boston (Other Keyword)
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This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A significant Chinese immigrant wave began in Boston during the 1870’s. Throughout the next decade, a centralized Chinese community began to form downtown on Harrison, Essex, and Beach Avenues. This neighborhood allowed residents to converge on Sundays, meet with friends, buy food and supplies, and seek solace through gambling and opium. Recently, Boston’s Chinatown residents requested an...
Digging Beantown: Mary Beaudry's Boston (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Historical Archaeology with Canon on the Side, Please”: In Honor of Mary C. Beaudry (1950-2020)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Dr. Mary Beaudry spent decades digging, working, and eating in Boston. This paper celebrates Mary's contributions to the city, from some of the first historical archaeological excavations in Boston, to her mentorship of many working archaeologists in the region, and to her love...
Extreme Public Archaeology : Excavating the 1645 Boston Latin School Campus Along Boston's Freedom Trail (2016)
Boston is a city celebrated for its history. With millions of heritage tourists bringing billions of dollars to the city annually, it is significant and rare for Boston to add additional attractions to its assemblage of historic sites along and around its famous Freedom Trail. In the summer of 2015, a team of volunteers excavated one of the "lost" Freedom Trail sites, the 1645 Boston Latin School campus, exposing and expanding the sites history to visitors and residents alike. This paper...
From Horse to Electric Power at the Metropolitan Railroad Company Site: An Old Collection Provides a New Narrative of Technological Change (2015)
The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site in Roxbury (Boston), Massachusetts, was first excavated in the late 1970s by staff of the Museum of Afro American History. Researchers recovered nearly 20,000 artifacts related to the site’s life as a horsecar street railway station and carriage manufactory from 1860 to 1891, its subsequent conversion into an electric street railway until around 1920, and finally its modern use as an automobile garage. Using the framework of behavioral archaeology, this...
Landscape Transformation and Use at the Harrison Gray Otis House in Boston's West End (2016)
The Harrison Gray Otis House, owned and managed by Historic New England, was built in Boston’s West End in 1796, and is significant for being the only surviving free-standing, late eighteenth century mansion in the city. PAL recently completed excavations in the extant yard space for the Otis House and 14 and 16 Lynde Street, formerly the site of two circa 1840 townhouses. The feature complex uncovered during fieldwork illustrates the increasing complexity and fragmentation of the West End as it...
The potters of Charlestown (Boston), MA, their wares, and their archaeological contributions (2016)
A systematic re-processing of the ceramic assemblages recovered from the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston during the Central Artery/Tunnel Project (Big Dig) is revealing new insights and research avenues into this prominent 18th-century earthenware production center. This paper will review the history of the dozens of potters participating in Charlestown’s potting industry in the 17th and 18th centuries and provide a preliminary typology and dating guide to Charlestown wares and decorations. ...
Provisions, Possessions, and Positionality: Faunal Analysis of the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls (2018)
Through faunal analysis of the remains of mammals, molluscs, fish and fowl found at the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls this report explores the dietary habits of staff and students, and connects the socioeconomic and cultural positionality of the girls, the School, and their food to the greater context of late 19th century Boston. We may interrogate specific social circumstances and their effect on daily meals, and in doing so draw useful comparisons between the activities of the port of...
Public/Private Consumption in the Performance of Respectability and Gentility at 71 Joy Street, Boston, MA. (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "African American Voices In The Mid-Atlantic: Archaeology Of Elusive Freedom, Enslavement, And Rebellion" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. 71 Joy Street was home to several free Black families in the mid-late nineteenth century and working-class white tenants through the early twentieth century. Evidence of their daily lives and identity performances was discovered in the brick-lined privy sealed after...
Revisiting Past Excavations: An In-Depth Look at Feature B7 from the African Meeting House, Boston, MA (2015)
This paper analyzes a pit feature that was identified during a 1984 excavation in the basement of the African Meeting House, located in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood. Full excavation of the feature followed in 1986; however, complete analysis of the resulting artifact collection was not possible at the time. Predating the construction of the prominent African Meeting House, the feature is likely the privy of Augustin Raillion, a hairdresser who occupied a house at 44 Joy Street with two...
"Some interest has been expressed in regard to the diet of the children": The Documentary and Archaeological Implications of Food at the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls. (2018)
The "flora" portion of past diets tends to be an aspect of archaeological assemblages that becomes partially inferred, rather than completely recreated. When they exist, documentary records such as purchase lists and recipes can suggest dietary preferences. Archaeologically recovered macrobotanical assemblages display a concrete portion of consumption practices, but within the constraints of showing a small percentage of plant material that only survives in certain preservation...
A Tale of Two Cemeteries: Examining Nineteenth-Century Cemetery Relocations in Roxbury, Massachusetts (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reinterpreting New England’s Past For the Future" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Kearsarge-Warren Avenue Cemetery and the St. Joseph’s Cemetery were nineteenth-century burial grounds located approximately one-third of a mile apart in the Roxbury section of Boston. Both were in use for several decades: Kearsarge-Warren Avenue from 1818 to 1883 as a Protestant parish and later a City-owned cemetery, and...
"Training to good conduct, and instructing in household labor:" Sewing at the Industrial School for Girls, Dorchester, MA (2018)
In the mid-19th century, a practical working knowledge of domestic arts, such as sewing, was necessary to navigate daily life. However, excelling in these skills was seen as significant not only because of the functional use of the work, but also as associated with desirable personal qualities of neatness, thrift, and morality. The Industrial School for Girls in Dorchester, MA was established not only to foster marketable trade skills, but also to improve the moral character of the young women...
An Unexpected Spark: The Seaport Shipwreck Shines a Light on Seaport History (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 May 2016, development and construction firm Skanska discovered a terrestrial shipwreck at 121 Seaport Boulevard in Boston. They convened an archaeological team (The Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc., City Archaeology Program) at the site to excavate the shipwreck and a design team (Amaze Design, Copley Wolffe, Trivium Interactive) to...