Identity (Other Keyword)
126-150 (227 Records)
This presentation applies theories concerning the role of individual creativity and innovation, modes of symbolic expression, and formation of social group identities to analyze the past creation and use of material expressions of symbols within the diasporas of particular African cultures. Utilizing archaeological and historical evidence, I explore the divergent ways these creative processes played out at sites in South America, the Caribbean, and North America. The perseverance and creativity...
Intersecting Identities in Southeastern U.S. Prehistory (2015)
Archaeological evidence from the southeastern and mid-south regions of the U.S. suggest that dress, personal ornamentation, and body modification were key strategies for presenting the self during later prehistory. These markers were apparently deployed to designate multiple and intersecting aspects of identity, including gender, age, community affiliation, and leadership status. Evidence comes from recovered artifacts, human burials, and representational images of humans. Some archaeologists...
The Intersection of Identity, Labor, and Racism in Washington State Company Towns (2015)
This paper will propose research to address the intersection of identity, racism/racialization, and labor as manifested in the material and documentary remains of workers and administrators in Washington State company towns. From the mid-1800s to the Great Depression, logging and mining towns formed a critical part of state and regional economies. The archaeology of labor-related sites in this state and period has been historically under-researched, and the relationship between labor, racism,...
An Intersectional Archaeology of Colonial White Male Privilege? (2017)
I suggest that it is worth pursuing an archaeology of white male privilege through the contextual study of white privileged males. Among many outcomes, this project can de-naturalize "maleness" and "whiteness" as nomothetic and unmarked—thereby advantaged—social categories and reveal systematized advantage/oppression. Historical gendering was a nuanced process. Masculinity had multiple practiced and experienced forms. They persisted even within a tightly controlled environment, such as colonial...
Iron producers, iron users. (2015)
Participation in technological activity in sub-Saharan Africa is often discussed in terms of identity, whether that is framed by gender, kinship, status or ethnicity. In particular, social distinctions between iron producers and iron users are well known from the ethnohistorical and ethnographic records of numerous African regions, providing important information as to the social organisation and values of a particular society. However, recognising these identities in the archaeological remains...
Is Close Enough, Enough?: Negotiations of Self and Place in Castroville, Texas through Ceramics. (2017)
The mid-to-late-19th century marked a time of enormous material and social changearound the world. Newly available lands and a more fluid social structure made life in the American West, and Texas, especially desirable for immigrants from Europe. Immigrants from the French-German border region of Alsace sought and found opportunity in what would become Castroville, Texas. The Birys, a family within the community, sought opportunity like many new immigrants and faced many of the same challenges....
Is Colonoware an Emblem of Enslavement? (2016)
During the antebellum period the town of Manassas, Virginia, was composed of free whites, and both free and enslaved black people. In this small community material culture played a crucial role in broadcasting status amongst its anxious constituents. They lived in an atmosphere where “whiteness” connoted cleanliness, order, freedom, and privilege. An individual’s proximity to, or distance from, whiteness yielded either powerful benefits or humiliating consequences. This was a community in which...
Issues of Identity Through the Material Remains of the First Cathedral of New Spain (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Through historical archaeology, we can analyze material remains of past societies beyond its materiality and description to reach its context and understand facets of economy, religion, politics, identity, and culture. Here, I am presenting an investigation in which, analyzing the remains of the first cathedral of New Spain,...
It Always Comes Back to Identity: Materiality and Presidio Soldier Identity During the 1720-1726 Occupation of Presidio La Bahia (41VT4), Victoria County, Texas (2017)
Even as archaeologists continue improving the identification of Spanish colonial sites in Texas, consideration of the archaeological implications of the mix of regional and social identities that made up the settlers sent to populate these sites remains limited. Consequently, most research focuses on the presumed cultural provenance of artifact manufacture – European/Mexican/Chinese/Indigenous - to interpret colonial period sites and the material aspects of emerging frontier identities. While...
"It Is the Devil’s Business": Acceptable Labor, Clandestine Labor, and Sex Work (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. Slowly, twenty-first century Americans are beginning to accept the reality that sex work is real work. As a component of this, scholars exploring historical sex work in Boston explore this reality within the context of nineteenth century concepts of labor, acceptable versus...
The Kowoj: Identity, Migration, and Geopolitics in Late Postclassic Petén, Guatemala (2009)
Neighbors of the better-known Itza in the central Petén lakes region of Guatemala, the Kowoj Maya have been studied for little more than a decade. The Kowoj: Identity, Migration, and Geopolitics in Late Postclassic Petén, Guatemala summarizes the results of recent research into this ethno-political group conducted by Prudence Rice, Don Rice, and their colleagues. Chapters in The Kowoj address the question "Who are the Kowoj?" from varied viewpoints: archaeological, archival, linguistic,...
Landlord Villages Of Iran As An Example Of Political Economy In Historical Archaeology (2016)
The high, mud brick walls enclosing whole villages owned entirely by wealthy landlords are common sites across Iran. Now largely abandoned but with occupation still within living memory, these villages offer the opportunity to explore use of space and analyses of material remains in relation to status, economic function, and individual and group identity. Analyses the walled landlord villages of the Tehran Plain have been carried out in order to explore hierarchy and control, and how these...
Landscapes of Forgetting and the Materiality of Enslavement: Using Class, Ethnicity, and Gender to Search for the Invisible on a Post-Colonial French Houselot in the Illinois Country (2017)
Elizabeth Scott has spent many years working in Francophone settings on subjects connected to identity. She has been especially interested in the social makeup of such communities. In honor of Dr. Scott, I will focus on the materiality of enslavement within a houselot in the French town of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Forgetfulness can be a violent act. Modern landscapes and historical narratives of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri similarly reflect a semi-purposeful "forgetfulness" of enslaved individuals...
Landscapes Of Liminality: Trail Of Tears Disbandment Sites In Indian Territory (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Landscapes Above and Below in Southern Contexts (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the 19th century, the U.S. government enacted a program of forced removal of Native Americans from their southeastern homelands to an area west of the Mississippi River known as Indian Territory. The end-points of the migration trails were known as Disbandment Sites where the tribes temporarily camped...
Laying Aloft in Modern Times: Exploring the Potential of Collaborative Work Between Nautical Archaeology and Tall Ship Organizations (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Innovative Approaches to Finding Agency in Objects" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. For those studying the act of sailing a vessel during the Age of Sail, roughly 1500-1900, details regarding a sailor’s day-to-day sailing experience, as well as the detailed mechanics of the operation of the vessel, can be frustratingly rare. Texts that do exist, in the form of rigging guides or sailor autobiographies for...
A life in the mountains: Spanish identity in 17th c. New Mexico (2015)
As opposed to typical well-defined urban areas, 17th c. Spanish colonial New Mexico consisted of a series of small, dispersed, rural, isolated settlements. The colonists were also isolated in the sense that they had extremely limited and irregular access to trade goods and communication with the broader Spanish Empire. Furthermore, they stemmed from diverse ethnic backgrounds, often lumped as mestizo by modern researchers. Given these challenges to maintaining a perceived Spanish identity, how...
A "Little Alsace" for the Lone Star State: Alsatian Migration and the Construction of Place, Narrative, and Identity on the Texas Frontier (2018)
This paper examines placemaking and identity in the Alsatian colonies of Texas. On the eve of Texas statehood, Alsatian migrants settled lands to the west of San Antonio. Displaced or disenfranchised by the turmoil of 19th century Europe, Alsatian families, often farmers, responded to advertisements by empresarios touting free passage, land, and opportunity in a "land of milk and honey." They arrived unprepared for the harsh realities of the Texas landscape, particularly life on the Republic’s...
Little Glass Footprints: A Glimpse into the Beads of Fort St. Joseph (2023)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Over twenty years of excavations at the historic site of Fort St. Joseph, an eighteenth-century mission, garrison, and trading post, have revealed thousands of glass beads. These small personal adornment artifacts can provide information about the occupants of the fort, specifically about expressions of their social identities. By expanding on previous research that focused on...
Local Earthenware Ceramic Decoration and Cultural Transformation on Kenya’s Swahili Coast, AD700-1700 (2015)
Description of locally produced earthenware ceramic assemblages excavated from Swahili town sites on the Kenyan coast suggest that incised and impressed decoration became less common and less formally complex, particularly on cooking vessels, after AD 1200 (Chittick 1984; Horton 1996; Wilding 1989). This development appears to be contemporaneous with shifts in consumption practices, domestic architecture, religion, and the importance and expression of socio-economic identity within coast town...
Local Identity in the Mani Peninsula in Classical Antiquity (2016)
This paper presents a new approach to studying ancient identity in the Mani peninsula, using a combination of archaeological and epigraphic evidence and existing theoretical paradigms. Mani can be classified as an 'ahistorical historical' region – one that is inhabited within the historical period but which does not itself produce emic written evidence. Regions like Mani are often left out of typical inquiries into ancient Greek identity, which are overwhelmingly divided between studies of a)...
Looking Beyond the Colonial/Indigenous Foods Dichotomy: Recent Insights into Identity Formation via Communal Foodways from Mission Santa Clara de Asís. (2016)
The Spanish Colonial mission complexes (churches, quadrangles, and outlying buildings and structures) brought about new order on native landscapes with the introduction of European urban planning. As a result, many researchers maintain that Old World plants and animals rapidly supplanted and displaced many types of native species, and they often define "wild" foods as supplemental to agricultural foods. Additionally, many scholars continue to support the notion that agriculture is an active...
Los Aatributos de la Identidad el Caso de Tamtoc, San Luis Potosí, México (2017)
La ritualidad de los grupos humanos está íntimamente ligada a su cosmovisión, a su organización social, así como con aquellos elementos que les otorgan identidad. Las modificaciones corporales que se han estudiado tradicionalmente en la antropología física, como son la modificación intencional el cráneo, el limado dental, la lesión suprainiana y la trepanación, deben ser consideradas como expresión de los elementos antes mencionados. El significado de cada una de ellas solo puede ser entendido...
Making an Alsatian Texas: World-Building, Materiality, and Storytelling in the Castro Colonies of Medina County (2017)
In many ways, Castroville, Texas is a world unto itself. As the "Little Alsace" of Texas, it has been built for over a century through work, struggle, and cooperation – with words and materials, memories and relationships. This world is continuously crafted today, through the restoration of historic Alsatian-style houses and the stories that are told about the town and its history. Though Castroville has been a nexus of Alsatian identity in Texas, other Alsatian colonies spread further into...
Making Ends Meet in 19th Century New Mexico (2015)
In 19th century frontier New Mexico consumer relationships reflected important social networks that were essential to the survival of Hispanic settlements. These relationships played a vital role in the formation and maintenance of modern Hispanic identity during the Mexican and American Territorial Periods. Using close statistical analysis of technological styles in the New Mexican ceramic assemblages of two sites, this poster examines personal relationships Hispanos cultivated with neighboring...
Manifestations of Identity: Materiality, Meaning & Mediation in Early Modern & Contemporary Ireland. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology on the Island of Ireland: New Perspectives" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Perhaps one of the most significant contributions made by historical archaeologists working throughout the island of Ireland is the promotion of archaeology’s remedial effects in terms of conflict mediation and reconciliation. Using the material record to challenge Ireland’s sense of cultural identity, key...