North America (Geographic Keyword)
3,376-3,400 (3,610 Records)
On March 9, 1862 in the placid waters of Hampton Roads in Virginia, the Union steam-battery Monitor met the Confederate ram Virginia (née Merrimack) in battle. Though this first clash of ironclads was technically a draw, it helped to usher in a new era in naval warfare. It also ushered in over 150 years of popular music, poetry, artwork, alcohol, clothing, sports teams, farm equipment, and home appliances inspired by the meeting of these two vessels. Interest in the Monitor in the 20th and 21st...
Updates and Progress of the Ongoing Public Oriented Cultural Resource Monitoring Program (2017)
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 and collect data on 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...
Upland Box Tombs: Southern Variants on a Popular Nineteenth Century Grave Cover (2016)
Box tombs (aka False Crypts) are a common grave cover in late eighteenth and nineteenth century cemeteries. In areas above the fall line in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama, local granites and similar igneo-metamorphic stone were used to form rectangular surface chambers approximating the shape and dimensions of their more formally milled counterparts. While frequently observed, very little is known about the form. Variants include the slot-and-tab and tombs made from milled stone panels...
Urban Archaeology in the City of the Saints and the Growth of a Real Frontier City (2015)
While archaeologist in the western United States survey wide open expanses for federal and state agencies, archaeology in the urban centers themselves are often ignored. The majority of city centers consist mostly of businesses and business is money. Archaeology in these districts cost time and money, so archaeology is almost never undertaken unless it is done for an agency that must follow established laws and regulations that include archaeology. The new United States Courthouse for the...
The Urban Archeology Corps: A partnership between Groundwork Anacostia and the National Park Service (2013)
The National Park Service has partnered with Groundwork Anacostia, a community-based environmental non-profit organization, on a heritage education work experience to introduce local youth to archeology. This paper draws on the outcomes of the work experience as a case study in federal/local partnerships in archeology outside a traditional field school model.
Urban Casualties: Work-Related Injuries and Healing among Irish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century New York City (2013)
Archaeologists have long recognized that urban environments are frequently hazardous to the health of residents. From the very first cities through the present, many urban populations have experienced higher rates of epidemic disease, endemic disease, and certain kinds of injuries than rural populations. Health is thus both a primary concern for public officials in cities and a daily struggle for ordinary urban-dwellers. This paper discusses the health-related challenges faced by rural Irish...
Urban Life Through the Lens of Glass: A Brief Analysis of Glass Tableware and Flaked Objects from the 19th Century San Jose Market Street Chinatown, California (2015)
The Market Street Chinatown archaeological collection offers a diverse assemblage of artifacts that shed light on the urban social lives of Overseas Chinese communities in San Jose, California during the late 19th century (1866-1887). Glass objects constitute a considerable percentage of the total archaeological collection and includes a massive assortment of medicinal and cuisine containers, architectural features, and domestic objects. The bricolage collection of glass permits discriminate...
Urban Livestock in New Orleans: The Zooarchaeology of the French Quarter and Treme (2018)
Urban farmsteads with livestock were an important component of life in eighteenth and nineteenth century New Orleans. In this presentation historical research and zooarchaeological analysis of faunal remains from sites in the French Quarter and the Treme are used to examine how meat and meat products were processed and discarded in the urban setting. The archaeological contexts include the public space of St. Anthony’s Garden located behind the St. Louis Cathedral, the Ursuline Convent, and...
US 301 Project Archaeology and Historic Context Development in Delaware (2016)
A 2007 study conducted for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program examined cultural resource professionals’ views on the usefulness of historic contexts, and found that, "…SHPO and state DOT staff rarely use historic contexts to evaluate the National Register eligibility of properties." However, Delaware has a long and well-established practice of encouraging the development – and use – of historic contexts. The US 301 project archaeological investigations presented an opportunity to...
US Route 301 Predictive Modeling (2016)
Survey along the US Route 301 corridor was guided by a 2006 predictive model. The effort was informed by previous modeling efforts in Delaware and by earlier models primarily prehistoric in focus.The historic component identified margins adjacent to older roadways as having at least medium potential for sites and isolated house locations shown on nineteenth-century maps as high potential locations. Sites dating to the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were at times encountered in medium...
USCS Paddle Steamer Robert J. Walker, 1847-1860: Historical and Archaeological Research, Diver and Fisher Knowledge, and the Remote Sensing Search. (2016)
An East Carolina University graduate PhD researcher utilized historical research methods to narrow down the Robert J. Walker’s general location and its key archaeological features for site identification. Interviews with key local wreck divers and commercial bottom fishermen provided local environmental knowledge of unidentified wrecks and fishing gear snags within the general search area. This information was essential input to the remote sensing search planned and executed on the NOAA...
Use Of Electronic Diver Positioning In A Challenging Marine Archaeological Environment (2016)
An important consideration in the excavation of an archaeological site is spatial control. Establishing provenience is particularly challenging in a harsh environment such as the Savannah River, where black water, high current, limited dive windows, safety constraints, and limited budgets do not allow traditional archaeological methods to achieve success in a project with the scope of the excavation and recovery of the CSS Georgia. The nature of the Savannah River environment dictates a more...
The Use of Forensic Anthropology Methods in Historic Cases (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "Historic" is a term commonly used in archaeology and bioarcheology but is not typically associated with forensic anthropology. However, historic cases have been brought to forensic anthropology labs, where biological profiles are built using forensic anthropological methods. These osteological methods used within forensic anthropology can be applied to...
The Use of Place to Find a Person: A Hybrid Microhistory of Salubria Plantation, Prince George’s County, Maryland (18PR692) (2016)
An examination of an antebellum plantation in Prince George’s County, Maryland can be a case study into how to see a subaltern group (slaves) living within a dominant culture. To do this, three entities will be examined: a place, a slaveholder, and a slave. How are these three elements related and interdependent upon each other as a means to understand the elements individually and as a social group? All three elements occupied the same time and space but would often be described as three...
The Use of X-Ray Fluorescence to Determine the Composition of American Glassware Artifacts: Analytical Methods and Chronological Insights (2016)
The compositional analysis of American glass has untapped potential to shed light on the chronologies of historical archaeological deposits. This is due to a 1864 patent, which introduced the use of soda-lime glass to U.S. pressed glass manufacturers. By 1880, soda-lime glass displaced lead glass in this industry. Therefore, pressed glass tableware produced before 1864 contains lead, whereas pressed glass tableware produced after ca. 1879 largely lacks lead. This study demonstrates the use of...
Using a Landscape Approach: Case Studies in Section 110 Compliance in Military Installations. (2018)
Per Section 110 of the NHPA, federal institutions, including military installations, are required to identify and manage the cultural resources found therein. Funding to meet this requirement is typically limited and awarded within a yearly budget, allowing for disjointed surveys from one year to the next. The result is often recommendations based on a singular viewpoint of a site rather than a true reflection of the information the site can provide based on the regional setting and temporal...
Using Archaeology to Understand Strategies of Racial Uplift, Past, Present, and Future: A Case Study from Annapolis, Maryland (2017)
Following the end of Reconstruction, the leaders of the African American community strove to combat negative stereotypes presented by the White majority using various strategies of racial uplift designed to develop a positive Black identity. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, these strategies could be classified as strategies of inclusion, advocated by scholars such as Booker T. Washington and Nannie Helen Burroughs, and strategies of autonomy, described by W.E.B. Du Bois and Anna Julia...
Using Assimilationist Tools to Refashion Cultural Landscapes: Allotment on the Grand Ronde Reservation (2018)
The General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 was passed amid mounting criticism that the federal reservation system was failing to assimilate Native Americans into Euro-American society. On reservations, Native communities grappled with the traumas of dispossession, violence, and food shortages, but they also possessed a degree of freedom to maintain cultural practices and identities. The Dawes Act was designed to terminate these lifeways by tethering Native families to privately owned plots,...
Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles for Locating and Surveying Battle of the Atlantic Shipwrecks off the Coast of North Carolina (2015)
An Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) was used to locate and conduct detailed surveys of shipwrecks from the Battle of the Atlantic. A proven method for developing operationally efficient AUV dive plans was used for these surveys. The AUV dive plans were based on the characteristics of the search area, the capabilities of the AUV and onboard sensors, and the nature of the shipwreck of interest and required data products. The dive plans took into consideration the risk assessment and the...
Using Collections for Trans-Atlantic Studies: A Case Study in the Spanish Atlantic (2015)
For decades, archaeologists working throughout the Spanish Atlantic have excavated a wide variety of sites. Today, the artifacts from these excavations are stored in museums and at universities throughout Spain, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Because it can be difficult to locate and access appropriate collections, these artifacts are often overlooked or undervalued. In many cases, however, the collections have an extremely high research potential and are invaluable for conducting...
Using Collector for ArcGIS for Cultural Resource Data Collection (2016)
The Calvert County, Maryland cultural resources planner has worked with the county GIS team to develop a Collector for ArcGIS app template for collection of data in the field for archaeological sites and architectural properties. The Collector for ArcGIS template is designed to capture the information required by the state on its forms, acquire geolocation information, and attach pictures for each site. With minimal editing, a mail merge is used to produce a printable form that is acceptable to...
Using DAACS to Explore Embodied Identities: Potential Approaches (2015)
DAACS has proven to be a valuable resource for quantitative studies that explore patterns across sites associated with slavery. However, its analytical potential is not limited to purely statistical applications that utilize abundant artifact types such as ceramics, because the rigorous, highly standardized cataloging protocol used in DAACS captures minute details of artifacts. This makes it a useful resource for the qualitative study of more variable artifacts, such as objects of personal...
Using Digital Mapping Techniques to Rapidly Document Vulnerable Historical Landscapes in New Orleans, Louisiana (2018)
With the oncoming threat that climate change poses upon New Orleans, the documentation of historic spaces becomes critically important. This project aims to promote new methods of cataloging and visualizing the historic character, unique landscapes, and research potential of culturally significant sites so that they may be accessible to future generations, using Holt Cemetery as a case study. Our process combines GIS, Unmanned Aerial Systems, GPS, and traditional cemetery survey techniques to...
Using Digitized Archaeological Literature as Big Data: Lessons from Using Open-Source Software to Text Mine Archaeological Site Numbers and Citation Information from JSTOR across the United States and Canada for the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) now contains citations to professional journal articles which mention specific archaeological sites in tens of thousands of instances across the United States and Canada. DINAA researchers have developed methods to identify Smithsonian Trinomial (USA) and Borden Grid (Canada) archaeological site...
Using Formation Process Models Of Educational Institutions At Lake Valley Mining District, New Mexico To Create Public Archaeology Progams (2016)
This paper will use two principle models of site formation processes to understand an emerging field of institutional archaeology that of school house archaeology. By using the mining community of Lake Valley, Sierra County, New Mexico, these two models can compare and contrast the social strata and life-cycle of two school houses that shows the history of the community from founding to the closing of the town in 1954. The existing archaeology and features of will be compared and contrasted by...