North America (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kari Jones.

Over 50,000 Italian prisoners of war were transported to the United States during World War II. After Italy negotiated an armistice with the Allies, POWs were presented with a choice. Those that signed an oath of allegiance to the new Italian government were assigned to Italian Service Units (ISUs). They provided support services for the United States military in exchange for limited freedoms and better living conditions. Those that refused to sign the oath remained in POW camps. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Judith P Joklik. Michael P Roller.

Personal collections of objects reflect individual orderings of the material world, particularly when they encompass the realms of work, domestic life, health, aesthetics and religion. As complete sets, they are like an idealized version of an archaeological assemblage: intact, curated, annotated, and often traceable to an individual life trajectory and historical period. Carmelo Fierro was an Italian immigrant who came to American in 1902, carrying with him a small cabinet packed with small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason, T. Raupp. David Steinberg.

The American transport ship Florence D disappeared in the murky waters off of the Tiwi Islands after being bombed by Japanese fighter planes on their return from the first air attack on Darwin Harbour on 19 February 1942. Considered one Australia’s great wartime mysteries, the location of the site was unknown until discovered by a local fisherman in 2006. Archaeological investigations of the wreck later conducted by teams from the Northern Territory’s Heritage Branch verified the identity of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amber J Grafft-Weiss.

Historians and archaeologists alike have noted the structural repression imposed by the plantation landscape. The organization of spaces and various structures on plantations allowed for optimal surveillance through the establishment of clearly delineated areas suggesting prescribed labor or activity. Personal spaces associated with enslaved Africans or African Americans were often easily visible from parts of the plantation that were typically occupied by white authority figures. Archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Bush. Julia Furlong.

This is an abstract from the "Outreach and Education: Examples of Approaches and Strategies from the Pacific Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural resources management (CRM) is at a pivotal moment in its history. Increasing workloads and an insufficient stream of early professionals have created a labor crisis. We are not alone in identifying recruitment as one solution. With the goal of increasing the number of bachelor’s degrees we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Diaz.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Health, Wellness, and Ability" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Museums were created for educated, wealthy, able-bodied white men. This legacy of exclusion is one that museums find difficult to accept and then rectify. As museum goers begin to expect more and incoming museum professionals demand change, these institutions have gradually begun to shift elitist paradigms into one of accessibility and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Devlin. Lynsey A. Bates. Jillian Galle.

In this paper, we argue that site survey, prior to and in addition to open area excavation, is essential to addressing our understanding of the contested landscapes of plantation life. Building on a research strategy employed by DAACS on former British Caribbean plantations, preliminary results from 2016 fieldwork at the eighteenth-century Jamaican sugar estate of Stewart Castle suggest the methodological power and analytical opportunities of systematic shovel-test-pit (STP) survey. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Halling. Ryan Seidemann.

This is an abstract from the "Forensic Archaeology: Research & Practice" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many coroners’ offices in the State of Louisiana have a contract for interring unclaimed or unidentified individuals, keeping their coolers clear for new bodies. Therefore, the public relies on interment to document the location of the body in the event that family members require disinterment in the future. When these contracts are with private...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton. Mark U. Wilde-Ramsing.

In November 1717, at the height of his short-lived career as a notorious pirate, Blackbeard stole a French prize, the La Concorde de Nante. After taking the ship, he kidnapped several crewmembers and slaves, crucially needed to continue his pirating.  In June 1718, the ship was run-aground on a sandbar at Topsail Inlet and life changed once again for the crew and conscripted passengers. As Blackbeard and a few loyal crewmembers fled the scene on a smaller vessel, the rest were put a-shore. From...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laurie A. Wilkie.

Until recently, the archaeology of Chinese immigrants and their descendants has been under-theorized and too often, consciously/unconsciously shaped by contemporary racialized discourses.  In this paper, following the lead of historical archaeologist Kelly Fong, this paper will draw upon bodies of theorizing developed in the fields of Ethnic and Critical Race studies to examine the experiences of diaspora among a community of Chinese and Chinese American shrimp fishermen who worked the waters of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Petrich-Guy. Renae J. Campbell.

Self-taught artist, James Castle, lived his entire life in Idaho (1899-1977). From a young age, he created his works from everyday materials, such as mail, matchboxes, pages of siblings’ homework, and found objects. Castle moved to Boise with his family in the 1930s and while at this farm, he used a converted chicken coop/shed as a private workspace and abode. In October 2016, archaeologists from the University of Idaho (UI) collaborated with the James Castle House, Boise City Department of Arts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruth Van Dyke.

In the 1840s, empresario Henri di Castro brought Alsatian settlers from the Rhine Valley to south Texas, where the new arrivals joined established Mexican families, German immigrants, and displaced Apache.  Today, the Castro Colonies Heritage Association (CCHA) is transforming a 19th-century property into a Living History Center, intended as a focal point for Alsatian heritage tourism. In partnership with the CCHA, Binghamton University archaeologists have completed three excavation seasons at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeneva Wright.

USS Arizona, a steel-hulled battleship sunk in Pearl Harbor, HI on 7 December 1941, is an iconic American shipwreck, a war grave and memorial, and is among many shipwreck sites that contain large amounts of potential marine pollutants. Unlike most similar sites, however, USS Arizona has been the subject of long-term and ongoing corrosion studies aimed at understanding and modeling the nature of structural changes to the hull. Gaining a detailed understanding of the interaction between the marine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemarie T Blewitt.

This paper analyzes botanical remains recovered at the Old Town site, a late 18th century occupation of the Catawba Nation, and integrates those data with faunal and ceramic analysis along with ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources to describe Catawba foodways. The Old Town occupation was defined by wars and a major epidemic, and was one of the places where the devastated Catawba peoples reformed and reconstituted their new identity. I examine the foodways at Old Town as part of the changing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Peles.

In the 18th century the Catawba held a key position in the Southeast, drawing a number of groups from the North Carolina Piedmont down to South Carolina to join them; ultimately these groups coalesced into the Catawba Nation.  Projects undertaken by the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at UNC have investigated some of these previous 17th century communities in the North Carolina Piedmont, as well as a number of 18th-19th century Catawba households in South Carolina.  This paper uses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kisha Supernant.

The Métis Nation of Canada has often been categorized as a mixed, hybrid ethnic group, based largely on racialized understandings of the early encounters between Indigenous women and European men. Métis scholars have begun to critique the racial basis for "Métis-as-mixed" and shift toward ways of identifying based on personhood and nationhood. In this paper, I discuss how settler colonial categories of hybridity have influenced past archaeological research on the Métis in Canada and explore the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith A.B. Ellis.

While bioarchaeologists are able to estimate age from the remains of children into narrow ranges, they often avoid dividing childhood into categories based on these age estimates.  Children then end up lumped under just a few categories, or even a single category, "child."  While this is prudent in cases where chronological and cultural age cannot necessarily be matched, historical bioarchaeology gives us a unique opportunity to examine historical records and further refine how we categorize,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Machado.

Virginia City, Nevada was a thriving mining boomtown in the late nineteenth century. Saint Mary’s Hospital provided quality health care to the citizens of Virginia City from 1875 to 1897. Administered by the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, this private medical institution was greatly influenced by the Catholic Church. Considering its pivotal role as both a religious and social institution, the hospital site can provide great insights into the civic life of a community that was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Lenik.

The Catholic parishes that were established as units of ecclesiastical jurisdiction are among the range of institutions, including chartered companies, missions, and military installations, deployed by nation-states in the Americas to exert control over the daily lives of African, European, and indigenous peoples. As administrative units in the colonization of newly acquired territories in the Caribbean islands, parishes introduced administrative boundaries and religious personnel who intended...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth A. Comer.

For more than 42 years, the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, Inc. has maintained heritage programs in the village of Catoctin Furnace. These activities balance the needs of the ongoing village lifestyle with those of the received visitor experience. Updating traditional seasonal events while adding leisure amenities involves constantly balancing funding sources and message.  However, the tourism experience must be rooted in solid academic research.  Current research on the African-American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenn Ogborne.

Cattle were not the primary focus of Thomas Jefferson’s Bedford County plantation, but he did maintain a small herd, divided between the quarter farms that comprised Poplar Forest, for various purposes. These included dairying, some meat production, and manure. Cattle were also driven in small numbers to Monticello, herded by enslaved individuals living at Poplar Forest. In addition to live animals, dairy products were also sent regularly to Monticello. While herding and dairying activities are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martha Zierden. Elizabeth J. Reitz.

When colonists settled Carolina in the late 17th century they encountered a bountiful land.  They immediately planted cattle, that thrived in the pinewoods, canebreaks, and marshes of the lowcountry.  Most of these cattle were raised under free-range conditions.  Three decades of archaeological research in Charleston, South Carolina, show that the flourishing cattle herds influenced the city's economy and diet. Measurements of cattle bones and analysis of recovered horn cores indicate that the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nerissa Russell.

I argue that, in contrast to other early animal domesticates, cattle domestication in the Near Eastern Neolithic was motivated largely by the symbolic value of wild cattle (aurochsen).  Already the centerpieces of feasts and ceremonies, subject to ritual treatment, and probably playing a key role in Neolithic religion, domestication brought these powerful animals under human control, and ensured a ready supply for ceremonies.  I suggest that this pre-existing symbolic and spiritual power shaped...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman. Nicole Mathwich.

Cattle and other European livestock were important to the economic and cultural development of western North America; however, the celebrated cowboy and vaquero cultures of the region emerged out of a complex Spanish colonial tradition that began with missionized native peoples who became adept at ranching. The Pimería Alta, what is today northern Sonora and southern Arizona, provides an excellent case study of the many ways that the cattle introduced at missions became rapidly intertwined with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John D. Richards. Patricia B. Richards.

Encouraged by earlier emigrants as well as boosterism by steamship companies, some 60,000 Belgians immigrated to the United States before 1900. A particularly dense concentration of Walloon speakers settled the southern portion of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula and by 1860 over 60% of this area was Belgian owned. Today, the area harbors the largest concentration of Belgian-American vernacular architecture in North America and is remarkable for the presence of well-preserved agrarian landscapes as...