaluation by a National Park Service program whose mandate was to deter, deflect, and discourage the acquisition of new parks proposed for addition to a system already burdened with maintenance backlog issues. But the goal of the "new preservation" was never to acquire and interpret a comprehensive panorama of the American experiment; its mission was to ensure...
More Questions than Answers: An Assessment of Bottles, Utilitarian and Fine Wares, and Galley Stoves from the Monterrey Shipwreck Project (2015)
Monterrey Shipwreck A, replete with an amazing collection of material culture, was systematically investigated during the summer of 2013. This collaborative project, consisting of archaeologists from State, Federal, and academic institutions, set out to document, map, and recover artifacts in an effort to answer questions related to the maritime history and culture of the Gulf of Mexico during the early 19th century. While excavation and recovery of material culture occurred at Monterrey...
A More Sustainable and Ethical Foundation for CAREfully FAIR Data in Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists generate vast amounts of data in the form of databases, media files, spreadsheets, GIS files, reports, articles, and other literature. However, despite years of advocacy and data management investments, archaeological information is still poorly curated, scattered, incompatible, and haphazardly...
More Than a Notion: Archaeology’s Issue with Using Social Theory to Comfortably Perceive the Lives of Marginalized Peoples (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 archaeology, we like to theorize about those who lived at the margins of society, the systematically oppressed, the class struggle of those who existed at the bottom and the “creative” ways in which they “persisted,” “resisted,” and survived. However, despite this seemingly...
More than a Supply Stop: The Maima Village Before and After Columbus (2015)
In the winter of 1503-04, Christopher Columbus was marooned and provisioned by the Taino village of Maima located on the north central coast of Jamaica. What we know about the Taino of this village remains what was written in the accounts of those marooned Spanish explorers. After the year spent in this village the Spanish returned to the area and founded the settlement of Sevilla la Nueva, resulting in the people of Maima becoming victims of forced labor, conversion and disease. What is...
More than Presence or Absence: Improving Ground Stone Tool Analyses to Address Tool Manufacture, Use, and Maintenance Questions (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Debitage Analysis: Case Studies, Successes, and Cautionary Tales" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The presence of ground stone tools in an assemblage is often indicative of a long-term occupation or resource processing site. The technology represents diverse site activities, including subsistence, social, and symbolic aspects of Indigenous communities. Despite the importance of ground stone tools in the Pacific...
More than the Fort: Recognizing Expanded Significance of the Fort Snelling National Register and National Historic Landmark Districts (2016)
Fort Snelling, built in 1820 at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, was the first National Historic Landmark designated in Minnesota, and among the state’s first listings in the National Register. The site of the frontier fort was the focus of a grassroots historic preservation effort in the 1950s, leading to large-scale archaeological excavation and reconstruction. Historical designations and programming have focused on the fort’s military history, extending from the...
Morphology and Mineralogy of Consolidated Iron Corrosion Products From Historic Shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico (2015)
Consolidated iron corrosion products (rusticles, tubercles and flakes) were collected from historic shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico before (2004) and after (2014) the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2010). In all cases the iron corrosion products were stratified. Goethite and lepidocrocite were identified by powder X-ray diffraction in samples before and after the spill. The internal structure of samples collected before the spill has been examined in detail with environmental scanning electron...
The Morrisville Historic District: Developing a Preservation Plan for the National Guard (2018)
As early as the 1840s, a flourishing industrial community – Morrisville – had begun along a prominent bend in Cane Creek, Benton County, Alabama. Over the next 100 years, the area saw technological change, the Civil War, natural disaster, demographic and economic shift, and subsequent abandonment to the military. Today, the Morrisville Historic District is represented by a complex of archaeological sites, structures, and objects. The heart of the district is the Morrisville Dam, which represents...
The "Most Cherished Dream": Analysis of Early 20th century Filipino Community Spaces and Identity in Annapolis, Maryland (2017)
In the late 19th century, American territorial expansion policies in the Pacific created a foothold into Asia through Philippines. Consequently, territorialization of Philippines stimulated waves of immigration into the U.S. that formed Filipino communities. This paper examines the intersection of space, politics, and identity through the formation of early 20th century Filipino community sites in Annapolis, Maryland. Through Archaeology in Annapolis (AiA), a cultural investigation of Filipino...
Mother Baltimore’s Freedom Village and the Reconstitution of Memory (2013)
The inconspicuous Mississippi River town of Brooklyn, Illinois was the first black town in the USA. Located just north of East St. Louis, Brooklyn was founded around 1829 as a freedom settlement by several enterprising African-American families that emigrated from Missouri. The most remarkable settler was a former slave named "Mother" Priscilla Baltimore, who was a major figure in the AME movement. Today, despite serious economic hardships, Brooklynites display tenacity, resilience, and a strong...
Mother Mother Ocean: Utilizing An Online Educational Platform To Connect Audiences With Research Regarding The Gulf of Mexico. (2018)
The University of West Florida created a MOOC, or Massive Open Online Course, to highlight the various forms of research being conducted at UWF regarding the Gulf of Mexico. The five modules touch on several areas of research including history, archaeology, the economy, and even the environment. One of the key elements in creating this MOOC was to introduce to a broad audience the connection between humans and the Gulf of Mexico and how the past, present and the future impact this often...
Motivation and Evaluation of Outreach to Underserved Communities in Southwest Florida (2018)
Public archaeology in southwest Florida comes with unique challenges and opportunities. The dominant population for the Florida Public Archaeology Network’s Southwest Region consists largely of retired wealthy white citizens, many of who call southwest Florida home year-round, others who flock here during the winter months. While this group dominates the region in terms of population, there is a significant part of the public who identify with one or more minority groups. FPAN Southwest is...
Mounds of Mollusks: A Preliminary Report of the Zooarchaeological Assemblage Recovered from the Slave/post-Emancipation Laborers’ Quarters at Betty’s Hope Plantation, Antigua, West Indies (2015)
Betty’s Hope plantation operated continuously for nearly 300 years during the colonial period in Antigua, West Indies. Since 2007, excavations have been conducted on several parts of the site including the Great House, Service Quarters, and Still House contexts. Zooarchaeological analyses have begun to untangle the foodways patterns in daily life at Betty’s Hope, particularly the incorporation of local resources with specific class-based patterns despite the general disdain the English...
Movement of Potters and Traditions: A View from Washington County, Virginia (2016)
The nineteenth-century potters of southwestern Virginia came from diverse, geographic sources. These individuals brought with them extra-local traditions of pottery decoration and kiln technology. The origins and interactions of Washington County potters will be delineated as case studies of how potters moved across the countryside. Individual potter histories will presented as illustrative of the general trend of movement of potters out of Pennsylvania, Delaware, eastern Maryland, and New...
Moving beyond Cowboys and Indians: Rethinking Colonial Dichotomies into Messy "Frontiers" (2017)
As part of its etymological "baggage," the term "frontier" evokes thoughts of action and excitement, conquering the unknown, and transforming the untamed and uncivilized into the managed and controlled. In North American colonial contexts this perspective privileges the experiences of European, colonizers at the interpretive expense of the multitude of other social actors (e.g., enslaved Africans, women, Native Americans) whose practices equally constituted the colonial project. In our paper, we...