North America (Geographic Keyword)
2,676-2,700 (3,602 Records)
When an earthquake struck in 1692, the shoreline of Port Royal, Jamaica, was interminably altered as the town fell to the sea. Using integrated GIS and 3D modeling, this project aims to reconstruct the pre-earthquake shoreline of Port Royal in elevated space. Historical maps and archival data are georeferenced to align the old shore with remaining features, allowing for an outline of the former area. From there, bathymetric data as well as archaeological excavations are used to extrude...
Raising The Bar: Archaeology Collections Management (2016)
The Fairfax County Park Authority’s museum standards and use of technology has changed over the years and we are currently reevaluating and improving our archaeology collections care. In spirit of this conference we are making a call to action: we are stressing to those working in archaeology collections the importance of good collections management. Without good collections management, field work, cataloging, researching, and artifacts can lose their original meaning, be insufficiently cared...
The Ralph J. Bunche Community Project (2018)
Built in 1930 in southern Anne Arundel County, Maryland, the Ralph J. Bunche Rosenwald-type school transitioned from a Jim Crow-era school to a community center after integration and a fight from the community to preserve the building and use it as a community center. The surrounding African American community still uses this building to celebrate its history and culture. The University of Maryland and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center partner with the center in preserving the school...
Rations, Hunting, Fishing, and Farms: Pre- and Post-Emancipation Foodways on James Island (2018)
James Island, South Carolina is a place of intergenerational connectedness and a nexus of Lowcountry food culture. Many descendants of the agricultural plantations that once carpeted the island still reside in the area. Archaeological remains uncovered at Stono Plantation are analyzed and twentieth century oral histories of islanders are used in order to compare pre- and post-emancipation foodways. Preliminary findings are discussed.
(Re)Telling the History of Cleveland Urban Neighborhoods (2017)
Like many Rust Belt, Midwest cities, Cleveland has seen a large demographic shift over the last century in its urban neighborhoods. In many cases, the same street or city block has been shaped by the unique sociocultural practices and material arrangements specific to a range of different racial and ethnic groups. In this paper we focus on the 20th century history of two different downtown neighborhoods, Hough and Cedar-Central. We examine how the representations of urban space specific to...
Re-envisioning Mount Vernon: a digital reconstruction of George Washington’s Estate. (2015)
The role of the estate as providing support to the hinterland community during the Washington family’s ownership (c. 1675-1858) and prominence beginning with the MVLA’s acquisition of the property have defined community development, both past and present. Though much of the 20th century suburban growth has erased some of the traces of Mount Vernon’s landscape, features remain, from old roadways to 20th century worker’s cottages. The transformation from single-owner plantation, to small farms,...
Re-excavating the Highbourne Cay Shipwreck: The Converging Worlds Project Overview (2018)
The Converging Worlds project focuses on the presence of the earliest surviving shipwreck in the Americas; a shipwreck thought to be representative of the first vessels to routinely cross the Atlantic, the first to circumnavigate the globe, and the harbingers of the modern globalized economy we have today. However, amidst this Euro-centric perspective of events, these vessels were also the carriers of disease, mass enslavement, imperialism, and identicide. The Highbourne Cay Shipwreck in the...
Reaching for the Channel, Part 3 (2016)
The preservation and exploration of William Dry’s wharf and the entire Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site waterfront would not be possible without the involvement of many different organizations and entities. What started as an archaeological project has evolved into one of the largest and most innovative shoreline stabilization projects in the nation. Archaeologists from the NC Department of Cultural Resources, United States Army Corps of Engineers, East Carolina University, Wake...
Readdressing Conservation In Situ: New Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Underwater Cultural Heritage Management (2016)
Protecting cultural heritage and disseminating archaeological research are two of the primary tenets of archaeology. Protocols, such as the 2001 UNESCO Convention, emphasize monitoring sites over excavation and conservation because of the financial constraints and labor involved, as well as the physical space needed to treat, store, and display collections. However, no concise field standards exist, few clear directives are offered, and as a result, the application of appropriate conservation...
Reading Animal Remains: Identifying community specific foodways through faunal analysis. (2018)
This study explores the diet of the enslaved communities at James Madison’s Montpelier by analyzing two faunal assemblages from the property. The three enslaved communities provide a look at the social structures and power dynamics of enslaved communities through diet. The presence of different species, both wild and domestic, shows the access available to different communities. this paper explores those relationships by comparing three enslaved communities through five different assemblages at...
Reading Between The Iron Lines: An Analysis Of Cannon Arrangement On Caribbean Shipwrecks (2018)
The aim of this study is to explore how cannon distribution on shipwreck sites can be analyzed to reflect the wrecking event of the ship, crew procedure or emergency action in jettisoning heavy artifacts during a time of disaster, post wrecking salvage operations and in situ changes on the site due to environmental factors like marine growth patterns and fluvial processes. The datasets will include unpublished archaeological information gathered during the 2015 and 2016 East Carolina University...
Reading between the Lines: Building the Historic Context for a Female Planter in mid-18th Century Piedmont Virginia (2017)
Records for females in 18th-century society are often scarce. Such is the case for our investigations into President James Madison’s Grandmother Frances Madison. Widowed in 1732, she ran the Montpelier plantation for the first thirty years of its existence. Using a combination of archaeological evidence, a scattering of court records, and information on her oldest son (James Madison, Sr.), we build a case for her intersection with paternalistic society and the mark she left on the destiny of the...
Reading, Writing, and Riots: Constructing Masculinity on an Antebellum College Campus (2015)
Recent archaeological excavations at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, have uncovered a rich assemblage related to one of its earliest buildings. The context in question, Graham Hall (occupied 1804-1835), served as a dormitory, chapel, and classroom space; this mixed space created an environment for college males to test social boundaries, bond with peers, and construct a regionally- and temporally-distinct version of masculinity. This poster integrates archaeological,...
Real Pirates of the Caribbean: Archaeological Interpretation of Captain Kidd and Captain Morgan’s Shipwrecks (2013)
Pirates have long captured our collective imaginations, yet very little concrete evidence has been observed in the archaeological record. In recent years, a number of projects have studied and searched for the remains of ships that belonged to some of history’s most infamous pirates, including Captain William Kidd and Captain Henry Morgan. As these ships were part of the budding globalization during the 17th century, the subsequent interpretation of these sites includes placing them in the...
The Real Value of an 1853 Dollar: A Foundation Rite Date Coin from the Levi Jordan Plantation House in Brazoria County, Texas (2017)
The Levi Jordan plantation house in Brazoria County, Texas, is a two-story, antebellum house made of cut lumber on a pier-and-beam foundation. It is currently a state historical park run by the Texas Historical Commission. The house underwent a full structural restoration between 2010 and 2012. It was raised above ground on steel beams and cribs to allow for repairs to the fireplace and wall foundations. Prewitt and Associates, Inc. archeologists investigated the original brick chimney bases and...
The Reality of Predictive Modeling: Experiences and Lessons Learned at Two Military Training Facilities (2018)
Department of Defense military training facilities occupy large areas across the US encompassing over 30 million acres. Facilities range in size from several acres to several million acres and are present in every state. While similar in scope to the National Park system, military lands are working lands with missions that often revolve around and include destruction and construction in various forms. These activities typically constitute a federal undertaking requiring the application of...
Realizing Autonomy: Building the Capacity of Senegal’s First Underwater Archaeologists (2018)
In April and May of 2017, two National Park Service (NPS) staff from the Submerged Resources Center (SRC) joined Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) staff and post-graduate students in Dakar, Senegal. The three-week project was a response to a request for technical assistance by the U.S. State Department, UCAD, and other partners for underwater archaeological training and capacity building as part of the Slave Wrecks Project (SWP). While in Senegal, SRC staff contributed to ongoing marine...
A Reanalysis of Human Remains from a Cemetery at Catoctin Furnace (2016)
More than three decades ago, a highway expansion project resulted in the excavation of thirty-five historic graves at Catoctin Furnace. Initial analysis was conducted by Smithsonian anthropologist J. Lawrence Angel, who identified the remains as African or African-American, presumably associated with the late eighteenth – mid-nineteenth century operation of the iron works. This report presents updated assessments of demography and pathology, as well as stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data to...
Reanalysis of the Japanese Gulch Village Collection: Japanese Ceramics Recovered from a Pacific Northwest Issei Community (2018)
Japanese Gulch Village, located on the Mukilteo Lumber Company complex in Washington State, was home to a community of Issei millworkers and their families between 1903 and 1930. Excavations conducted in the vicinity of this village in 2007 recovered a large archaeological collection that included at least 100 Japanese-manufactured ceramic vessels. This paper presents a reanalysis of a selection of these vessels using an expanded typology specific to historical Japanese table- and sake wares....
Rebellion, Civil War, and Transformation: The Archaeology of Modern Ireland Before and During Europe’s Interwar Period (2018)
Ireland’s modern history has been largely ignored archaeologically. It was not until the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising that sparked archaeological interest. The work deals mostly with the actual event, thus forms a study of a single moment in time. What is missing is a dialogue linking Ireland’s interwar transformations to that happening across Europe after World War I. This presentation seeks to begin the discussion of interwar Ireland through the material culture recovered from the...
"Rebels" and "Idolators" in the Valley of Volcanoes: An Archaeological and Historical Inquiry of Andagua, Peru, 1000AD-1800AD (2015)
This paper outlines developing dissertation research that integrates archaeological and historical evidence about the community of Andagua and the Ayo Valley in the Southern Peruvian Andes. Constructed as a Spanish colonial reducción, Andagua resides in a seldom-visited highland area, and today is merely considered a rural, provincial neighbor of Arequipa. Andagua, however, has a striking past evident in the substantial prehispanic remains that surround and lie buried beneath the contemporary...
"Rebuilding" Chinatown in The Dalles, Oregon (2015)
Uncovered during ongoing efforts to restore the last standing Chinese operated laundry and merchandise store in The Dalles, Oregon, test excavation at site 35WS453 has exposed the deep roots of a largely vanished community. The thick stratified deposits at the site are the product of nearly a century’s worth of intensive occupation, followed by a long period of near abandonment. By coupling archival research with the archaeological record, we are gaining a clearer understanding of the site...
Recent Advances in Marine Magnetic Survey: Case Studies from the Application of the Magnetometer Survey Python Toolbox V 1.0 (2015)
Between March, 2013, and October, 2014, the National Park Service Submerged Resources Center and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s Office of Renewable Energy Programs collaborated on a marine magnetic research and testing initiative resulting in the development of a custom ArcGIS python toolbox for visualizing and assessing marine magnetic survey data used to identify submerged cultural material. These tools, and the mathematical models driving them, were applied in numerous survey...
Recent Analyses of the Faunal Assemblage from the Submerged Cave Site of Hoyo Negro: Implications for Late Pleistocene Human Ecology Research on the Yucatan Peninsula (2016)
In addition to a nearly complete human skeleton dating to the Late Pleistocene, the submerged cave site of Hoyo Negro contains a diverse and well preserved assemblage of extinct and extant fauna from the Yucatan Peninsula. Recent and on-going investigations have focused on the documentation, sampling, and partial recovery of select specimens for description and analysis. Of particular interest are bears of the genus Tremarctos, a yet unnamed megalonychid ground sloth, cougars (Puma concolor),...
Recent Archaeological Discoveries at James Monroe’s Ash Lawn-Highland (2016)
Longstanding questions about the main house at Ash Lawn-Highland prompted a Phase I archaeological study of the plantation’s domestic core and adjacent hilltop in 2014. This work revealed an area of interest just east of and adjacent to the 1870s wing. Phase II testing of this area in 2015 identified a substantial masonry foundation with partial basement. Associated material culture suggests that the structure dates to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The projected architectural...