United States of America (Geographic Keyword)
251-275 (3,819 Records)
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...
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 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...
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...
Archaeology of Pierre Metoyer’s 18th-Century French Colonial Plantation Site, Natchitoches, Louisiana (2016)
This paper discusses recent findings and interpretations at the 18th century plantation of Pierre Metoyer, a prominent resident of French colonial Louisiana. Metoyer is historically best known for his relationship with Marie-Thérèse Coincoin, a freed slave of African descent living in the Natchitoches area in the 1700s and one of the most important founding ancestors of the regional Creole community. Since 2011 the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC) has been assisting...
The Archaeology of Pivotal Places: The Structuring of Habitual Landscape and the Bush Hill Plantation. (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Places where the nexus of human agency, social momentum, and singular events come together can exert pivotal influence over historical trajectories. Such places may have lasting influence over behaviors, consciousness, and habitus long after initial intersection. Pivotal places foster social entanglements through dynamic relationships, but also from passive constraint. Many pivotal...
Archaeology of Plastics: On Overcoming, Oceans, and Environmentalism (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Citizen Science in Maritime Archaeology: The Power of Public Engagement for Heritage Monitoring and Protection" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In October 2019, eXXpedition launched a round-the-world sailing voyage that emphasized “citizen science” in understanding single-use plastic in our oceans and the impacts of those toxins on women’s health. The mission of the ongoing two-year trip—which features 30...
The Archaeology of Playing Indian: Boy Scout Camps as Colonial Imaginaries (2016)
Over the last 20 years archaeologists have come to pay close attention to the complexities of indigenous agency, cultural continuity and change, and survivance in colonial contexts. In their focus on materiality and everyday life, in their use of multiple lines of evidence, and in their connections to contemporary indigenous communities, archaeologists have the ability to challenge colonial narratives. In contrast, the ways in which these narratives (e.g., notions of savagery, authenticity, and...
The Archaeology of Racial Hatred: Springfield, Illinois (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. On August 14, 1908, racial tensions ignited over allegations of the rape of a white woman by a black man. After being thwarted in their attempt to take justice into their own hands, a crowd erupted into violence resulting in two days of rioting, and the lynching of two black men. Incensed by the fact that this event had taken place in the hometown of the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln,...
The Archaeology of Refugee Crises in Greece: Diachronic Cultural Landscapes (2017)
The escalation of the Syrian Civil War caused a refugee crisis in Greece as thousands of people crossed the Aegean, leading to tragic loss of life. When Balkan neighbors closed their borders in 2016, some 50,000 migrants and refugees were trapped in Greece. The country responded by a dispersing this population throughout the country in new camps over abandoned sites like army camps, tourist resorts, commercial spaces, gymnasia, fair grounds, and even archaeological sites. Using lessons from the...
The Archaeology of Religion in America (2013)
This paper provides a brief overview of our forthcoming book on the historical archaeology of religious beliefs and practices in America. The archaeology of religion has included traditional fieldwork, as well as aboveground archaeology. Many archaeologists have focused their attention on religious communities and places of worship: churches, Quaker meeting houses, Jewish synagogues, Buddhist temples, Pueblo kivas and Mormon temples. In California, the Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast,...
The Archaeology of Rural Proletarianization in Early Modern Iceland (2016)
Categories such as capitalism, feudalism, peasantry and proletariat obscure more than they elucidate in Early Modern Iceland. The millennium-long occupation of farms in Skagafjörður, Northern Iceland reveals that during the initial settlement of Iceland in the late ninth century, land was freely available, but by the late seventeenth century over 95% of all farming properties were owned by landlords who frequently renegotiated tenant leases. In many ways these insecure tenants resemble...
Archaeology of Shifting Landscapes on the Historic San Francisco Waterfront (2015)
Geographically situated at the northern margins of the Spanish empire and the among outposts of multinational commercial activities, the San Francisco Bay served as a hub of maritime traffic on the western coast of North America in the early nineteenth century. Evidence for use of the San Francisco waterfront in its natural state is preserved more than twelve feet below the modern city surface at Thompson’s Cove (CA-SFR-186H). Stratified deposits document the sequence of physical alterations...
An Archaeology of Survivance: Investigating Settler Colonial Narratives with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (2018)
Native nations in the 19th and early 20th century were subjected to increasing pressure from American settlers and the U.S. government, which resulted in their forced removal, resettlement, and the creation of policies that were directed at terminating tribal identities and reservations. Despite this history of colonial oppression and dispossession tribes such as the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (CTGR) did not just survive settler colonialism, but created anew their social worlds and sense of...
Archaeology of the 1859 Dorchester Industrial School for Girls: an Introduction (2018)
In 2015, the City of Boston Archaeology Program excavated the rear yard of the 1859 Industrial School for Girls in Boston ahead of construction on the property. The School was founded by wealthy Boston women in order to recive neglected children and provide them education and domestic labor training with an ultimate goal of employment as domestic laborers in Boston-area homes. The more than 17,000 artifacts recovered, most from an intact 5-meter long privy and nearby trash deposit, are...
Archaeology of the American Southwest: Comparing the Mythology of the Frontier with Daily Life in Fort Davis, Texas (2018)
The mythology of the frontier has captured the imaginations of generations of Americans. Images of cowboys, ranchers, and gold miners have become the idealized subjects of wild west shows, dime novels, paintings, and films. Even today, the legends of Buffalo Bill, Jesse James, and Calamity Jane are still widely known. In an attempt to examine how these romantic myths have shaped the lives of those living in the Southwest, this poster presentation will analyze 20th century cultural material...