North America (Geographic Keyword)
2,926-2,950 (3,610 Records)
This paper focuses on the similarities of marginal development and population movement between 19th and early 20th century communities in Western Ireland and Southern Italy. Focusing specifically on the local development of historically marginalized communities in South-West Co. Mayo, Ireland against that of the San Pasquale Valley in Calabria, Italy, this paper investigates narratives of state-sponsored marginalization in these two disparate locations, and traces the entanglements between...
A Second Life for the Alt-Right: Uses of Conservative Material Culture in Online Spaces (2018)
The use of social media as an organizing space for the alt-right has received considerable attention since the election of Donald Trump. The alt-right refers to those loosely-affiliated groups that share a far-right ideology intersecting white nationalism. This paper examines how these groups use other forms of new media. The alt-right has long used online worlds such as Second Life to promote their nationalist ideology. Employing a netnographic approach, the author explores the continued rise...
Secrets Stashed in Dental Impacta: Best Practices (2017)
Material from the root canal of a teen male from Jamestown was removed for study including microscopic analysis. Examination of the material, transported on sealed slides to PaleoResearch Institute, yielded starches, fungal hyphae, pollen, and fibers. Options for safe transport and transfer of materials to working microscope slides are discussed. Principals of microscopy, including having no air in the working light path between the microscope slide and the coverslip, are important to...
Section 106 Contributions to Urban Archaeology: What Was Lost is Now Found (2016)
When improvements were proposed for the Whitehurst Freeway in Washington, DC, existing conditions would not have recommended this heavily urbanized project area for a research-oriented archaeological investigation. The area was traversed by elevated freeway ramps and major roadways. As well, it had been the site of a 20th century school and 19th and 20th century industrial use. Yet, because of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, archaeological investigations led to the...
Sediment Identification Challenges: Is That Really Ancient Bilge Mud? (2013)
Excavations of shipwrecks at Tantura Lagoon in Israel between 1995 and 1997 resulted in a rich collection of sediment specimens which have been catalogued as ‘bilge mud’ – the residue that collects in the bottom of a ship’s hold. Some of these samples have been analyzed for the presence of pollen, seeds, insects and other organic materials, but the body of the sediment itself also holds important clues to the past travels of the vessels. Using techniques more common to oceanography and...
Sedimentary and Taphonomic Contexts of Quaternary Vertebrate Fossils in the Northern Rocky Mountains (2018)
Quaternary vertebrate assemblages from the northern Rocky Mountains can be used to understand the biogeographic consequences of climate change. Some localities contain strata from before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), while others consist mostly of Late Glacial and Holocene deposits. The Merrell Local Fauna is from a stratigraphic sequence in Centennial Valley. Radiocarbon dates range from >52,000 to 19,000 BP and fossils are in lacustrine deposits, fluvial sediments, and a debris flow. The...
Seeds, Weeds, and Feed: Macrobotanical Analysis of Enslaved African-American Plant Use and Foodways at a James Madison's Montpelier (2015)
In 2008, the archaeology department at James Madison’s Montpelier began a multi-year project that sought to understand the community dynamics between enslaved workers at the plantation in the early 19th century. This study excavated and analyzed four sites: South Yard, Stable Quarter, Field Quarter, and Tobacco Barn Quarter. Each of these sites represents a different community of enslaved workers, from those who worked in the mansion to field hands. In this paper, I discuss and compare the...
Seeing African-Native American Identities Through Gendered, Multifocal Lenses (2018)
African Seminole and African Chickasaw archaeologies present us with opportunities to explore the multiplicitousness of identity and facets such as gender that have cocreated social beings, material culture practices, and communities. Much work remains to be done to address the silences and biases that chroniclers and scholars have perpetuated in their writings on enslaved people and women in Native American territories. Interpretation and analysis can be advanced by a theoretically plural...
Seeing Native Histories in Post-Mission California (2018)
Conventional archaeological and historical accounts of Spanish missions, Russian and Mexican mercantile enterprises, and American settler colonialism in California have overemphasized the loss experienced by indigenous Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo communities who encountered these diverse colonial programs. The story of loss found in many accounts contrasts sharply with the casino – a symbol of tribal prosperity – established by the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo community in 2013. Each...
Seeing the Past through the Soil and Trees of Poplar Forest (2016)
This paper includes recent discoveries from a survey of natural and cultural resources along a proposed 1.7 mile parkway at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. In addition to locating archaeological sites and mapping aboveground features, 10 forest plots were established within stands of increasing age adjacent to the proposed path of the parkway. By measuring tree diameter, identifying tree species, and coring trees from three different positions in the forest canopy using dendrochronology,...
Seeing Women in "Male" Spaces: Consumer Choice in Fugitive Slave Villages in 19th-Century Kenya (2013)
In the Americas, fugitive slave settlements have often been interpreted as predominantly male spaces. In Kenya, oral and written histories suggest that runaway slave villages were similarly male-heavy. These histories make clear, however, that formerly enslaved women were also present. This paper uses archaeological data and a consumer choice model to tease out female voices. Runaways continued to suffer disenfranchisement in freedom. Yet, archaeological data suggest they were also...
Seeking Stories of Family and Community: Resituating Antebellum and Postbellum Narratives at Clover Bottom (2016)
During the summer of 2015, Middle Tennessee State University's Public History Program conducted an inaugural field school in historical archaeology at Clover Bottom plantation, assisting the Tennessee Historical Commission in its efforts to resolve lingering questions about the property's historic landscape and the experiences of African American families within it. This paper introduces the research design and longterm goals informing a multidisciplinary study of Clover Bottom's African...
Seeking the Indigenous Perspective: Colonial Interactions, Archaeology and Ethnohistory at Fort St. Pierre, 1719-1729, Vicksburg, Mississippi (2017)
French Fort St. Pierre was a completely failed colonial endeavor from start to finish. Applying a post-colonial approach to the site, I realized that the power dynamic between the French ‘colonizers’ and the ‘colonized’ Yazoo, Koroa, and Ofogoula peoples was essentially reversed. To understand this reversed power dynamic from an indigenous viewpoint, I took an ethnohistorical approach to the written record. To understand the events that unfolded between the French and Native peoples of the Yazoo...
Seminole Deathways and Resistance at Fort Brooke (2017)
Initially excavated in 1980, the historic cemetery at Fort Brooke (1824-1883) contained the remains of 146 soldiers, white settlers, Seminoles, and African Americans. Very little analysis of these burials exists beyond identification to determine group affiliation, age, and gender. This paper looks at Seminole deathways, which persisted and represented a discord with the Anglicized burials of white settlers and soldiers. An analysis of grave goods might provide insight into the organization of...
"Send Me a Postcard and Don’t Forget to Sign It": Comments from a Current Schuyler Student (2017)
Throughout Robert Schuyler’s career he has mentored leading scholars in the field and continues the tradition of mentorship to this day. As one of his final PhD students, I’ve benefitted from his years of experience, his contribution to forging the discipline of historical archaeology, and his extensive network of former students. All have been invaluable to my growth as an archaeologist. With a liberal advising style, he expects his students to pursue their own research interests and...
Seneca Village: The Making and Un-making of a Distinctive 19th-Century Place on the Periphery of New York City (2018)
In the late 1820s and in the shadow of emancipation in New York State, several African Americans purchased land in what is now Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Pushed by racial oppression and unsanitary conditions downtown and pulled by the prospects of a healthier, freer life and property ownership, they were joined by other members of the African diaspora and built an important Black middle-class community, likely active in the abolitionist movement. The city removed the villagers from their land...
Sensory Perspectives on Maize and Identity Formation in Colonial New England (2018)
Food is not just a source of nutrition or the result of chemistry, but a complex sensory experience that can be linked to the creation, transformation, and maintenance of identity. My examination of the role of maize in the lives of colonial New Englanders is grounded in an understanding of 17th-century English culinary practice, close reading of printed and handwritten cookbooks and recipes, and recreation of maize-based foods using period recipes and cooking technology. A study of the sensory...
A Sequence of French Vernacular Architectural Design and Construction Methods in Colonial North America, 1690-1850 (2016)
This study examines published and unpublished historical archaeological research, historical documents research, and datable extant buildings to develop a temporal and geographical sequence of French colonial architectural designs and construction methods, particularly the poteaux-en-terre (posts-in-ground) and poteaux-sur-solle (posts-on-sill) elements in vernacular buildings, from the Western Great Lakes region to Louisiana, dating from 1690 to 1850. Whether European colonists during the...
The Serenity Farm African American Burial Ground (2016)
The Maryland State Highway Administration had an opportunity to delineate and research an unmarked African American burial ground in southern Maryland. Prior to exploring the site, archaeologists reached out to a local descendent community in Charles County who agreed to speak for their ancestors. Throughout the project, archaeologists and the African American community shared in the discovery of the people buried in unmarked graves on the Smith Farm between ca. 1790 and ca. 1810. Forensic and...
Setting Boundaries: Identifying the Homes of Enslaved Field Workers at James Madison's Montpelier (2015)
During the 2012-2013 field season, the Montpelier Archaeology Department excavated the remains of houses occupied by field workers on the Madison plantation . These structures were not built using sub-surface methods that would leave direct architectural evidence. In the absence of post- in- hole construction or foundations, the determination of building boundaries can be quite challenging for archaeologists. Drawing on the evidence from Montpelier and other examples lacking features directly...
Setting the Context of Equity and Harassment Issues: They Are NOT Only Women’s Issues (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Presidential Session: What Is at Stake? The Impacts of Inequity and Harassment on the Practice of Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Social sciences within the United States, like US society in general, are facing serious ramifications regarding issues related to equality and harassment. Gender equity, pay equity, and funding equity are all part of the problems being faced by professionals employed in...
Settlement and Industry in the Wild West Coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia (2018)
A planned 30 km long paved path connecting the towns of Tofino and Ucluelet through Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, prompted an opportunity for an archaeological assessment of a cross section of this coastal Canadian National Park. The survey recorded over 25 historic sites that together illustrate a multi-layered past of historic settlement and use of the area which included homesteading, mining, logging, Second World War and Cold War...
Settlement Orginization at Sugarloaf Estate (2015)
This paper is a summary of the ongoing analysis of artifacts and spatial data recovered from the enslaved quarters of the Sugarloaf Estate in northern Dominica. The enslaved village associated with the estate was established sometime before 1771 and abandoned in 1834 after a violent hurricane destroyed much of the village and left at least 3 dead. Initial interpretations of the landscape have emphasized symmetry, optics, and relationships of power. Yet such interpretations are premised on a...
Settlement Scaling in the Eastern Woodlands of the United States, ca. 3500 BC to AD 1700: Size, Monumentality, and Public Space (2018)
The concept of settlement scaling is increasingly being utilized in archaeology to empirically evaluate mathematical properties of urban and non-urban settlements. However, principles based on settlement scaling theory have yet to be tested in the Eastern Woodlands of the United States despite the existence of a robust sample of settlements, including those containing monumental architecture. As part of a broad regional study, I collected spatial data on settlement size, monuments, and public...
Seventeenth Century Battlefields in Colonial New England (2016)
The National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program has provided funding to research and document several battlefields associated with the Pequot War (1636-1637) and King Philip's War (1675-1676) in southern New England. These battlefield surveys have yielded hundreds of battle-related objects including weapons, projectiles, equipment, and personal items associated with the Colonial and Native American combatants. These battlefield surveys have also provided significant information...