United States of America (Geographic Keyword)
451-475 (3,819 Records)
Glass trade beads are one of the most notable artifacts of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Beads played an important role in African culture spiritually, metaphysically, and historically. Since its discovery in 1996, over 790 whole and fragmented glass beads have been recovered from the Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck. The beads recovered from the Queen Ann’s Revenge have been identified, classified, cataloged, and compared to other bead assemblages recovered from underwater and terrestrial...
Blacksmithing for Fun and Profit: Archaeological Investigations at 31NH755 (2017)
Archaeological investigations at an early 19th century historic site along the banks of the Lower Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina, uncovered evidence of a small blacksmith shop and adjacent domestic occupation. Archaeological features included the footprint of the burned blacksmith shop, approximately 15 by 15 feet in size, along with a dense scatter of charcoal, slag, and scrap iron. Adjacent to this building were structural posts and artifacts that appear to be related to a...
Blazing Trails and Chasing Scoundrels: Kathleen K. Gilmore’s contribution to Spanish Colonial Archaeology in Texas and the Relentless Pursuit of Presidio Captain Felipe Rabago y Teran. (2017)
No history of Spanish Colonial archaeology in Texas is complete without addressing the accomplishments of Dr. Kathleen K. Gilmore. When reviewing her nearly 50-year career as an archaeologist, one is hard-pressed to find a Texas mission, presidio, rancho, or settlement that Dr. Gilmore did not visit, research, excavate, or write about. Among her most important projects were the missions and presidio of San Xavier in present-day Milam County. While researching the site, Dr. Gilmore became...
Blood, Sweat and Queers: Roller Derby and Queer Heritage (2018)
Queer theory is a new and developing realm of heritage management; with the listing of historic places Stonewall National Monument and the Bayard Rustin Residence, queer heritage is attaining broader recognition. Investigations into the broader patterns of queer history will expose additional spaces and places with important associations to queer communities on multiple levels. Roller derby’s queer-normative environment has become a center of community-building in the last twenty years,...
Blood-Residue Analysis of Musket Balls from Sackets Harbor Battlefield of the War of 1812: Results and Implications (2016)
In the early morning of May 29, 1813, British and Canadian provincial troops launched an amphibious assault on the American shipbuilding facility and fortifications at Sackets Harbor on Lake Ontario in northern New York. An ABPP grant sponsored a wide-scale metal-detecting survey of the battelfield and detailed artifact analysis of the resulting assemblage. Besides shedding new light on the battle’s controversial narrative, the study also subjected musket balls to blood-residue analysis to...
Blue and White Chinese porcelain with datable 16th-century mounts (2015)
Besides learning from sherds that have been turned up by terrestrial and underwater archaologists, we can learn more about dating Chinese porcelain from pieces found with datable mounts in European collections. Five pieces of blue and white porcelain now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York were originally in Burghley House, Stamford, Lincolnshire, where they may have come via trade with Turkey. They are significant because there were very few pieces of Chinese...
Blue Willow Vessels and Life’s Other Mysteries: Understanding high value ceramics and their role in identity formation within contexts of company town economic deprivation (2018)
Historical archaeologists have long recognized the connection between material culture and identity. Ceramics, in particular, have the opportunity to inform researchers about economic choices, consumer decisions, and societal trends. However, when looking at communities that experience social and economic deprivation, the presence of (oftentimes more expensive) decorated vessels can cause confusion. Excavations conducted in 2016 focusing on the poorest workers’ housing in a coal company town in...
Blurred Boundaries: Internal and Illicit Plantation Economies (2015)
Craft production, hired time, personal cotton plots, theft, and diverse trade networks created a patchwork of economic opportunities for several hundred slaves on Witherspoon Island, a 19th century cotton plantation in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. This paper explores the impact of household and community involvement in a myriad of economic practices that were at times sanctioned, expressly forbidden, or tacitly accepted by the plantation management. When the archaeological and...
Blurred Lines: Queering the divide between pre-historic and historic archaeology (2015)
The infamous divide between historic and pre-historic archaeology in the North American tradition often rests on the introduction of written texts or the arrival of Europeans to a region. With the division comes methodology that is considered acceptable by each group. Well-renowned archaeologists have discussed this divide in detail, yet we continue to maintain the boundaries due to lack of implementation of new theoretical/methodological paradigms. This paper discusses the queering of...
Blurring Disciplinary Boundaries: Historical Archaeological Investigations at St. Nicholas Abbey Sugar Plantation (2013)
Since 2007 faculty and students from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia have conducted archaeological investigations at St. Nicholas Abbey sugar plantation, one the most important heritage site in Barbados. The interdisciplinary research program developed for the site seeks to uncover evidence that will help in the restoration, preservation, and celebration of this important historic landmark. While deeds, maps, paintings, and other documentary sources offer insights into...
Boats and Captians of Cahuita: Recording Watercraft and Small Boats of Costa Rica (2016)
The boats of Cahuita, Costa Rica vary in design, size and decoration. This poster displays the design variation and depicts the East Carolina University summer field school methods used to record these small watercraft. The differences in design are catalogued through photography and also with recorded measurements. The information gathered should be sufficient to reconstruct the vessel at full scale. In some cases, the data was further utilized to create more practical three dimensional...
Boca, California- House On The Hill Project: Results of 2016 Field Survey (2018)
During 2016, fieldwork was carried out in the California Sierra Nevada Mountains at Boca, a late 19th century company town that provided lumber for the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Comstock mine. Boca was also one of the largest producers of naturally harvested ice, selling to individuals and companies, including the railroad. Use of iced railcars provided the means for the transcontinental railroad to successfully ship perishable goods long distances, giving later rise...
Bodies Lying in State: Nationalism, the Past, and Identity (2013)
In the twenty-first century, nationalism continues to be a powerful motivating ideology in global, national, and local politics. In the hope of overtly and covertly strengthening cohesive nationalist sentiment and identity, individual states often use the very bodies of past peoples as symbols and ideological tools. This is evidenced in the differing display (or lack thereof) of human remains in the national museums of Denmark, Egypt, and the United States. In each case, the identification of...
Bold Rascals: The Archaeology of Blockade Running in the Western Gulf (2016)
Archaeological study and historical research have combined to present a detailed picture of blockade running in the western Gulf of Mexico during the American Civil War. From the beginning of the conflict until weeks after Appomattox, the Confederate coastline west of the Mississippi was a hive of blockade-running activity, first with sailing vessels and later with steamships. The wrecks of the paddle steamers Will o’ the Wisp, Acadia, and Denbigh, all dating from the final months of the war,...
Bones and Barbeques: A Zooarchaeological Study of Alsatian Foodways at Castroville, Texas (2017)
Emigrating from Alsace, a contested border region, to the contested frontier of Texas, many Alsatians had to adjust to life in the American West. This included maintaining their identities as Alsatians in the face of a changing landscape, which manifested through different ways in quotidian life, including choices in food. Through Number of Identified Specimen counts, researchers use faunal assemblages associated with habitation sites to identify patterns of the frequency with which various...
Bones of the Frontier: Subsistence Practices at Hanna's Town (2016)
With the cooperation of the Westmoreland County Historical Society and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, faunal remains from three areas of the Historic Hanna’s Town site in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania were subjected to detailed zooarchaeological analysis in an effort to answer broad questions regarding the subsistence practices of eighteenth century frontier communities of Western Pennsylvania. As the first court and county seat west of the Allegheny Mountains, Hanna’s Town played a...
Bones Wearing Bow Ties: Differential Preservation in Funerary Taphonomy (2017)
The skeletal remains excavated from Scott Cemetery were well preserved while, in contrast, coffin and textile remains were generally poorly preserved. A soil pH test was conducted, with the sandy soil being an alkaline 7.8. The well preserved bone, adipocere formation, and poor textile preservation reflect established literature on the effects of alkaline soils. Burials with a high degree of roots, likely from remains of a tree that had grown through the grave shafts, were less preserved than...
The Boom and Bust of Tungsten Mining: A View from the Johnson Lake Mine (2015)
The Johnson Lake Mine was an early twentieth century tungsten mine. It is located above 10,000 feet on the eastern slope of the South Snake Range in east-central Nevada in what is now Great Basin National Park. The mine was in operation from 1908 – 1950. It was owned and operated by Alfred "Timberline" Johnson, Thomas Dearden, Sr. and Joseph Dearden. This presentation will discuss the recorded historic features and artifacts with a brief synopsis of the capitalism of tungsten mining as it...
BOOM BABY!": engaging the public through social media in response to "American Digger (2013)
In this paper we present our public outreach efforts in response to the American "reality" television series "American Digger," which portrays looting of archaeological resources as a desirable and profitable enterprise at the expense of archaeological context and communal knowledge of our past. Our efforts included blog posts, the creation and dissemination of a Change.org petition, and the facilitation of involvement and open dialogue through the creation and ongoing administration of a...
BOOM BABY!: Archaeology and the ethics of edutainment (2013)
Archaeologists in the United States have been horrified by the debut of new reality shows featuring treasure hunters looting sites for fun and profit. Most troubling was that one of these shows, "Diggers", was the brainchild of the National Geographic Society, long time supporters of archaeology. Meetings with National Geographic have shown them willing to compromise to make the shows more ethical if they could still be profitable. However, the real question is, how willing are...
The Boomerang: Archaeological and Historical Investigations of a Missouri CCC Camp (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring the Recent Past" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Civilian Conservation Corps was a major federal program during the Great Depression, employing over one million men, trying to rebuild their lives. One company of older military veterans, 1771-V, occupied a camp near Warrensburg, Missouri from 1934-1939. Archaeological and historical research based at the University of Central Missouri has revealed...
"Boring" Archaeology Along the Buried Historic Seattle Waterfront: Challenges from the Alaska Way Viaduct Replacement Project in Washington State (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. The Seattle waterfront, a formerly industrial landscape that has undergone significant redevelopment over 150 years, has deeply buried former surfaces and historic sites. WSDOT removed a seismically vulnerable viaduct structure and replaced it with a bored tunnel under the historic waterfront and adjacent urban center. Project constraints...
Boston Latin School: A Look At Ethnic And Engendered Spaces (2018)
Boston Latin School: A Look at Ethnic and Engendered Spaces Kathleen von Jena, Boston Landmarks Commission During the summer of 2015 the Boston City Archaeology Program conducted excavations on the site of the original Boston Latin School and neighboring Schoolmasters house dating to 1635-1748. Boston Latin was the first purpose-built free school in America where Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams and John Hancock attended. Public Archaeology conducted at this site provided an...
Boston Massacre Bullets: Using Live-Fire Validation Techniques to Refute a Myth (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Northeast Region National Park Service Archeological Landscapes and the Stories They Tell" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Boston Massacre occurred at the Custom House on King Street on March 5, 1770 when British regular troops fired on colonists. Five colonists were killed and six wounded. One British officer and eight soldiers participated in the event. How did eight soldiers firing only one shot kill...
Bottles at the Biry House: Consumption and Economic Choice in a Texas-Alsatian Household (2018)
In 2014, students from Binghamton University excavated several historic features in the rear yard of a Texas-Alsatian homestead in Castroville, Texas. This poster presents the analysis of the glass bottles found in Feature 7, a well built in the 19th century and filled in during the mid-20th century. During this time, the well became a dumping ground for a range of historical materials discarded by later occupants of the house and other local residents, like the American Legion next door. The...