North America (Geographic Keyword)
501-525 (3,602 Records)
Union and Confederate forces fought at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American military history with nearly 23,000 dead, wounded, and missing. Some of the fiercest fighting occurred around the Sunken Road -- the northern boundary of the Henry Piper farm. Over four field seasons, archaeologists conducted a systematic metal-detector survey of the Piper Orchard, site of the Confederates’ retreat from the Sunken Road and...
Bung Borers and Butter Pots: Comparing 18th-century Probate Records with Archaeological Evidence from the Chesapeake (2018)
Probate records from colonial Maryland offer a unique window into the lives of 18th-century property owners. Conducted by appointees of the Prerogative Court, often neighbors of the deceased, inventories give a sometimes idiosyncratic account of a person’s estate subject to the social and cultural prejudices of the appraisers. Juxtaposing archaeological finds recovered from Long Point Farm, an early 18th-century site in Oxford, Maryland, with the 1723 probate inventory of the property’s owner, a...
Bunker Hill Farm, Camp Michaux: From Farmhouse to Bathhouse (2016)
Isolated in a single location in central Pennsylvania within Michaux State Forrest rest the remnants of an Early Republic farmstead, a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp, a Prisoner of War (POW) Interrogation Center from World War Two (WWII), and a Church camp. The one common factor throughout each of these disparate time periods is the farmhouse built circa 1788. This wooden structure stood until the 1970s when the Church camp ended. Now only the stone foundation remains along with...
Buoyancy and Stability of the Warwick: Analytical Study of Ballast (2013)
For the past three years, archaeologists have been carefully excavating the remains of the early 17th-Century English vessel Warwick on the bottom of Castle Harbor, Bermuda. Although the wreck was partially salvaged in the 1970’s, leaving much of the ballast rocks scattered around the site and unrecorded, there was a small portion of ballast found intact during the 2011 field season. This intact section yielded some interesting artifacts and allowed for better insights into 17th-Century...
Burial and Remembrance: The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2013)
Fieldwork in 1992 and 1993 on the grounds of the Milwaukee County Regional Medical Center, Milwaukee Wisconsin, resulted in recovery of some 1600 individuals originally buried in the institutional or "poor farm" cemetery. This paper argues that the conflict inherent in a public policy intended to provide a decent burial while simultaneously discouraging utilization of the service can only be understood within a broader historical context. Milwaukee’s population increased from 20,000 in 1850 to...
Burying the Sons of Israel in America: Jewish Cemeteries as the Focal Point of Diasporic Community Development (2018)
Cemeteries are a means of tethering a community to a geographic location. Often this process of placemaking results in the development of a community comprised of a meshwork of individuals from throughout a diaspora. In the case of Jewish populations the establishment of burial grounds are often the first in creating a community that comes together as a result of outside force or lack of a homeland. The commonalities of their religion and shared experiences, both real and imagined, make the...
"But I'm Not Dead Yet:" A Comparison of Medicinal Choices Made by the Chinese in the American West (2013)
Explorations of Chinese occupied sites in the United States have often commented on the presence of Chinese medicines on those sites and how those products represent the continuity of Chinese practices. What has received considerably less attention is the use of Euroamerican patent medicines by Chinese immigrants. Recent excavations in Sandpoint, Idaho have provided a unique opportunity to explore this issue. Excavations of a Chinese residence/business resulted in the recovery of...
The Buttermilk Creek Ranch Sites 41BL1431 and 41WM1498: Examining Land-Use at Two Prehistoric Lithic Resource Areas in Bell and Williamson Counties, Texas (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Buttermilk Creek Ranch (BCR) is located within the upper Buttermilk Creek Valley in Bell and Williamson Counties, Texas. Across this landscape, valley incision dissects chert-bearing limestones of the Lower Cretaceous Edwards Group exposing extensive outcrops of tool quality stone. In direct proximity to BCR, are the well-known multi-component sites...
Button, Button, Who's Got the Button: Uncovering Clues to the Garrison of Fort George, Turks and Caicos Islands (2013)
In November 2010, the Turks and Caicos National Museum led the first archaeological investigation of Fort George Cay, a small uninhabited island in the Turks and Caicos. The collection of multiple regimental buttons offered clues to who actually garrisoned the fort. Very little of the history of Fort St George (now named Fort George) has been documented. This presentation provides detailed descriptions of the buttons found and the regiments that served at the fort. Originally built in 1795 by...
Buttoning Up at the Biry House A Study of Clothing Fasteners of a Descendant Alsatian Household (2016)
Excavations at the Biry house of Castroville, Texas yielded a large assemblage of buttons, which may be studied to yield a better understanding of the lives of Alsatian immigrants within the community. Buttons represent a class of material objects that are simultaneously intimate and utilitarian in nature. While buttons are used on a daily basis, we remain largely aloof to these small, discrete fasteners in our lives. This paper represents an exercise in discerning the information that buttons...
Buttoning Up The Social Fabric: Clothing Fasteners Of An Alsatian Immigrant Household (2017)
Excavations of the Biry House of Castroville, Texas have produced a diverse assemblage of clothing buttons dating from the 1840s through the 1930s. This paper explores how these buttons are being used to create a more holistic understanding of the lives of these Alsatian immigrants and their descendants. Such buttons are a common occurrence among domestic assemblages of the 19th and 20th century, but these humble artifacts may actively shape the narratives of individual lives and the communities...
Buttons, Buckles, and Buffalo Soldiers: Personal Adornment and Identity at Fort Davis (2017)
In recent years personal adornment artifacts and their relation to identity performance have gained interest among historical archaeologists. This paper analyzes personal adornment artifacts recovered from Fort Davis, Texas during FODAAP’s 2014 field season to show how Buffalo Soldiers negotiated identity within a frontier community. Fort Davis, a nineteenth century U.S. Army base located on a major frontier, was home to all of the army’s all-black regiments and an ethno-racially diverse...
C. J. Young Artist: Archaeology of Civil War Photography and Stencil Cutting at Camp Nelson, Kentucky (2017)
Recent excavations at Camp Nelson Civil War Park, KY have focused on the William Berkele Sutler store, which was part of the camp’s commercial district. While excavating north of the Berkele Store, we unexpectedly found evidence of a photograph gallery which included a stencil cutting operation. Both of these products were in demand for Civil War soldiers, the former to send portraits of themselves back to loved ones, perhaps for the last time, and the latter to mark and claim personal...
Cabins, Households, and Families: The Multiple Loci of Pooled Production at James Madison's Montpelier (2016)
The lives of the members of the enslaved community at James Madison’s plantation in Virginia, Montpelier, were shaped by the types of work they were expected to do in order to keep the president’s mansion and farm running smoothly. Recent work by historical demographers has highlighted the importance of pooling resources within households, with members each contributing the results of their production activities to the group. Archaeological excavations at several different early 19th century...
California Archaeological Site Stewardship Program (CASSP) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Site Stewardship Matters: Comparing and Contrasting Site Stewardship Programs to Advance Our Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are many ways to organize and administer site stewardship. We highlight some characteristics of California site stewardship and we discuss why they matter. CASSP is provided by Partners for Archaeological Site Stewardship, a private, nonprofit organization. Because CASSP is not a...
California Public Education and the Mexican Ranchos - Looking Beyond 4th Grade (2017)
The Mexican Ranchos of the 18th and 19th centuries represent a niche in California history which is not often well understood by students of any age. From elementary school education to popular media, the focus in California tends to be on either the precontact Native Americans or the Spanish Missions. The Ranchos are host to a pluralistic community, including laborers, visitors, traders, owners, and overseers. Fairly representing these multiple voices can be difficult, but by presenting diverse...
California’s Corporate Cattle (2017)
When thinking about open range cattle production, seldom is that image linked to a picture of corporate America. The Kern County Land Company operating on over 2 million acres of land in the American West, much of it devoted to animal husbandry. All stages of husbandry was operated by the Kern County Land Company from the cow / calf operations to the abattoir and shipping to supermarkets. In the San Emigdio Hills in south central California, where this paper will focus, the Emigdio Ranch was...
A Call for Contextualized Ancient DNA Research in Mexico: The Importance of Developing Ancient DNA Collaborations that Further Education and Technology Transfer and Infrastructure in Developing Countries: Perspectives from Mexico's Experiences (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Increasing the Accessibility of Ancient DNA within Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient DNA approaches have a long-standing history in bioanthropological and archaeological contexts in Mexico. However, we are starting to see a gap between these novel data and anthropologists; this could be the result of the mixture of the rapid advance of paleogenomics together with the lack of technological and...
Camino Real de Tierra Adentro: Locating Trail Segments through Predictive Modeling (2017)
The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was a trail connecting Mexico City with New Mexico from 1598 until the early 20th century. This period reflects significant trail alteration in response to transportation change from carreta carts, stagecoaches, wagons, and automobiles plus localized weather conditions during travel. These shifts caused travelers to create alternate trail segments, leaving the Camino Real a series of trail segments, not a single path. As it travels through the Jornada del...
Camp 'a Colchester: Fairfax County, VA (2016)
Acquired in 2006 the Old Colchester Park and Preserve is over 145 acres located in Lorton, Virginia situated on the Occoquan River and is part of the Fairfax County Park Authority’s system of parks. Archaeological investigations in the park have revealed foundations contemporary to the Colchester port tobacco town that was in operation from ca. 1754-1830. Through research and various survey methods the Colchester Archaeological Research Team (CART) have discovered the presence of numerous...
Camp Atterbury's Grey Areas: Civilian Cemeteries on Military Property (2018)
Many of the military installations in use currently were built at the beginning of 20th century. These usually displaced some communities and individual residences. When Camp Atterbury was built in 1941, it displace a few small communities, a few hundred farming families, and approximately two dozen churches. Many of each of these groups had burial grounds. At the very beginning of construction of the base many of these people and their memorials were also removed to an area just north of base....
Camp Lawton: Life and Death of a Civil War Prison (2013)
In 2010 Georgia Southern University began a long term project to investigate and interpret Camp Lawton Prison near Millen, Georgia. This prison had a short lifespan, only six weeks to construct and six weeks of occupation and yet it has proven to have one of the most intact prisoner occupation areas of any Civil War prison in the United States. Results of work so far have demonstrated the efficacy of metal detection use in the prisoner occupation area, developed a conservation strategy for...
Camp McCoy: The Archaeology of Enlisted Men Before the Great War, ca. 1905-1910 (2018)
Test excavations conducted within modern-day Fort McCoy (US Army Installation, Wisconsin) revealed portions of historic Camp McCoy/Camp Emory Upton, two seasonal Army manuever camps occupied sporadically from 1905-1910. Discovery of what appears to be a Company size bakery, butcher yard and supply station area, along with a period midden allows for a detailed archaeological understanding of the lives, equipment and diet of enlisted soldiers in the early "territorial" U.S Army. This site is...
Camp of the 6th New York Volunteer Infantry and the Battle of Santa Rosa Island, Florida (2017)
In October of 1861 the camp of the 6th New York Volunteer Infantry was surprised and routed and the Battle of Santa Rosa Island ensued. Confederates destroyed the camp before being pushed off the island by regulars from nearby Fort Pickens. Research at the site was kicked off by an RPA-certified Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archaeologist training hosted by the University of West Florida, Florida Public Archaeology Network. Results expanded on the understanding of the site developed after the...
Camp Stanton and the Archaeology of Racial Ideology at a Camp of Instruction for the U.S. Colored Troops in Benedict, Charles County, Maryland. (2016)
Camp Stanton was a major Civil War recruitment and training camp for the U.S. Colored Infantry, established in southern Maryland both to draw recruits from its plantations, and to pacify a region yet invested in slavery. More than a third of the nearly 9,000 African Americans recruited in Maryland during the Civil War were trained at Camp Stanton. Archaeological survey and testing resulted in the discovery of four features associated with shelters that housed recruits over the winter of...