United States of America (Geographic Keyword)
826-850 (3,819 Records)
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. As a discipline of introverts, we avoid talking about potentially contentious subjects too often. This habit is detrimental to both us and the public. Instead of viewing them as merely dangerous or risky, these topics are also an opportunity. Strong feelings in an audience means we do not need to convince them that it is...
Contextualizing Consumption: Examining the Benefits of Multi-Site Discussion at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Frequently, discussions of the artifact assemblages uncovered at presidential sites focus only on the households of the president's that the site commemorates. By excluding the surrounding residential sites, researchers sacrifice valuable information regarding typical consumption and use behaviors in the area. The analysis presented seeks to utilize the extensive excavations of the...
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 While historical documents suggest possible mechanisms for European copper distribution (including trade and tribute), the most important clues about these objects come from their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...
Contradictory Food: Dining in a New York Brothel c. 1840s (2016)
The faunal assemblages excavated from New York City’s Five Points neighborhood provided an opportunity to examine the foodways of the city’s 19th century working class. One distinct Orange Street deposit was associated with a brothel which operated in the early 1840s and seemed to reflect the contradictory nature of this occupation. While some food choices reflected the working class nature of the neighborhood, other finer foods, were selected for fancy feasts, to entertain guests or for...
Contributing Historical Archaeology to Global Efforts to Address Climate Change (2016)
In the most recent Summary for Policy Makers from the IPCC Working Group II (Adaptation), this statement, "Throughout history, people and societies have adjusted to and coped with climate, climate variability, and extremes, with varying degrees of success," is written without attribution. Though this statement is a consensus view, the absence of a footnote disconnects it from analyses of the human past and the models of adaptation developed in the IPCC reports. This is a big gap. The most...
Converging Concepts of Landscape: Space and Place in 19th-century Northwest Lower Michigan (2018)
The same landscape in the same moment can be experienced differently by people as they project culture and history onto the landscape. Using two juxtaposed perspectives of landscape in the same geographic location and time, this research compares and contrasts Cartographers and Native Americans in Northwest Lower Michigan following intensification of mapping after 1837. Using historic documents, vivifacts (living artifacts), and maps, this analysis presents the conflicting landscape concepts of...
Convicts, Cargo, and Calamity: The Wreck of the Enchantress (2016)
From 2010-2015, the University of Rhode Island and St. Mary’s College of California conducted an underwater archaeology field school in the waters of Bermuda on a site called the "Iron Plate Wreck." Aptly named for a large block of sheet iron located at the stern, the wreck’s identity remained a mystery for over 50 years. In 2013, however, historical research provided clues to the identity of the wreck, revealing it is the Enchantress, an early 19th century British merchant vessel with a unique...
Cooking up Authenticity in an Afro-Brazilian pot: Nationalism, Racism, Tourism, and Consumption of low-fired earthenware ceramics in Pernambuco, Brazil. (2018)
Black beans, smoked sausage, salted beef, the less desirable pig parts, garlic, and onion. These are the basic ingredients of the Brazilian national dish, feijoada. But there is another ingredient, one frequently overlooked, but essential element of the authenticity in the minds of Brazilians. The ceramic pot, holding the magic of the meal’s miscegenation: African, European and Amerindian ingredients blended together in a seemingly innocuous object. Unlike other places in the African Diaspora,...
"Coon, possum, rabbit, squirrel en aw dat": A zooarchaeological investigation of foodways at Witherspoon Plantation, South Carolina (2015)
This paper examines the results of zooarchaeological analysis completed on faunal remains from Witherspoon Island, a 19th century cotton plantation in South Carolina. This research contributes to a larger ongoing historical archaeological project exploring the lives of enslaved African-Americans and their descendants on the remote absentee plantation. To examine shifting food practices at the site, we present the results of the analysis of faunal remains recovered from two house and adjacent...
Coopers, Peddlers, and Bricklayers: Stories of a Working-Class Property through Public Archaeology in Washington, DC (2018)
An archaeological investigation of a lot where a former frame shotgun house once stood offers a unique look at 19th century working-class immigrant households. A German immigrant carpenter built the house before 1853 and it was successively occupied by a peddler, cooper, and bricklayer; little is known about their lives. Prior to redevelopment, the DC HPO Archaeology Program conducted a systematic archaeological survey from August 2016 to May 2017, the "Shotgun House Public Archaeology Project"....
Cope Hook and a Slate Pencil: Understanding Skidaway Island’s Benedictine Monks and Freedmen School Students (2018)
Skidaway Island’s Benedictine monastery and Freedmen school provides us with a unique opportunity to examine one angle of African-American life post-Reconstruction. Located southeast of Savannah, Georgia, this mission was part of the larger Benedictine presence, whose members initially started Freedmen schools at the Bishop’s request. Though this site was only briefly occupied (1878- ca. 1890s), we are gaining insight into the lives of the European-born Benedictine monks, African-American...
Copper On The Borderlands Of New Spain...It's Complicated (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Meaning in Material Culture" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Copper vessels are an understudied artifact category for students of the Spanish colonial experience. At the 2018, SHA New Orleans meeting the promise and problems associated with the analysis of copper vessels was discussed. This included forms, uses, nomenclature, and fabrication. In that presentation, copper vessels from the Southeast U.S. and Texas...
Copper-Clad Ghost: The "Monterrey A Shipwreck" (2015)
Archaeological assessment and limited test excavation of the Monterrey A shipwreck provides an initial characterization of an early 19th century armed vessel whose remains are comprised of articulated two-dimensional features as well as a substantial portion of seemingly well-preserved three dimensional hull remains of the copper-sheathed hull. The form and lines of the hull are present, and with the various features, suggest that this armed vessel of approximately 200 tons was a two-masted...
Copper-The Overlooked Artifact Of The Borderlands Of New Spain (2018)
From the littoral of Florida to coastal California vessels made of copper have been regularly found on archaeological sites associated with the borderlands of New Spain. While described in in the associated archaeological literature they, unlike the ubiquitous copper artifacts associated with sites in New France, have not received systematic analysis. This presentation, based on nearly two decades of archaeological and documentary research, brings the folk taxonomy found in documents into...
Corduroy Roads as a Feature of the American Landscape: Historical Reports from the Trenches (2015)
Corduroy roads are an infrequently considered element of the American frontier landscape. A recent discovery of an 18th-century corduroy road along New York's border with Ontario suggests that corduroy roads have a great deal of research potential not only in archaeology, but also in ecology and the study of past landscapes. This paper examines the historical record of corduroy roads in newspapers and popular accounts. While corduroy roads are rarely well documented archaeologically, the...
Cores and Peripheries: Betty’s Hope, A Synergy of Approaches to the Archaeology of a Caribbean Sugar Plantation (2015)
The Betty’s Hope Field Project has been ongoing for the last eight years, and comprises two components: ongoing research and the summer field school. AS a 300-year-old sugar plantation on Antigua, Betty’s Hope offers a myriad of opportunities to explore plantation life and Caribbean archaeology. Within the theme of this year’s SHA conference on boundaries and peripheries, the paper will address some of the exciting new developments and directions our research is taking us, and how it relates...
Corkonians And Fardowners: Irish Activity And Identity In The Rural American South, 1850-1860 (2018)
During the 1850s, the Blue Ridge Mountain Railroad Company recruited 2,000 Irish immigrants to work an area 20 miles west of Charlottesville, Virginia, carving out tunnels and cuts for an emerging rail line. The grueling and dangerous work transformed the physical landscape and turned a transient immigrant population into a vibrant semi-settled community. This paper explores the identities of the two groups of Irish laborers involved with the construction of the Blue Ridge Railroad Tunnel, the...
The Cornplanter Grant: Listing Pennsylvania’s First Native American Traditional Cultural Property (2019)
This is an abstract from the ""We Especially Love the Land We Live On": Documenting Native American Traditional Cultural Properties of the Historic Period" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2015, as a result of the installation of Positive Train Control poles along their rail lines, seven Class I freight railroad companies created the Cultural Resource Fund to address historic preservation and environmental reviews. The ten million dollar fund...
Coronado and Spanish Colonial and American Indian Trade at Pecos National Historical Park, New Mexico: Archaeological Evidence (2013)
Spain's first contact with Pecos Pueblo occurred in 1541 when Francisco Coronado besiege the site. Formal trade began about 1590 and continued until the Pueblo was abandoned in the 1830s. Spain's entrada in northern New Mexico superceded a vibrant trade with the Plains Apached and Comanche that had been on-going for over 150 years prior to contact. A intense metal detecting sampling suvery of selected areas of Pecos National Historical Park resulted in the finding of over 1350 metal targets....
Correcting History: 18th Century Elliot Plantation, African -Built Landscapes, Volunteers and Partners in the National Park Service (2016)
The National Park Service plays a vital role in educating the public about stewardship and preservation of archeological resources, and vice versa. In 2008, a group of volunteers engaged the NPS to re-evaluate an historic site located in Canaveral National Seashore and Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Working with volunteers, we determined that the site is actually Elliot Plantation—a previously undocumented, but the largest and southernmost 18th century British Period sugar plantation...
Corrosion Monitoring and Preservation in Situ of Large Iron Artifacts at the Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck site (2016)
At North Carolina state archaeological site 31CR314 (Queen Anne’s Revenge), the overall conservation management strategy is full excavation and recovery of all artifacts. Preservation and protection of artifacts in situ is, however, needed as long as they remain on site. Research on in situ monitoring and preservation of large iron artifacts (cannon and anchors) began in 2008. With funding provided by a Mini North Carolina Sea Grant further data was collected in 2012-2013 for eight cannon and...
Cosmic Context, Emancipated Persons, Germantown Parsonage (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A 1767 slave-owning Calvinist minister’s cellar in Germantown NY holds a fireplace with punctate figures in its wooden frame: sailboat, smoking pipe, and BaKongo cosmogram. Beneath the adjacent hearthstones, amidst rubble fill, student excavators plotted clusters of symbolic objects: quartz crystals, blue glass beads, buttons, a shale pebble etched with two ‘X’ marks. The symbolically...
Cosmopolitanism In South Carolina: Examining John Drayton’s Country Estate (2018)
New research at Drayton Hall is shifting decades-old interpretation of how the house and land were used by John Drayton in the mid- to late- 18th century. The previous narrative was of an agricultural lifestyle on a southern plantation, but the material culture and historical evidence indicates that Drayton Hall was built and used as an English country estate to display wealth and position to those visiting the property. This paper analyzes the artifacts recovered from the South Flanker well to...