North America (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Wagner.

Shoe-box shaped "flatboats" represented the most common vessel type on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from 1770-1900. Although  tens of thousands of these boats were built during this period, by 1915 a historian lamented that "not one of them remains" . In 2002, however, SIU archaeologists documented the remains of  an early 1800s  flatboat wreck found resting on the Illinois shoreline near the abandoned town of "America". Subsequent documentation of the 45 ft long x 12 ft wide wreck provided...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Borgens.

The first half of the 19th-century was a tumultuous period in the Gulf of Mexico as European and regional powers competed for territorial dominance. As immigration into the northern Gulf of Mexico increased, age-old rivalries erupted while new independent nations emerged. In such a climate, maritime supremacy was essential – foreign and local navies representing every major power were present, new and sometimes ad-hoc navies were created, and privateers capitalized on the unrest - often acting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erwin Walker Lane. Brent Lane.

Sir Walter Ralegh’s attempted English colony in coastal North Carolina is best known for thefailure of its 1587 "Lost Colony". But that colony was preceded by a 1585-86 exploratorysettlement that accomplished much of its mission to explore and describe the region’s lands, flora, fauna and peoples. Officially peaceful, this "First Colony" nonetheless engaged in military actions with indigenous peoples. Although direct archaeological evidence of its military capability is scant, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lawrence Babits. Peter Norris. Gregory Stratton.

A cannon used by North Carolina Confederates was captured by the Union navy during the Civil War and placed as a trophy in Washington, DC. In 1973, a similar cannon was recovered from the Roanoke River below Fort Branch, a Confederate fortification blocking upstream navigation. The production identification numbers (136, 138) suggested they came from the same shipment. Their initial identification as Blakely rifled cannon is challenged here by connecting the two guns to specifications for cannon...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer M Trunzo. Maggie Needham.

Between 1826 and 1955, the Augusta Arsenal operated on the land currently occupied by the Summerville Campus of Augusta University. As a military site, it is easy to conceptualize the Arsenal as a male gendered place and associate it almost exclusively with war-related manufacturing activities. However, most of the artifacts recovered from the Arsenal directly address the domestic lives of the people who lived there. Additionally, many artifacts from the Arsenal speak to presence of the often...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stanley Bond.

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Heritage Protection: Accomplishing Goals" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Archeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) and 54 U.S.C. 307103 (Title 54) exempt archeological site location data and other site information from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The digital age, however, provides site looters with a new range of tools to discover archeological site locations on federal and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen V. Bouzon. J. Ryan Kennedy.

In this paper we present analysis of faunal remains recovered from a mid-19th century privy at 936 St. Peter Street, an archaeological site in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter. Although the faunal assemblage includes domestic trash related to meals eaten by the site occupants, it is dominated by a tremendous number of caprine cranial elements. These cranial bones show a consistent butchery pattern indicating that site occupants were harvesting caprine brains in large numbers, presumably for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dorothy Lippert.

This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeologists assert the responsibility to give voice to the dead, but the dead exist in many different definitions. As ancestors, they are part of an existing human community, as objects, they are part of a created community of collections. They can also be sources of data for researchers seeking to expand knowledge about human existence....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Willard. Dorothy Rowland.

This paper discusses the artifacts found during the 2017 summer field excavation of the Highbourne Cay Shipwreck, excluding any hull remains. The wreck is well-known and located in an area that has a low sediment level, as a result, the artifact assemblage is expected to be small. The artifacts found and being discussed will be those that were not recovered by salvagers in the 1960s, and were not in the section excavated in the 1980s. Although, there is a possibility of duplicates of previous...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joshua T. Harden.

This paper is a preliminary analysis of the artifacts recovered from the Warwick shipwreck. Over the course of three field seasons from 2010 to 2012, numerous artifacts were recovered from the site. Artifact types will be described briefly and a historical context given. Basic groups will be created to categorize the artifacts and will include cargo, armament, and rigging. Statistics will be compiled for each category and for individual artifact types within the groups. The ultimate goal is to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chelsea R. Freeland.

This paper analyzes the salvage of artifacts from Modern Greece, a Civil War blockade-runner off Wilmington, NC. The NC Underwater Archaeology Branch brought up over 10,000 artifacts in 1962-63. Parts of the collection underwent conservation, while others remained in storage at Fort Fisher. Recently, students from ECU completed a re-housing project to allow for identification of conservation targets and prevent degradation. This paper discusses the retrieval and housing as related to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John R. Bratten.

Artifact conservation is a necessary step for most archaeology projects, especially those involving the recovery of objects from underwater sites. In addition to stabilization, laboratory treatment often aids in the interpretations of artifacts.  Based on two decades of laboratory work, this paper will discuss conservation lessons learned in terms of equipment and techniques.  Information will be provided related to the choice of an x-ray machine, the fabrication of electrolysis tanks, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sabrina Ta'ala.

Artifact collection and analysis is a foundation of all archaeological research, and the methods used to record and draw meaning from the material culture we encounter on archaeological sites are generally standardized across subdisciplines.  But field decisions about what to keep, what to disregard, and how to record and quantify it all are invariably informed, to some extent, by our research goals.  When it comes to war-related sites excavated by U.S. Department of Defense teams with the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clare M Votaw. Brianna Patterson.

The Guthrie family first came to America from Ireland around 1720 and settled in St. Charles County, Missouri in 1816. The family owned many acres of land, which they passed down through the generations.  Archaeological work on the Guthrie Farmstead commenced due to impending impact on the property for housing development. A cultural resource management company conducted thorough and extensive work on the farmstead, which revealed a homestead site (23SC1041) on the property. The site was a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meg Winnick.

This is an abstract from the "NPS Archeology: Engaging the Public through Education and Recreation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archeology education initiatives can benefit from 3D technologies to develop further engagement between archeological artifacts and the public. In the summer of 2018, the National Park Service in collaboration with the National Council of Preservation Education crafted a project to help NPS write guidelines for parks...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John R. Bratten. Janet R. Lloyd.

  Thousands of artifacts have been recovered from the two shipwrecks associated with Tristán de Luna y Arellano’s 1559 settlement attempt and recently hundreds of artifacts have now been recovered from the associated land site. Even at this early stage in the terrestrial work, we have the unique opportunity to make many interesting comparisons between the two assemblages regarding the relative proportions of different functional categories and the presence/absence of fasteners, armor, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristine Madsen. Elizabeth Harman. Ray von Wandruszka. Chelsea Rose.

Analytical chemistry is a valuable tool in the identification of historical artifacts for which visual inspection is inconclusive. This is often the case with bottles and jars holding unknown materials, especially when the containers themselves provide little or no evidence. Several of the artifacts recovered from the historical Chinese Quarter of Jacksonville, OR, were of this type. They included a variety of medicine bottles and vials with contents that could only be identified through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George W. Calfas.

Collections allow archaeologists and other scholars the opportunity a means to view past lifeways. Those lifeways are connected to past histories that are situated in a time and place. Context is everything! However, what happens when artifacts are lost misplaced, or mis-catalogued? Archaeologists across the globe are working on shoe-string budgets and are being asked to do more with less. Due to these shrinking budgets the collections that we painstakingly curate often are given less care and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brooke L. Drew.

Historical archaeologists expect to encounter artifacts in the field or lab, but may not anticipate uncovering them in the library. While conducting research on individuals buried in the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, the author came across a diverse assortment of material culture associated with the coroner’s inquests curated at the Milwaukee County Historical Society Research Library.  This paper will describe the various items uncovered including photographs, clothing samples, personal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Galke.

Section 110 archaeological investigations at Manassas National Battlefield Park (MANA) sparked breakthroughs in the recognition of quartz crystal caches and the meaning of colonoware: contributions which continue to shape historical archaeology. These categories of material culture have become emblems for spirited discussions about the dimensions of meaning, identity, and agency. The corpus of work from MANA continues to influence and contribute to understanding multivariate dimensions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Shaffer. Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory Federal Curator.

The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory (MAC Lab) is a State-owned facility serving as the primary repository for collections excavated in Maryland. Artifacts come to the MAC Lab from every part of the state, and while the estimated 8.5 million objects in our collections are regularly used by researchers and school groups, our broken bits of "stuff" are less of a draw for the general public. This paper discusses how the MAC Lab staff turned their love of Outlander, a popular...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Louis A. Brennan.

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DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Young. Allison M Young.

During the Second World War, thousands of prisoners of war were transported to the United States to be held for the duration of the conflict. The Geneva Convention served as the primary doctrine influencing how camps were built and how the prisoner populations were treated. Under the convention, prisoners were able to work for a wage as well as pursue hobbies in areas like education, sports, and the arts. This paper explores how the artistic pursuits of German POWs influenced the material record...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin C Bradley. Meagan Ratini. Elisabeth A. LaVigne. Kathryn Wood. Wade Catts.

Nearly a month after the Crown Forces captured Philadelphia, a Hessian Brigade under the command of Colonel von Donop crossed the Delaware River intent on clearing away the American defenses entrenched along its east bank. Captain Ewald was part of the expedition, and his jaegers supported the attack on Fort Mercer at Red Bank, New Jersey. The assault on the earthen fortification began in the late afternoon on October 22, 1777. The Hessian force suffered heavy casualties at the hands of a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Sperling.

The Fairfaxx County (Virginia) Park Authority mission statement specifies the, "…protection and enhancement of…, cultural heritage to guarantee that these resources will be available to both present and future generations." When staff preservationists identified the need to stabilize a historic meathouselocated at an eighteenth century house site built by a member of the county’s namesake family, it presented the opportunity to demonstrate commitment to this mission.  In order to stabilize the...