North America (Geographic Keyword)
2,651-2,675 (3,602 Records)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Queen Anne’s Revenge: A Very Lore-ful Site (2017)
Long before the discovery of Queen Anne’s Revenge, Blackbeard and his flagship loomed large in popular literature and art; large enough even to prompt production of two Hollywood movies about him. Twenty years of excavation and conservation have only increased the lure of these topics. Hundreds of contributions by scholars and more popular writers have enriched the literature with books, articles, and presentations. Artists and illustrators have found subjects in the man, the ship, and the...
Queer Animacies: Disorienting Materialities in Archaeology (2015)
This essay draws from contemporary strands of affect and materiality in queer theory to discuss a network of queer animacies in the historic record. Using examples of late 19th and early 20th century jook joints , I explore a range of affective material relationships that threaten heteronormative ideals. This attempts to move beyond privileging sexual acts and orientations as defining queerness, towards a queer historical framework attuned to the vast network of human and material...
Queer Frontier Identities: A Look at at the Laundresses' Quarters and Enlisted Married Men's Quarters of Fort Davis, Texas (2017)
This paper defines frontiers as queer locals that shape the relationships and practices of individuals within them. Frontiers are liminal spaces where normative ideals are actively challenged and thrown into flux by competing ways of knowing, both new and old. Inhabitants of these heterogeneous communities simultaneous assert, contest, and reassert their positionality and personhoods daily through a series of meetings between and within cultural groups. As a result a third space of fluidity...
Queer Imaginatives, Normative Narratives: Examining Archaeological Theory and Conceptions of Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Labor and Social Identity (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology’s role and capacity to present multiple narratives about the past situates the discipline as a locus for competing power dynamics: What stories about the past are prioritized? How are stories constructed? Which stories are utilized for crafting a generalizable theory about “human nature”? At the same...
Queering the Heteronormal: Memorial Practices in the Historic Cemeteries of Erie County, Pennsylvania (2017)
This project determined, using a Queer Theory approach, to what extent burial pattern, grave marker, and accompanying text and images reflected and reproduced presumed dominant heteronormative ideologies. Grave marker styles and text have highlighted the constant change in familial ideologies from the colonial period to the present. Burial and marker attributes from over 4,000 adults in cemeteries in Erie County, PA between 1880-2015 were recorded and examined. The results indicate that the...
Queering the Household Group: Challenging the Boundaries of an Archaeological Unit (2015)
The use of queer theory in archaeology aims to challenge static social structures. This paper focuses on how traditional assumptions of family and the household can be problematized through an investigation of non-household ‘households’ – such as saloons and other non-domestic residential spaces. In deconstructing the family, queer theory has elucidated the Western and modern biases that underlie the traditional definition of this social group. By challenging normative social constructions of...
Queering the Norm: Reinterpreting the Heterosexual Ideal (2015)
This paper aims to problematize the concept of heteronormativity through a queer perspective. Too often, heterosexuality is posited as a universal norm against which queer identities can be examined. Through a look at archaeological deposits associated with heterosexual relationships and practices - such as courtship, marriage, and prostitution- this discussion queers the 'normalness' of heterosexuality by showing that an ideal heterosexuality is rarely, if ever, truly performed. Using examples...
Queerness is for White People: The Effects of the Idea of African American Sexual Deviancy among 19th Century Buffalo Soldiers (2015)
This paper investigates male identified homosociality within black communities by tracing male relationships within 19th century gendered labor spaces. Using examples from Fort Davis, Texas, this study analyzes Buffalo Soldier troops stationed there from 1867-1891. A queer perspective allows this research to focus on the bonds and relationships amongst African American soldiers that do not subscribe to traditional heteronormative practice. Because so often these relationships are obscured within...
The Question of Anomalies in Slave Archaeology: Evidence from an Antebellum Industrial Site (2017)
This thesis asks how anomalies are to be approached within the larger paradigm of African-American archaeology through analysis of the Arcadia Mill Industrial Complex. The author compares historical and archaeological data from two possible slave components for functional similarities and differences. This is then considered alongside evidence from both plantation and non-traditional slave sites to determine what the most appropriate basis for material and theoretical comparison is. The author...
Questions Answered and the Way Forward: Results of the 2015 Clover Bottom Field Season and the New Questions Generated. (2016)
During June and July of 2015, a historical archaeological field school from Middle Tennessee State University’s Public History Program conducted a survey and assessment of Clover Bottom plantation (40DDV186) in Nashville, Tennessee. This excavation looked to bring forth new material evidence for the experiences of the property’s majority of enslaved and emancipated residents. This paper presents the results of topographic and shovel-test surveys and test excavations as they relate to ongoing...
Quite Voices and Silent Houses: Video ethnography on Inishark (2013)
Video interviews, oral histories and historical records provide an important means of reconstructing past island lifeways. In this presentation we illustrate how the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast project employs video ethnography to document 1940-1960 island life. Over the summers of 2009-2012 we conducted multiple video interviews with five islanders while revisiting Inishark, conducting on-camera interviews in their homes that were abandoned 50 years ago, and having them discuss the...
Québec City's Archaeological Master Plan (2013)
The City of Québec is developing an archaeological master plan for its territory which includes four legally-defined historic districts, one of which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The plan is being developed in the context of renewed provincial heritage legislation that will come into force in October 2012, and of the adoption of a revised urban master plan required under provincial legislation. The archaeological master plan will be accompanied by policy and programmes designed to foster...
Race and Alienation in Baltimore's Hampden (2016)
The recent uprising in West Baltimore took place less than two miles from the neighborhood of Hampden, but, with a few notable exceptions, it made little impact there. Writers and historians have long understood the Baltimore neighborhood of Hampden to be culturally, geographically, and racially isolated from the city in which it is embedded. Archaeological investigations performed there have helped to illustrate how class and power relationships changed over time, ultimately reinforcing that...
Race and the water: the materiality of swimming, sewers and segregation in African America (2017)
Few dimensions of the color line were monitored as closely as access to American rivers, beaches, and swimming pools, which became strictly segregated in the early 20th century. This paper examines the heritage of color line inequalities in Indianapolis, Indiana's waters, where beaches were segregated, African Americans were restricted to a single city pool, and waterways in African-American neighborhoods still accommodate sewer overflows. Despite that history, a new wave of urbanites is now...
Race, Gender, and Consumerism in Nineteenth Century Virginia (2017)
This paper uses historical and archaeological evidence to consider which consumer goods were available to enslaved men and women in nineteenth century Virginia. At the scale of local markets and stores, supply and variable adherence to laws constrained which goods were available to slaves who were able to purchase and trade for them. By comparing purchases of enslaved African Americans with purchases of whites at the same store, I assess which goods were accessible to each group. I use...
Race, Health, and Hygiene in a World War II Japanese American Internment Camp (2018)
During World War II, approximately 120,000 individuals of Japanese heritage were imprisoned in internment camps in the United States, with 2/3 of the prisoners holding American citizenship. This paper looks at health and hygiene related artifacts found at one such internment camp, the Kooskia Internment Camp, which was located in north Idaho and in operation from May 1943 to May 1945. Hygiene and health products mediated the racial boundaries between not only Anglo American officials and their...
Racially-Mixed People of the Ramapos: Undoing the Jackson White Legends (1972)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Racism and the Society for Historical Archaeology: Advancing an Anti-Racist Institutional Identity (2015)
Archaeologists are well aware of the ways in which our personal and political lives influence our practice. Since the 1980s the profession has paid increasing attention to the racialization of the past and how white privilege, white supremacy, and racial hierarchy structured the material world and our analysis of it. We have paid less attention to how these conditions continue to structure our institutions. Membership surveys in archaeology demonstrate that our professional societies are...
The Rad Clay Pad that the Spaniards Had: A Geoarchaeological Examination of Sixteenth Century Spanish Forts (2018)
Academia regularly relies on documentary evidence to interpret the relatively rapid culture changes that occur after contact, often ignoring the more long-term patterns and processes of the indigenous response. Geoarchaeological survey allows for an in-depth study of the changes in cultural deposits diachronically, recreating a narrative that is reflective of a wide range of human experience. This paper examines the ideological shift in the Spanish strategy for colonizing La Florida by utilizing...
Radical Heritage Archaeology: A Case Study from the W.E.B. Du Bois Homesite in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (2013)
Archaeology at the W.E.B. Du Bois Homesite was based on the goals of combining archaeological problem solving with the teaching of field methods and techniques. It began in the 1980s when the dominant ethic in archaeology was conservation and Cultural Resource Management. Today, the dominant practice of archaeology has been transformed by projects like the New York African Burial Ground to revolutionized how we think about archaeology’s relationship with the community. This paper, based on...
Radical Stratigraphy: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology Out-of-the-Box: Investigating the Edge of the Discipline" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the past 100 years, an alternative written record has been tied to the underbelly of Los Angeles’ built environment. The urban infrastructure of railroads, bridges, storm drain tunnels, harbors, and paved rivers houses a vernacular history inscribed mostly on concrete with rocks, chalk, charcoal, pencil, and...
Railroad Camps in the High Sierras (2015)
Railroad construction camps occupied by Chinese laborers have been investigated archaeologically since the 1960s. The upcoming 150 year anniversary of the construction of the first transcontinental railroad has spurred renewed interest in these sites. This paper will discuss what we have learned from previous studies of railroad work camps and how they inform current interpretations, with special emphasis on drawing connections between the archaeological record and theoretical frameworks for...
"Railroaded" - The Wreck of the Schooner Plymouth! (2015)
An unidentified shipwreck was located in 1996 by CLUE (Cleveland Underwater Explorers) member Rob Ruetschle in Lake Erie, approximately 20 miles off Cleveland, Ohio. CLUE re-visited and surveyed the shipwreck in 2013. After extensive archival research, CLUE identified the wreck as the two-masted schooner Plymouth, which sank on the night of 23 June 1852, after a collision with the sidewheel steamer Northern Indiana. Additional historical research relative to the parties involved revealed a...
Railroads, America, and the Formative Period of Historical Archaeology: A Documentary and Photographic Investigation into the Historic Preservation Movement (2016)
The twentieth century, the formative period of historical archaeology, is marked by an ideological shift from the fervent consumerism and industrialism of the nineteenth century, towards a growing institutional concern for the nation’s finite natural and historical resources. A focused case study of twentieth century railroad stations highlights various themes pertinent to the discussion of the role of historical archaeology in the Historic Preservation Movement, which focuses on preservation...