United States of America (Geographic Keyword)
2,251-2,275 (3,819 Records)
This paper will examine the role of wampum in the globally-connected western Great Lakes fur trade, with a focus on Fort St. Joseph, in Niles, Michigan, and the fort's position on the periphery of trade activities in New France. To explore wampum's spatial and temporal boundaries, I sampled data from the archaeological findings of historic sites throughout the Northeast and Midwest regions. GIS spatial analysis provided an alternate method of processing archaeologically-recovered and historic...
Meaningful Choices: An Archaeology of Selective Engagement on the 19th Century Irish Coast (2016)
This research explores the nature of marginality on the periphery of the British Empire. The edges of empires are shifting, culturally-negotiated borders with the capacity to disclose important information about social networks and cultural change. Households in these places are subject to transnational processes and make choices which demonstrate the presence and connections with broader global networks of economic and social access. This project focuses on the ramifications of national...
The Meanings of "Litter" in Yosemite National Park (2015)
The concepts of "nature" and "culture" have been carefully critiqued by anthropologists over the last few decades, but they still remain in the forefront of the public debate over the environment and how best to preserve it. The question of how modern people see the natural and cultural realms is at the heart of this issue. This project explores the line between these ideas by analyzing the behavior of one segment of the modern public: visitors to Yosemite National Park. Employing the...
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch: The Archaeology of Ranching in Arizona (2016)
One of the "Five Cs" on the Arizona State Seal, cattle ranching has contributed greatly to Arizona’s growth and prosperity since Father Francisco Kino first introduced cattle in the 17th century. Ranching continues to influence the economic and cultural heritage of Arizona today, with nearly 4,000 ranches spread across the state’s 15 counties. This session will briefly summarize the archaeology of Ranching in Arizona, with emphasis on the San Rafael Ranch. Formally established as a the San...
The Measure of Meaning: Identity and Change among Two Contact-Period Cherokee Site Bead Assemblages (2016)
Archaeologists have studied bone, shell, and glass beads for several decades, in search of their meaning among Native American cultures. The significance of these small artifacts among the Cherokee is evident in their mythology, personal adornment, and rituals. Thus, they represent an integral part of Cherokee cultural identity. Previous archaeological research at 40GN9, linked to the sixteenth-century Cherokee town of Canasoga located in Tennessee, demonstrated the predominantly shell beads...
Measuring Success in the Jesuit Cause (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Jesuit Missions, Plantations, and Industries" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The site of Fort St. Joseph in southwest Michigan began as a mission in the 1680s when the Jesuits were granted a tract of land by the French crown along the St. Joseph River. For nearly a century a Jesuit priest tended to the souls of the Fort St. Joseph community. The presence of a marriage and baptism register testify to their religious...
Measuring Variability in Jaw Harps on Enslaved Sites (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During excavations of an early 19th-century quarter site for enslaved field laborers at Monticello, archaeologists have recovered four jaw harps. This high quantity stands in contrast to other excavations at sites at Monticello. This paper aims to contextualize this find. We trace temporal and spatial trends in the abundance of jaw harps in a sample of slavery-related sites in North...
Meat Economies of the Chinese-American West (2016)
Cuisine and diet are topics of particular interest to scholars of Chinese communities in the Nineteenth-century American West. Many zooarchaeological analyses have identified beef and pork among the main provisions for miners and townsfolk, and this paper will synthesize archaeological and historical evidence for food access and supply while exploring contexts of socioeconomics and cuisine which likely structured food choices. By focusing on both urban and rural sites to compare access and food...
Mechanical Scanning Sonar: 21st Century Documentation of 19th Century Shipwrecks (2016)
The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (LCMM) has been exploring the use of mechanical scanning sonar systems for the documentation of the shipwrecks found within its waters. These technologies allow for fairly rapid recordation of 3D structures in limited visibility environments. The LCMM has deployed this technology on two canal boat wrecks to determine its effectiveness in comparison with traditional documentation techniques. This presentation will review the results of those studies as well...
Medical Practices and Teaching Specimens: A Review of Skeletal Modifications Associated with Medical Intervention and the Educational Use of Human Remains, with Application to Subadult Individuals from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2017)
From life to death and beyond the grave, the bodies of the individuals buried at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery have been vulnerable to the actions and authority of medical professionals. Medical procedures and the implementation of human remains for training purposes are two forms of culturally-sanctioned skeletal modifications detected among the juvenile remains recovered from the 1991-1992 Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery excavations. This paper presents the results of a...
Medieval Japanese Ports: Exploring the Seto Inland Sea’s Maritime Cultural Landscape (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the late medieval period (14th – 16th c), Japan’s Seto Inland Sea became the locus of a robust maritime trade network. Smaller island ports were integral to this maritime trade, but have often been overlooked in larger studies of this area. This paper will look at the intersection of environment, transport, and commodity production to consider the impact on port...
The Medieval Shipwrecks of Novy Svet: A Reassesment (2015)
Since 1997, Dr. Sergey Zelenko of the Centre for Underwater Archaeology (CUA) at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev has been conducting survey and excavation near the resort town of Novy Svet on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula. CUA researchers have discovered the remains of three medieval shipwrecks spanning the 10th to the late 13th centuries, illuminating much about Black Sea seafaring. Recently, multi-national CUA teams discovered hull timbers, anchors and vessel...
Mediterranean Shipbuilding In Iberia: The Dovetail Mortise And Tenon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research and On Going Projects at the J Richard Steffy Ship Reconstruction Laboratory" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Several archaeological projects in the 1980s revolved around excavation and the analysis of 16th-century Iberian shipwrecks. The number of examples allowed Thomas Oertling at the 1989 SHA conference to propose 12 characteristics that appeared on almost all vessels originating from the Iberian...
Mediterranean Vistas, Local Experiences: An Historical Archaeology and Social History of Everyday Life on a Greek Island: Andros 16th-19th Centuries (2015)
This paper examines the historical archaeology of everyday life using the results of KASHAP. This multidisciplinary/indterdiciplinary project tracks the human and environmental histories of two Greek islands. One main theme is how being integrated as peripheries into major premodern empires, the Venetian Empire and the Ottoman Empires, shaped everyday life and how the transition to nation-state, which transformed the islands into a border zones, impacted society and economy. Focusing on the...
"A melancholy scene of abandonment, desolation, and ruin:"The Archaeological Record of the Upper Ashley River Region of South Carolina (2016)
The Upper Ashley River region of South Carolina is characterized by cypress swamps that form a relatively straight, narrow river that flows unimpeded to Charleston. This landscape provided the ideal location for early estates of the planter elite in the eighteenth century. These Carolinians developed the rice and indigo plantation culture of the Lowcountry. The region became the crossroads of many historical events including the development of rice cultivation, Native American trade and...
Melvina Massey: Fargo's Most Famous Madam (2016)
In my work as a professor and public historian, research material often unfolds from teaching. In my Spring 2013 Introduction to Museum Studies class at North Dakota State University, students conducting primary source research on early Fargo discovered a will and probate records for Melvina Massey. The records show that she was an African American and ran a brothel in Fargo for more than 20 years. The course concluded with an exhibit, "Taboo: Fargo-Moorhead, An Unmentioned History," and one of...
Memories that Haunt: Reconciling with the ghosts of the American Indian School System (2018)
During the nineteenth century, the United States had an "Indian Problem". The problem was that Indians continued to exist despite rigorous efforts to erase them from the landscape through disease, violence, and segregation. To solve this conundrum, the U.S. government staffed and funded the Indian School System; a system comprised of residential and non-residential schools in which savage Indians were transformed into obedient citizens. Over the past several decades, archaeologists and...
Memory and Engagement with Sacred Ground: the many publics of Mount Vernon's African-American Cemetery (2018)
In 2013, Mount Vernon's archaeology department began a long term research project to locate the graves of enslaved and emancipated individuals interred within the African-American cemetery on the home quarter of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. Four years deep, dozens of graves have been reclaimed from new growth forest and the cemetery has taken on new life as a touchstone of memory and an interpretive vehicle for a diverse array of descendants, scholars, and visitors to the historic...
Memory and Heritage Before and After 1991: A Case Study from the Solovetsky Islands (2015)
As recent battles over the fate and meaning of the gulag site in Perm have shown, gulag heritage in Russia remains highly dissonant. Questions of how to manage and interpret former gulags have become increasingly politically charged in the last few years, following a brief thaw during the perestroika and glasnost periods. The island site of the infamous Solvetsky Gulag offers an illuminating case study of the struggles of stakeholders – monks, other island residents, tourism...
Memory and Relevance: Local History and Outreach by the Anthracite Heritage Project at Eckley Miners’ Village (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Communicating Working Class Heritage in the 21st Century: Values, Lessons, Methods, and Meanings" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Eckley Miners’ Village in Luzerne County, PA is a living history museum that holds significance to many residents of the surrounding area. Preserving and interpreting the homes and buildings that once made up an anthracite coal mining patch town, the site retains ties to many in the area...
Men of Good Timber: An Archaeological Investigation of Labor in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (2015)
Questions of labor and everyday life have been commonplace in archaeology. At Coalwood, a cordwood camp that operated from 1901-1912 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, these issues become especially important since labor experienced a dramatic transformation when the camp shifted from housing a large number of male laborers to being organized by individual households. In this paper I use archaeological evidence to examine the social relations these laborers were engaged in that produced and...
The Men of the H. L. Hunley: An Osteological Portrait (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. The remains of the Hunley crew were removed from the vessel following a careful, detailed, documentation process. Osteological, stable isotope, and DNA analyses confirmed the identities and places of origin of the eight men. The skeletal remains provide details...
Mercy in a Town Without: Catholic Nurses and their Medical Care in a Frontier Town (2018)
From Ireland to Fort Smith, the Sisters of Mercy parish was established by Bishop Andrew Byrne, along with five devout female recruits, to support the Church of Immaculate Conception which would be the first Catholic place of worship in what was considered the "wild" westernmost portion of the United States.The Sisters of Mercy site, (3SB1083) was occupied from its establishment in 1853 up to present day, where it hosts several schools, outbuildings, and a cathedral and acts still today as a...
Message in a Breech Block: A Fragmentary Printed Text Recovered from Queen Anne’s Revenge (2018)
The collection of artefacts recovered from the 1718 wreck of Queen Anne’s Revenge (QAR) contains a broad array of items typical of shipboard life on a pirate vessel, as well as tantalizing, unique finds. While unloading and conserving the breech chamber for a breechloading swivel gun, conservators recovered 16 small fragments of paper, some bearing legible printed text. These fragments of text have been uncovered after nearly 300 years inside a cannon chamber on the sea floor, and conservators...
Message(s) in a Jar: Mason Jars, Archaeological Narratives, and Contemporary Fascinations (2015)
Mason jars, as workhorses of home food preservation beginning in the late nineteenth-century, have functioned both as indicators of social and economic status within archaeological contexts and currently as objects of fascination in the DIY marketplace. This paper parses out the various discourses within which mason jars have been placed historically and contemporarily by their users, promoters, and archaeologists, and seeks to understand how gender, race, class, and nostalgia continue to inform...