United States of America (Geographic Keyword)
326-350 (3,817 Records)
Section 110 archaeological investigations at Manassas National Battlefield Park (MANA) sparked breakthroughs in the recognition of quartz crystal caches and the meaning of colonoware: contributions which continue to shape historical archaeology. These categories of material culture have become emblems for spirited discussions about the dimensions of meaning, identity, and agency. The corpus of work from MANA continues to influence and contribute to understanding multivariate dimensions of...
Artifacts of Glory and Pain: Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Monuments, Memory, and Commemoration" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Depending on one’s perspective, Confederate monuments and other forms of commemoration symbolize a grand “lost cause” heritage, a perplexed and paradoxical cultural inheritance, or symbols and agoras of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and hate. Most of them were not crated in isolation, but rather as political statements and consequences...
The Artifacts of Outlander: Using Popular Culture to Promote Maryland’s Archaeological Collections (2016)
The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory (MAC Lab) is a State-owned facility serving as the primary repository for collections excavated in Maryland. Artifacts come to the MAC Lab from every part of the state, and while the estimated 8.5 million objects in our collections are regularly used by researchers and school groups, our broken bits of "stuff" are less of a draw for the general public. This paper discusses how the MAC Lab staff turned their love of Outlander, a popular...
Artistic Endeavors in Nebraska’s Prisoner of War Camps (2015)
During the Second World War, thousands of prisoners of war were transported to the United States to be held for the duration of the conflict. The Geneva Convention served as the primary doctrine influencing how camps were built and how the prisoner populations were treated. Under the convention, prisoners were able to work for a wage as well as pursue hobbies in areas like education, sports, and the arts. This paper explores how the artistic pursuits of German POWs influenced the material record...
"As Long As I Have Served, I Have Not Yet Left A Battlefield In Such Deep Sorrow…": Archeology, History And The Material Remains Of Fort Mercer, Red Bank, New Jersey (2016)
Nearly a month after the Crown Forces captured Philadelphia, a Hessian Brigade under the command of Colonel von Donop crossed the Delaware River intent on clearing away the American defenses entrenched along its east bank. Captain Ewald was part of the expedition, and his jaegers supported the attack on Fort Mercer at Red Bank, New Jersey. The assault on the earthen fortification began in the late afternoon on October 22, 1777. The Hessian force suffered heavy casualties at the hands of a...
Ash Dump Archaeology: Piecing Together the History of the R. J. Dunn House (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper discusses a collection of artifacts recovered from the ash dumps and chutes of three fireplaces in the R. J. Dunn House, an NRHP-listed property in Redlands, CA. The 1912 home was built as a rental property and was used by four families who have famous relatives such as the Busch (of Anheuser Busch) and Pulitzer families. Our analysis clarifies the history of the...
The Ash Grove Meaathouse: Public Archaeology and Preservation at a Fairfax Family Property (2016)
The Fairfaxx County (Virginia) Park Authority mission statement specifies the, "…protection and enhancement of…, cultural heritage to guarantee that these resources will be available to both present and future generations." When staff preservationists identified the need to stabilize a historic meathouselocated at an eighteenth century house site built by a member of the county’s namesake family, it presented the opportunity to demonstrate commitment to this mission. In order to stabilize the...
Asian Export Porcelain at the New York City Archaeological Repository (2016)
This paper explores how a detailed analysis of Asian export porcelain at the New York City Archaeological Repository may enrich our understanding of the city's archaeology. For example, dates based on stylistic and technical characteristics of Asian export porcelain may refine the dating of archaeological contexts based on other lines of evidence. New York City's development as a global entrepot may also be further elucidated by identifying and comparing the points of origin and maritime...
Ask the Archaeologists: Mount Clare Archaeology Past and Future (2016)
Archaeology took place at Mount Clare, a former plantation the remnants of which sit in Carroll Park in southwestern Baltimore, beginning in the 1970s. It not only shaped the story told at the site, but influenced many archaeologists' careers. In 2014, Baltimore City reclaimed the archaeological collection. This historic moment provides archaeologists with an opportunity to reflect on their time with the Mount Clare sites and collections. It is also a moment to propose new ways of using the old...
Asking New Questions of Old Collections, The Future of Curated Assemblages. (2016)
Part of the future of Historical Archaeology is the re-examination of existing collections by applying new research questions. An example of this is Fort St. Pierre (1719-1729), where a productive fourth year of excavations in the 1970s went unpublished. In re-examining the whole artifact assemblage with its associated architectural features, I gathered new information regarding daily life at the fort. Using an ethnohistorical approach I constructed the political situation that surrounded the...
Aspirational Architecture and AK-47s: The Intersections of Nineteenth-Century Settlement Processes and the Post-Conflict Detritus of Violence in Liberia (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Global awareness of Liberia’s recent past is largely limited to the long-term bloodshed that erupted with a 1980 coup and the ensuing civil conflict. What remains understudied is how recent episodes of violence are tethered to the decades following Liberia’s founding as a settler colony of the American Colonization Society in 1822. Our new...
Assessing Environmental Impacts on Shipwreck Sites: Results & Lessons Learned from the 2009-2012 Gulf of Mexico Shipwreck Study (2013)
Shipwreck sites are subject to large scale oceanographic and environmental processes which can impact interpretation of the site as well as the stability of the wreck itself. Along the Outer Continental Shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico, alluvial deposits comprised of varying quantities of clays, silts, and sands dominate the seafloor. The movement of these deposits through both ongoing processes (such as currents and waves) and punctuated events (such as hurricanes) significantly impact...
Assessing Healthcare amid World War II Incarceration (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeologists frequently recover artifacts that speak to the health and welfare of individuals or a community they are studying. Archaeologists can use these medicinal- and healthcare-related artifacts to assess an individual or community’s quality of life. This is particularly important to investigate in the context of...
Assessing Recently Discovered Shipwrecks on Lake Winnipesaukee (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the past decade over 80 shipwrecks have been discovered in Lake Winnipesaukee, NH. After a preliminary survey in 2018, the researchers returned to Lake Winnipesaukee in 2019 to document some of these shipwrecks. The ones found with the most integrity will be used for future research investigating such things as the environmental and human impact on the shipwrecks. For the 2019...
Assessing the Value and Potential of Labor Archaeology: A Description of the Labor Archaeology of the Industrial Era National Historic Landmark Theme Study (2015)
Work and labor relations have been under attack over the last several decades. Many of the same issues and problems confronting workers today were faced by workers in the past. Historical archaeology has the ability to use archaeology to highlight these connections and thus, contribute to the study of labor and the current labor dialogue and struggles. This paper details the latest draft of the Labor Archaeology of the Industrial Era National Historic Landmark Theme Study and its usefulness...
"At Rest," the Pima Lodge 10, Improved Order of Red Men Cemetery Plot in Tucson, Arizona. (2016)
The Improved Order of Red Men opened a lodge in Tucson, Arizona Territory in 1898. Here, members of the fraternal group held meetings featuring songs and speeches, and marched in parades dressed in Native American attire. The lodge purchased a cemetery plot and, from 1898 to 1908, 20 graves were dug. Archaeological excavation of the eastern cluster of graves yielded nine burials, two complete and seven exhumed in 1915. Each grave contained human remains, clothing, coffins, and outer boxes....
At Risk in Delaware: Nature and Culture in Conflict (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Case Studies from SHA’s Heritage at Risk Committee" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Delaware is one of the most low-lying coastal regions in the country, and the state has experienced relative sea-level rise at the rate of approximately one inch a decade over the course of the 20th century. Delaware has recognized as a matter of state policy that sea-level rise is a reality that has affected the state in the past...
At the Crossroads of Consumption: 19th Century Slave Life in Western Tennessee (2015)
In eight years of excavations on the 20,000 acre Ames land base in western Tennessee, a clearer picture of the 19th century of everyday life and the associated patterns of consumption of the antebellum south has emerged. With over twenty contiguous plantations, we are able to compare specific characteristics of the material culture from large (3,000+ acres) to small plantations (300 acres). Our current focus is on Fanny Dickins, a woman of financial means who established a small plantation after...
At the Crossroads: Intersections of Colonization (2018)
Intersectionality arose as a strategy for understanding the ways oppression operates simultaneously on multiple aspects of a person’s identity. As such, it provides a key framework for understanding how gender, race, and religion affected interactions between Europeans and indigenous communities from contact through today. The missionaries of New Spain, as well as later explorers of the Louisiana Territory, proscribed gendered expectations on indigenous peoples that fundamentally altered their...
"At this point there was terrible firing, and half of the Englishmen...were slain": The Rearguard Action at the Battle of Brandywine, 11 September 1777 - A comparative dialogic of Captain Ewald's battlefield experience as a function of terrain analysis in battlefield study bridging the semantic and the semiotic of a battlespace. (2016)
DRAFT "At this point there was terrible firing, and half of the Englishmen...were slain": The Rearguard Action at the Battle of Brandywine, 11 September 1777 kevin m. donaghy Temple University Department of Anthropology ABSTRACT Battlefield Archaeology has gained new energy in part due to: advances in remote sensing and data management, improved access to primary documents and GIS technologies. A question arises of whether we can improve our battlefield modeling based on military...
"Athens of the Ozarks": The Archaeology of Cane Hill College, Arkansas's First University (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Working on the 19th-Century" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Founded by Cumberland Presbyterians in 1827, Cane Hill, located in Northwest Arkansas, was once a thriving community centered on agriculture, religion, education, and its milling industry. Education was very important to the Cumberland Presbyterians and plans for their growing community. In 1834 they established the first public school and library in the...
Atlanta's Legacy: The MARTA Collection (2018)
The City of Atlanta was born from Terminus, a junction of rail lines, in the nineteenth century. Archaeological excavations for a modern transportation system, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), were conducted in the late 1970s. The results of this massive urban archaeological project identified 40 sites, along with 29 areas of artifact concentrations. The return of the MARTA Collection to Georgia State University has revealed new insight into nineteenth and twentieth century...
Atlantic Traverses, Contrastive Illuminations (2015)
Research projects in historical archaeology have been greatly enhanced by trans-Atlantic, comparative perspectives and questions probing the contours of European colonial impacts. Marley Brown's work has provided a key intellectual impetus to these developments. His focus has compelled colleagues to exhaust interdisciplinary data sets in each research project, and to frame questions with a large-scale, comparative perspective. A remarkable variety of research questions are being addressed, often...
Atomic Craters and Bedforms in Bikini: Detailed Geomorphic Signatures of the Seabed (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Mapping Crossroads: Archaeological and High Resolution Documentation of Nuclear Test Submerged Cultural Resources at Bikini Atoll" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. From 1946 to 1958 a series of 22 atomic bombs were tested throughout Bikini atoll resulting in a series of anthropogenic craters around the atoll. Now 61 years later, questions remain about what evidence remains for these tests and how human...
Augmented, Hyper-mediated and IRL (2018)
While archaeologists are making leaps and bounds integrating digital technologies into their work-flow and interpretive strategies, an over-emphasis on the virtual has left a hole where thinking about how archaeologists, collaborators, stakeholders and the public actually encounter archaeology — IN REAL LIFE. While many post about living in a post-digital age, their is a kernel of truth to how many collaborators, especially youth, conceive of their worlds not as full of new media but as, "always...