USA (Country) (Geographic Keyword)
2,426-2,450 (35,816 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 Illegal Garbage Dumping in the Twenty-First Century (2017)
A boon to the archaeological study of American lifeways in the past and present, the massive assemblages of discarded objects at landfills poignantly speak to an era of unrivaled consumption and waste. Aggregated through municipally sanctioned collection services, these assemblages, however, are rarely representative of the full range of household-level discard behaviors. Illegal dump sites, in contrast, comprise assemblages that cannot be easily or quickly discarded through regular garbage...
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 Joshua Tree National Park
WACC reports that summarize archaeological survey and excavation in Joshua Tree National Park (formerly Joshua Tree National Monument).
The Archaeology of Kennewick Man
This project includes background information, detailed reports of investigations, summaries, and other documents related to the Kennewick Man. Kennewick Man, also called "the Ancient One" by some, is an ancient individual represented by his nearly complete skeletal remains. The remains were discovered in 1996 under the waters of Lake Wallula, a reservoir in the Columbia River, near Kennewick, Washington. Controversy concerning the study and treatment of the remains was not resolved until a...
The Archaeology of Late-19th and Early-20th Century Freedman's Towns in Dallas, Texas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Texas, emancipation of slaves was formally announced in Galveston on June 19, 1865. In the decades that followed "Juneteenth," freed men and women established hundreds of communities across the state in search of land, loved ones, opportunity, and freedom. Such rural settlements have been the focus of both historical and archaeological research. Yet some...
The Archaeology of Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts
Documents associated with background historical research and archaeological field work at the Lowell National Historical Park.
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...
The Archaeology of Minute Man National Historical Park
Documents associated with archaeological field work at Minute Man National Historical Park.
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...
The Archaeology of Navajo Sites West of Black Mesa, Arizona: Investigations Along the Coal-Haul Overhead-Electric Railroad Between Page and Navajo National Monument (1982)
Forty-eight historic Navajo sites are investigated by the Museum of Northern Arizona prior to the construction of the Salt River Project Coal-Haul Overhead-Electric Railroad between Page and Navajo National Monument, Arizona. These 48 sites are classified by site function, inferred from various site features, and are then placed in a scheme of economic development and environmental conditions for the Colorado Plateau.
The Archaeology of North Carolina: Three Archaeological Symposia (2011)
A collection of papers on North Carolina Archaeology.
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...