North America (Geographic Keyword)
776-800 (3,602 Records)
This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part III)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Museums and academic institutions are beginning to reexamine their collections stewardship and daily practice by inviting Indigenous voices and perspectives into the conversation. This is becoming particularly relevant with the proposed addition of duty of care to the NAGPRA regulations....
Considering the Possibilities of an 'Urban Public Archaeology': The Findings of a 60-Year Retrospective of Public Archaeology in the City of Philadelphia (2016)
In practice, and in scholarly debate, historical archaeologists pursue urban archaeology either as the archaeology ‘of cities’ or as archaeology that is done ‘in cities’. Likewise, in practice and scholarly debate, there is variation and divergence in the definitions and terminologies related to what 'Public Archaeology' is and what it does. Drawing on the dynamic, diverse, innovative, and usually long history of public outreach and engagement in the city of Philadelphia, this talk -- part of a...
Considering the Role of Mammoth and Other Megafauna in Food Systems across North America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists agree that proboscideans and other megafauna played a role in lifeways of the first Americans. From eastern Beringia to central America, the evidence is unequivocal: humans hunted mammoths. But what role did these animals play in the food systems of the first Americans? New research at several...
Constructed Differences And An Archaeology of Material Practices in Antebellum Communities of Color (2018)
Slavery and the Atlantic economy created mixed Native/African communities in southeastern Massachusetts, a reality which widened after the Revolution. Historical archaeologists can deepen our understandings of the differences and interactions amongst such communities. As color lines became more rigid in such places, their inhabitants often made common cause. Yet the ancestral differences amongst them also lead to the emergence of groups of "coloured foreigners" on Indian reservations, mostly...
Constructing A Community Of Color: A Spatial Analysis Of New Guinea On Nantucket (2018)
In 1827, the community of New Guinea on Nantucket, MA opened the doors of the African Meeting House. The African Meeting House’s construction was a milestone event in the establishment of this thriving community of color. People of African and Native ancestry on Nantucket coupled this with buying property, building homes, starting businesses, and founding institutions to create a space that allowed them refuge from daily experiences of racism, and facilitated community resistance. By examining...
Constructing Heritage for the Historic U-Lazy-S Ranch (2017)
Heritage as a cultural process is observed through three-layers: people, history, and landscapes. These layers are analyzed together to gain a holistic view of heritage construction at the historic U-Lazy-S Ranch located along the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado in northwestern Texas. This generational cattle ranch has been in operation for over 100 years. As ranching requires large tracts of land spread across the landscape, multiple sites must be examined and combined with documentary...
Constructing Privileged Landscapes In 19th Century Southern New England (2016)
Alix W. Stanley spent the early 20th century purchasing old family properties in the ‘Stanley Quarter’ section of New Britain, Connecticut. The properties, owned by Stanley family members from 1644 through the mid-18th century, provided his ancestors the ability to generate considerable wealth, some of which Alix’s father used to create the Stanley Tool and Die Company. In 1928, Stanley gifted the 360 acre patchwork, which included his mansion and historic Stanley family homes to the city for...
Constructing Technology in the Mining Workplace: Gold Mining in Depression-Era Fairbanks, Alaska (2015)
Industrial landscapes can present a rather impersonal perspective due to their immense scale and emphasis upon technical processes. Anthropological perspectives on technology nevertheless emphasize that all technological systems are socially constructed, drawing attention to the political and cultural considerations behind decision-making. This paper utilizes a sociotechnical systems approach to investigate depression-era gold mining near Fairbanks, Alaska. Attention is given to the...
Constructing the Borderzone: The Role of Positional Warfare and Natural Border Ideology on a 17th Century French Colonial Landscape (2018)
The majority of archaeological interpretations of French involvement in North America have not accounted for underlying European social constructs and ideologies. As archaeological investigations of the French In North America move away from recognized strongholds and expands through the greater French Atlantic World, a critical examination of the archaeological record through these constructs is vital. This paper examines one episode of 17th century expansionism along the Lake Champlain...
Constructing the Community: A Multi-Scalar Analysis of Runaway Slave Identity in 19th-Century Kenya (2018)
Like Maroons elsewhere in the world, runaway slaves in Kenya were thrown together by circumstance and carried diverse social experiences and cultural practices with them into freedom. Given this heterogeneity, archaeologists have grown increasingly interested in the mechanisms by which Maroons created communities of broader cultural coherence. This paper explores the creation of two communities by self-emancipated people in 19th-century Kenya, Koromio and Makoroboi. Here, I use an expanding...
Construction and Assembly of the Highbourne Cay Shipwreck (2018)
Archaeologists rarely excavate complete sites, due to a mutual understanding that sections should be left for future generations and the advancement of archaeological techniques. The dynamic and high current environment surrounding the Highbourne Cay shipwreck threatened to undermine the formerly protective ballast mound. Over the course of the previous summer, an international team of nautical archaeologists proceeded to remove ballast, coral, and sand to record surviving hull remains. This...
Construction and Negotiation of Gender at Yama, a Late 19th-Early 20th Century Japanese American Community (2018)
The Japanese village of Yama, located on Bainbridge Island, Washington, U.S.A., was occupied from the 1880s-1920s. Yama contained approximately 250 people, and many residents worked at the Port Blakely Lumber Mill. Using a transnational framework, I present analysis and interpretation of gender at the community of Yama and implications for a comparative and collaborative approach to the study of gender in the field of Japanese diaspora archaeology.
Construction, Identification, and Conservation of a 19th Century Iron Cannon (2017)
There are multiple issues that must be addressed during the archaeological conservation of iron cannon from underwater environments. Due to their size and weight they are difficult to transport and handle, and their size means that the cost of materials for conservation is high. The diversification of cannon types in the 19th century necessitates highly accurate documentation and recording to insure correct identification of type. This paper outlines the methods used for the recording,...
Consulting on Reburial Efforts (2024)
This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part I)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Bureau of Reclamation is actively working within the foundations of its authorities to move beyond just regulatory compliance of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to better support needs identified by Native American tribes, such as reburial of their...
A Consumer Evaluates the Adult Learning Experience in 4 Public Archaeology Field Programs (2018)
The explicit use of adult learning theory should help align the goals of the pubic and of public archaeology. The programs reviewed included 1560’s Spanish fort, 1630’s coastal settlement, early 1800’s presidential plantation, and a Shaker village and were an academic field-school, state-funded site, private foundation, and business venture. Three senior archaeologists at each program answered a ten-question survey about public archaeology (definitions, goals, site selection) and educational...
Consumerism As A Strategy For Negotiating Racism: A Comparative Study Of African Americans In Jim Crow Era Annapolis, MD (2015)
Archaeologists have studied many different ways in which African Americans coped with the racist structures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America. One way in which this was done was through consumer choice as part of the capitalist market used to create African American consumer aesthetics. With this understanding, archaeologists can study how commodities were used to express internally imposed classes within the African American community. In this paper, the archaeological...
Consumerism on the Margins: Shop Ledgers and Materialized Social Status in Coastal Co. Galway, Ireland. (2016)
In contrast to the marginality ascribed to Western Ireland during the 19th and 20th centuries, islanders’ and coastal mainlanders’ participated in transnational trade networks expressed through everyday material decision-making, seasonal and intermittent international interactions, and ideologies of social status. Historically, coastal communities in Western Ireland have been characterized as marginalized and geographically isolated from participation in mainstream consumerism and national and...
Consumerism, Market Access, and Mobility at St. Barbara's Freehold, St. Mary's City, Maryland (2018)
The St. Barbara's Freehold Tract in St. Mary’s City served as the center of a large plantation owned by the Hicks and Mackall families from the mid 18th century to the end of the Civil War. At the plantation’s height in the early 19th century, 40 people were held in bondage, living in log quarters scattered across several hundred acres. In 2016, archaeologists from St. Mary's College of Maryland identified and tested a complex of quarters dating to ca. 1750-1815. Archaeological and historical...
Consuming the French New World (2017)
All of France’s New World colonies were based on relationships with particular geographies, according to the products and resources wanted by the Crown, which may be thought of as the ultimate "consumer" of French colonial landscapes. Colonists and French descendant communities engaged with these different landscapes for both commercial and family subsistence purposes. Obtaining, producing, and moving such resources as furs, wheat and flour, hams, bear oil, salt, and sugar required a variety...
Contaminated: Archaeological Perspectives on Adulterated Alcohol Products in Turn-of-the-Century America (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archaeology of Meat and Ale (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the Covid-19 epidemic, high demand for alcohol-based hand sanitizer has resulted in products contaminated with toxic adulterants such as methanol. Whether the contamination was intentional or accidental, there are historic parallels where contaminated alcohol was produced, sold, and consumed. This paper explores some of...
Contemporary Views on Clovis Learning and Colonization (2018)
The timing of the earliest colonization of North America is debatable, but what is not at issue is the point of origin of the early colonists: Humans entered the continent from Beringia and then made their way south along or near the Pacific Coast and/or through a corridor than ran between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets in western North America. At some point they abandoned their arctic-based tool complex for one more adapted to an entirely different environment. The dispersal of that...
Contexts and Consequences of Racialized Labor Relations between Japanese American Workers and Sawmill Town Management in the Pacific Northwest (1890 to 1930) (2017)
This paper will explore the historical context surrounding the relationships between Japanese American sawmill workers and sawmill town management in the early 20th century Pacific Northwest. Japanese American sawmill workers found themselves in a highly racialized labor structure, where they were often regulated to hard labor, "low skill" positions. At the same time, there is evidence to suggest that these workers successfully negotiated with sawmill town management, while taking advantage of...
Contextualizing European Copper Distribution Across the Seventeenth-Century American Southeast: A Geoarchaeological Approach (2015)
European alloy copper artifacts are frequently found in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Native American archaeological sites across Virginia and North Carolina. Smith and Hally (2014) ask a simple yet important question about these items: How were they obtained by Native Americans? While historical documents suggest possible mechanisms for European copper distribution (including trade and tribute), the most important clues about these objects come from their archaeological contexts. This study...
Contextualizing Petroglyphs: Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and Public Archaeology (2018)
The central question that drives our inquiry is: How can technology, specifically Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), pair with material culture and archived/published oral tradition in order to enhance visitor experiences at a sacred American Indian site? Jeffers Petroglyphs is a Dakota site located in Comfrey, Minnesota with over 5,000 known petroglyphs, dating up to 7,000 years. Today, these petroglyphs hold spiritual and historical significance for the Dakota people, yet cannot be...
Contextualizing the Exceptional: Understanding "Small Find" Abundance at The Hermitage (2018)
The archaeological program at The Hermitage was exceptional in many ways, from the breadth and depth of its archaeological education programs and the square footage excavated across the plantation to the range of domestic slave housing types and diversity of artifacts found within and around these dwellings. The richness and diversity of "small finds" across Hermitage sites is particularly striking. Previous studies of Hermitage small finds have focused on individual artifacts as representations...