Massachusetts (State / Territory) (Geographic Keyword)
351-375 (5,213 Records)
The University of North Dakota Man Camp Project has used archaeology to engage seriously the issues of workforce housing and industrial landscapes in the Bakken. Our work proceeds with a focus not on the ebullience (or catastrophe) of the Bakken, but rather on the material culture of housing in a dynamic extractive landscape. We do not advocate, nor do we analyze or make policy recommendations. Our work in the field epitomizes, however, an archaeology of care for the communities in which we...
The Archaeology of Cassipora Creek: Exploratory Investigations of a 17th-Century Jewish Settlement in Suriname (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Contact and Colonialism" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the 17th-century, Jewish migrants from Europe began settling in Suriname, where they were granted unprecedented autonomy in governing their community and openly practicing their religion. In 1665, these Jewish settlers established their first synagogue and cemetery along the Cassipora Creek, which would become the namesake of their...
Archaeology of Chinese Woodchoppers and the Forests of the Lake Tahoe Basin: Exploring the Intersections of Extractive Industries, Transportation, and Labor (2015)
During the late 1860s and early 1870s, Chinese "woodchoppers" lived and worked in the vast forests of the South Lake Tahoe Basin in the eastern Sierra Nevada, near Genoa, Nevada, leaving distinctive archaeological signatures wherever they worked and lived. The laborers in these isolated camps supplied Nevada’s Comstock mines with forest products, as the Comstock had already depleted its own local sources of lumber, approximately 30 miles away. This relatively well-preserved local cultural...
The Archaeology of Citizenship (2013)
This paper examines how a wide variety of communities and individuals have constituted and articulated what it means to be an American using material culture as a medium of social action. I oscillate back and forth from the institutions imparting ideals about American citizenship to the individuals on the receiving end of such ideological instruction. The vantage point historical archaeology affords permits a reading of citizenship that is multiscaler in methodology, nuancing previous studies of...
The Archaeology of Class, Status and Authority Within Mid-19th Century U. S. Army Commissioned Officers: Examples from Fort Yamhill and Fort Hoskins, Oregon 1856-1866 (2015)
In 1856 Fort Yamhill and Fort Hoskins were established to guard the newly established Oregon Coast Reservation. Charged with controlling traffic in and out of the northern part of the reservation these posts served as "post-graduate schools" for several officers who would later become high ranking generals during the American Civil War. During their service these men, often affluent and well educated, held the highest social, economic and military ranks at these frontier military posts. This...
The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America: A Case Study from 18th-century Spanish Texas (2013)
Dress matters. More than purely functional, the color, fabric, and fit of clothing, along with adornments, posture, and manners, convey information on status, gender, bodily health, religious beliefs, and even sexual preferences. Colonial peoples created a language of appearance to express their bodies and identities through unique combinations of locally-made and imported clothing and adornment. In this paper, I discuss the active manipulations and combinations of clothing and adornment in...
The Archaeology of Cowboy Island: The Santa Rosa Historic Archaeology Project (SRHAP) (2016)
This paper presents the findings from the first year of a new historic archaeology research project on Santa Rosa Island, one of the five islands of Channel Islands National Park off the coast of southern California. A new, multi-year project dedicated to recording the extant historic structures and sites related to the 19th- and 20th-century ranching complex was started in 2014, instigated by the recent opening of the Santa Rosa Island Research Station. Since May 2014, four CSU Channel Islands...
The archaeology of cultural interactions in French Guiana (2013)
The Guyanese cultural map changed just before the arrival of the Europeans in the territory. The first European explorers to reach Guiana therefore met recently restructured Native Amerindian groups. When the French settled and brought with them African slaves to work on their plantations, they increased the ethnic diversity of the Cayenne region. In this perspective, Cayenne Island was an area where cultural interactions and blends between the various groups in place were intense and frequent....
The Archaeology of Enslaved Labor: Identifying Work and Domestic Spaces in the South Yard (2016)
While the domestic lives of enslaved families and communities are a critical element of understanding enslaved life, the majority of each day was spent carrying out work for their masters. Recent excavations at Montpelier have begun to examine structures related to the work of James Madison's domestic slaves. These excavations include work on the extant kitchen and two smokehouses, buildings clearly designed for the support of the Montpelier Mansion. However, the proximity of these structures to...
Archaeology of Environmental Inequality (2016)
The relationships between biopolitics and processes of capitalism and industrialization have come under increasing scrutiny by activists in the environmental justice movement. Ethnographic studies in modern industrialized (and industrializing) societies demonstrate marked environmental inequality, particularly disadvantageous to racialized groups and working-class communities. These discriminatory practices have resulted in the disempowerment of marginalized populations, loss of land,...
Archaeology of Excursion Steamboats: Recent Work on Late 19th Century Shipwrecks of the Midwest (2018)
Shipwrecks in inland lakes in the United States provide scholars with an opportunity to study the nautical archiotecture and technological design of early excursion steamboats. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inland lakes were important areas for resort communities, and leisure destinations for urban centers. An important aspect of these spots were steamboats designed exclusively for pleasure excusrions. Recent sonar imaging of the shipwreck Hazel A. in Reeds Lake, Michigan has...
An Archaeology of Fear and Loathing: Building, Remembering and Commemorating the Civilian and Military Fortifications of the U.S. – Dakota War of 1862 in Minnesota. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Memory, Archaeology, And The Social Experience Of Conflict and Battlefields" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Relatively unknown outside of the state, the impacts of the U.S. – Dakota War of 1862 are far-reaching and ongoing in many Minnesota communities. Prior to 1862 most U.S. military installations in Minnesota were not walled or stockaded. The relentless land grabbing of settler colonialism,...
The Archaeology of Forts and Battlefields (2013)
Forts and battlefields embody the conflicts between nations. Victory or defeat in past wars has helped determine the shape of modern society. This paper discusses some of the most dynamic and exciting archaeological projects ever conducted at sites of military conflict throughout the United States. Using case studies from all of the major conflicts fought on American soil, this paper discusses how archaeologists use modern scientific techniques to discover the remains of forts, battlefields,...
The Archaeology of Gender in Historic America (2013)
Gendered social relations are fundamental to human experience. The ways in which individuals understand their roles as gendered beings and their relationships to other gendered beings is constantly pushed and pulled by forces both internal and external to the individual and the family/social/economic unit to which they belong at multiple scales from the household to the community to the nation. Identity, sexuality, cultural prescriptions for social roles, socioeconomic class, ethnic heritage,...
The Archaeology of Gendered Resistance at the Industrial Mine in Superior, CO (2017)
The Industrial Mine at Superior, operating from 1895 to 1945, was one of many coal mines situated within a region known as the Colorado Northern Coal fields. It is exceptional only in that it was one of the largest coal producers in the area and because it was the sole mine in the region with both a company town and company store. This paper examines how camp housing structured the lives of women living at the Industrial Mine, as well as how women altered the camp. Through their gendered...
The Archaeology of God’s Wrath – A Major Earthquake on the East Coast in 1663 (2015)
On the evening of February 5th, 1663, an earthquake estimated to between 7.2 and 7.8 on the Richter scale begins. It is felt from the actual state of New York up to Quebec City and from Montreal to Tadoussac. For Christians this first quake represents the eve of Judgement Day. The earth continues to quake for seven months. The quake is interpreted as God’s Wrath following years of alcohol trade and consumption as well as generally poor behaviour in the colony such as a recurring failure to...
Archaeology of Historical Land Use in Massachusetts (1986)
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An Archaeology of Homeplace at the Parting Ways, an African-American Settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts (2016)
The paper will explore how the African-American residents of a late 18th- and 19th-century community called Parting Ways in Plymouth, Massachusetts constructed a homeplace in the years following their emancipation from slavery. Beyond their importance to household productivity, daily practices—for example, cooking, eating meals, taking tea, and household chores—constituted social interactions and exchanges between individuals that fostered a sense of security and strengthened the bonds of...
An Archaeology of Inventories: An 18th Century Jesuit Winery and Distillery in Nasca, Peru (2018)
Estate inventories offer archaeologists a synchronic assemblage of material culture including the built environment, and an opportunity to understand how aspects of such an assemblage relate to one another and the landscape from the perspective of the assessor. Two such inventories exist for the Hacienda La Ventilla, an annex of the Hacienda San Joseph de La Nasca owned by the Cuzco Jesuits. The first dates to the sale of La Ventilla by a lay proprietor in 1706 and lists the structures,...
The Archaeology of Irish Railroad Laborers in Mid-Nineteenth Century Virginia: Findings from the First Field Season (2013)
In 1850 the landscape 15 miles west of Charlottesville was dramatically altered as thousands of Irish immigrants were brought to the area to construct the Blue Ridge Railroad. The dangerous work consisted of several cuts and tunnels. One of the more difficult projects was the Blue Ridge or Afton tunnel. At its completion it stretched just under a mile and at the time was one of the longest tunnels in American history. During the summer of 2012, the excavations focused on standing dry-laid stone...
An Archaeology Of Jazz: Urban And Racial Identity At The Blue Bird Inn, Detroit (2016)
The postwar period was a transformative time for African American communities in Detroit. Mass migrations of African Americans from the south and shifts in the racial boundaries between neighborhoods led to dramatic changes in the urban makeup of the city. Located at the center of one such neighborhood in Detroit’s Westside was the Blue Bird Inn, one of the most important jazz clubs in the city as well as a social hub for the community. The Blue Bird rose to prominence in the late 1940s with the...
The Archaeology of Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts
Documents associated with background historical research and archaeological field work at the Lowell National Historical Park.
The Archaeology of Maritime Alexandria (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Urban Archaeology: Down by the Water" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2012, City Council approved a plan to revitalize Alexandria’s historic waterfront. Just as Alexandrians sought to transform their sleepy tobacco town into a prosperous port, so too do today’s residents envision a vibrant waterside destination. Because of the 30-year old Archaeology Protection Code requiring, archaeologists geared up...
The Archaeology of Minute Man National Historical Park
Documents associated with archaeological field work at Minute Man National Historical Park.
Archaeology of Mothering in 19th Century Colonial Yucatán (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Women’s Work: Archaeology and Mothering" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The investigation of mothering naturally parallels that of childhood in archaeological literature. Arguments for the status of women as the last colonized population and childhood as a colonial construct make looking at mothering in colonial contexts compelling and necessary. In Spanish and British colonial Yucatán, it can be difficult...