United States of America (Geographic Keyword)
1,226-1,250 (3,819 Records)
Hobos and other transient laborers were integral to the development of industrial capital in the United States. They traversed the country filling essential temporary positions at the behest of capital interests. Yet, they frequently utilized alternative market practices in their labor arrangements, relying partially on direct trade over monetary payment. They likewise maintained intricate social networks, the material remains of which lay extant in past hobo campsites. Despite fulfilling a...
Excavating Emotion on a Maryland Plantation (2016)
Due to their ephemeral, intangible nature, affect and emotion are difficult to capture and interpret from the archaeological record. However, to be human, feel emotion, and interact with one’s environment is a common experience that connects people across space and time; therefore, presenting affect and emotion is a powerful means of connecting people to the past. This paper uses a 18th-19th c. plantation context to explore the importance of sense perception, materiality, and the landscape to...
Excavating Personhood in the 19th-Century Graveyard (2016)
The St. George’s/St. Mark's Cemetery in Mount Kisco, NY, offers an ideal site in which to investigate the construction of 19th-century middle-class personhood. Previous studies have generally conceptualized the gravestone either as a passive reflection of social realities or as a site of the momentary suspension of social difference. The proposed study will marshal historical and archaeological evidence in demonstrating how gravestones functioned as active participants in the articulation of...
Excavating the Motor City: Structural Racism and the "Archaeological Record" in Detroit (2018)
In 2012 the Detroit Housing Commission received funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demolish the long-neglected public housing development known as the Douglass Homes, a collection of townhouses and mid- and high-rise apartment buildings in mid-town Detroit. The Douglass Homes had been built on top of an earlier residential neighborhood on the edge of Paradise Valley, a once-flourishing center of African American commerce and social life in the city. Pursuant to...
Excavation and Conservation of Waterlogged Archaeological Textile from the American Civil War Submarine H.L.Hunley (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Lives Revealed: Interpreting the Human Remains and Personal Artifacts from the Civil War Submarine H. L. Hunley" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During excavation of the American Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley, archaeologists uncovered skeletal remains of the eight-man crew along with fragile, waterlogged fragments of their clothing. Due to their fragility, the textiles could not be excavated in situ, but...
An Excavation of Data from Dusty File Cabinets: Carolina Artifact Pattern Data of Colonial Period Households, Kitchens, and Public Structures from Brunswick Town (2016)
Between 1958 and 1968, archaeological pioneer Stanley South excavated a total of 13 colonial era primary households and associated structures, as well as the courthouse, jail ("gaol"), and church. While these excavations were designed to interpret these structures for public visitation, it was the tens of thousands of artifacts from these ruins that led South towards the development his pattern-based, scientific archaeology. However, the artifact data from only three of these structures—Nath...
Excavation to Exhibition: Archaeological Research and Stories of the African Diaspora (2013)
In 1720, Scotsman Alexander Nisbett boarded a ship bound for Charles Town. Three thousand miles away, captive Africans were forced onto ships bound for a place unknown to them. The lives of Europeans and Africans converged in South Carolina. At a place called Dean Hall, Alexander Nisbett and his enslaved laborers built a plantation to grow rice. Two hundred and eighty years later archaeologists came to the site of the old plantation to unearth the history of the people who created Dean Hall. ...
Excavation to Exhibition: Archaeology and a New Narrative for Plantation Museums (2013)
From 1730 until 1865 Charleston, South Carolina was home to some of the richest people in the New World. Their fortunes were created from rice, indigo, and cotton grown with the labour of enslaved Africans who made up over 50 percent of the Lowcountry population. Planters showcased their wealth in elegant plantations and townhouses filled with European fashions and furniture. Today this historical landscape is represented at the region’s popular plantation and house museums. As reflections of...
Excavations at Historic Jacksonport State Park (3JA53) (2015)
The town of Jacksonport, Arkansas was established in the late 1830s near the confluence of the White and Black rivers, and rose to prominence during the 1850s to 1870s as a key steamboat town and as the Jackson County seat. However, after being bypassed by the railroad the town declined and by 1892, it was largely deserted. In 2009, the planned construction of a collection management facility lead to data recovery excavations within two town lots, as well as the recovery of detailed...
Excavations at Historic Neelsville: life as a tenant blacksmith (2016)
From 2014 to 2015, excavations within the historic crossroads town of Neelsville in Montgomery County, Maryland, now a residential neighborhood, revealed a complex of features including a structure with a stone foundation. Initially identified as a blacksmith shop based on historic research, the structure was later revealed to be an adjacent domestic structure, presumably where the blacksmith and his family lived. A nearby sheet midden showed evidence of shared usage between the household, the...
Excavations at the Howe Pottery: A Late Nineteenth-Century Kiln in Benton, Arkansas (2016)
This poster presents the results of Phase III archeological mitigation (data recovery) excavations at the Howe Pottery (3SA340) on Military Road in Benton, Arkansas. The Howe Pottery is a National Register of Historic Places eligible archeological site that is significant because of its unique state of preservation, coupled with a general lack of archeological data for the late nineteenth-century pottery industry in the Benton area. Archival records suggest the pottery was established before...
Excavations in the carriage house basement of the Sorrel-Weed House (2018)
The Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah is one of only a handful of antebellum homes in the city's tourism industry to undergo archaeological studies. In spring 2017, excavations were conducted in the basement of the carriage house, where a depression in the floor was thought to be caused by the remains of a former enslaved woman. Completed in ca. 1841, the Sorrel-Weed House was built for merchant Francis Sorrel and is now the focus of a public interpretation program that involves infidelity,...
Exchange, Entanglement, and ‘Freedom’: British Anti-Slavery and Nascent Colonialism in coastal Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Considering Frontiers Beyond the Romantic: Spaces of Encroachment, Innovation, and Far Reaching Entanglements" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper examines the history of slavery, abolition, and the transition to nascent colonialism in coastal Sierra Leone from the lenses of the longue durée of history and entanglement concept. It draws on multiple lines of evidence to explore the role of material...
Exhibitions of Gentility at George Washington’s Boyhood Home (2013)
The examination of personal accessories recovered from George Washington’s boyhood home (1738-1774) reveals the family’s efforts to portray their respectability and gentry class identity despite the economic and social anxieties they experienced after the death of their family patriarch. Dedicated analysis of small finds artifacts demonstrate the family’s commitment to genteel behavior and display. Clothing accessories such as powdered wigs and sleeve buttons proclaimed their class, and, on...
Expanding KOCOA’s Potential: The Role of a West Point Military Academy Education on the Second Seminole War Florida (1835-1842) (2015)
The field of conflict archaeology has begun embracing KOCOA as a regular part of battlefield analysis. However, I argue KOCOA can be further expanded to include indirect expressions of warfare and incorporate them into a meaningful discussion of their role in the outcome of conflict. To accomplish this, I develop a model that allows for the investigation of hypotheses about decision-making processes and their effectiveness using the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) in Florida as a case study. In...
Expanding the Dialogue: A Conversation Between Descendent and Archaeologist about Community, Collaboration, and Archaeology at Timbuctoo, NJ (2017)
Meaning is not monolithic. Presented here are different narratives on the interests of archaeologists and descendants. Focus is given to the African American community of Timbuctoo. This project, like many other attempts at community archaeology is not a story of unabated triumphs: rather, these narratives are about the challenges that can emerge through collaboration. This is not meant to demean collaborative archaeology, rather it is to underscore that through pragmatic discourse we can...
Expanding the Historical Archaeology of College Hill: Updates in Excavation, Digital Technologies, and Outreach in Providence, Rhode Island (2017)
The Archaeology of College Hill is a course at Brown University, taught by two graduate students, that aims to train undergraduates in various field methods, documentary research, and readings and discussions of archaeological theory. In 2016, the course underwent several exciting changes. First, it relocated from Brown’s campus, where it had been conducting excavations for several years, to the nearby Moses Brown School. This paper presents the results of two seasons of fieldwork at this new...
Expedition Costa Rica: Cahuita’s Brick and Cannon Shipwreck Sites (2016)
East Carolina University’s Program in Maritime Studies studied two shipwreck sites in Cahuita National Park, Costa Rica. These sites presented unique challenges to the group because of their location, distribution, similarities, unique formation processes, and role as part of a dynamic and protected ecosystem. One site has a brick pile and few scattered artifacts, including cannon, concretions, a grinding stone, and two bottles. The other has 13 pieces of concreted cannon, two anchors, and a few...
Experience Counts: Solutions Historical Archaeologists Can Provide in Response to Climate Change (2016)
For well over a century Historical Archaeologists have been faced with the persistent problem of losing archaeological sites to development. Recently, another challenge has come to the forefront – how these sites are being adversely affected by climate change. Many of the problems encountered were the result of either increased coastal flooding or flooding in areas where former watercourses have been diverted, altered, or filled to accommodate development. In the last decade, requests for...
Experiencing Fort Recovery, Ohio: Balancing Descendent Views in Historic Site Interpretation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reflections, Practice, and Ethics in Historical Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Battle of the Wabash (1791) and the Battle of Fort Recovery (1794) in modern day Fort Recovery, Ohio are illustrative of early settler and American Indian conflicts in the expansion of the newly formed American nation. Consequently, the resulting modern battlefield landscape presents an opportunity for public...
Expessing ethnic identity in a French town: study of the Janis-Ziegler Site (23SG272) in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri (2017)
Dr. Elizabeth Scott introduced me to many aspects of understanding ethnicity in the historical and archaeological record through her years of work at the Janis-Ziegler site (23SG272). Despite Ste. Genevieve being founded by the French, the German Ziegler family resided in the town beginning in the early 19th century. In 2006, archaeological investigations went underway on the Janis-Ziegler site, directed by Dr. Elizabeth Scott and Donald Heldman. The purpose of my research was to discover to...
Exploring "Clocker’s Acre": The Architecture of a Colonial Period Building (2018)
In 2013, archaeologists at Historic St. Mary’s City excavated a newly discovered building within the Governor's Field. The remnants of this colonial period structure survived below Anne Arundel Hall on the campus of St. Mary’s College of Maryland. The large 1950’s period classroom building had been demolished in preparation for new construction. Likely dating to the late 17th century, this structure underwent numerous repairs and analysis of the post holes will aid in the understanding of the...
Exploring African American Life through Small Finds from Poplar Forest’s Wing of Offices (2019)
This is an abstract from the "POSTER Session 1: A Focus on Cultures, Populations, and Ethnic Groups" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeologists at Poplar Forest are revisiting the artifacts recovered during the excavation of the Wing of Offices, which serviced Jefferson’s retreat home and plantation in Bedford County, Virginia. This building included a kitchen and smokehouse along with two additional rooms that could have been used for other...
Exploring Age in the Chinese Diaspora (2018)
While the archaeology of the Chinese diaspora has grown and expanded to incorporate numerous realms of study, most work has continued to focus on ethnicity as the key marker of Chinese identity, culture, and artifacts. More recently, archaeologists have explored the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity and class and ethnicity at Chinese sites. Age, however, is underexplored throughout archaeology in general, and completely unaddressed in archaeological research into the Chinese diaspora....
Exploring Cultural Resource Management’s Contribution to Historical Archaeology, 1967–2014 (2016)
Since the signing of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, the Society for Historical Archaeology and the cultural resource management (CRM) industry have grown along parallel, but slightly different, paths. While CRM archaeologists make up more than half of the SHA’s membership, and the industry arguably generates more raw archaeological data each year than any other sector of the discipline, its representation in the journal is disproportionately low. This study presents the results...