Colonial (Other Keyword)
26-50 (108 Records)
The Betty’s Hope Field Project has been ongoing for the last eight years, and comprises two components: ongoing research and the summer field school. AS a 300-year-old sugar plantation on Antigua, Betty’s Hope offers a myriad of opportunities to explore plantation life and Caribbean archaeology. Within the theme of this year’s SHA conference on boundaries and peripheries, the paper will address some of the exciting new developments and directions our research is taking us, and how it relates...
Current Interpretations at the "Cemetery" Site at Old Colchester Park and Preserve (2016)
The Old Colchester Park and Preserve (OCPP), located in southern Fairfax County along the Occoquan River, was acquired by the Fairfax County Park Authority in 2006. The nearly 145 acres of preserved parkland includes numerous prehistoric and historic sites spanning 10,000 years of human occupation. Prominent among these sites is the colonial tobacco port town of Colchester, ca. 1754-1830. Current excavations are focused on the site immediately adjacent to the cemetery, located about half a mile...
Database Creation for the Legacy Collection of Hannastown (2016)
The rapid technological advances in digital computing of the preceding fifty years have allowed for an ever increasing complex analysis of archaeological assemblages. For those working with legacy collections curated before the advent of personal computing, the task of digitizing and formatting data into a usable form while also insuring against the same obsolescence that is being corrected can be daunting. The Applied Archaeology program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania takes a...
Developing Long-Term Research Goals at Gloucester Point through Problem-Oriented Research (2018)
Fieldwork and archival research has been conducted at Gloucester Point since the mid-1970s, yet only recently has an effort begun to synthesize the data developed from this piecemeal effort. Synthesis requires a concentrated effort at compiling and organizing cartographic and historical records, not solely to develop context and create narratives for the occupants of this place over time, but also to create research questions that can be addressed with the vast amount of available archeological...
Don’t Miss the Forest for the Trees: Considerations for the Conservation of Artifacts from Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site’s Waterfront (2016)
When dealing with the conservation of artifacts from archaeological contexts, one often focuses on a few special artifacts. This is often because there isn’t the time, money, or even simply enough artifacts to require looking at the larger conservation picture. Along Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site’s waterfront, a multitude of organic and inorganic artifacts, including ceramics, glass, wood, leather, and textiles, have been recovered. As a result, the conservation needs of whole...
"…down amongst the bears and dogs…": Investigations of an Animal Baiting Pit at the Calvert House Site, Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland (2017)
In the early 1980s, archaeologists surveying the northern yard of the Leonard Calvert house (c. 1635) in Historic St. Mary’s City (HSMC) uncovered small segments of a wide, gently curving fence trench that offered more questions than answers. Nearly 30 years later, over the course of multiple field school seasons, HSMC archaeologists explored more of the curious feature and revealed what appears to have been an oval-shaped fence with a single post at its center. Initial interpretation has...
Drayton Hall Reimagined: New Perspectives on the Commercial, Ornamental and Intellectual Landscapes of John Drayton (c.1715-1779) (2015)
Recent research has exposed how Drayton Hall (c.1738) was conceived by wealthy planter John Drayton to operate as a gentleman’s suburban estate at the center of his vast network of commercial plantations that stretched across South Carolina and Georgia. Drawing from extant architecture, archaeological evidence, landscape features and surviving documentary records, this study will further our knowledge of one of South Carolina’s greatest plantation networks by examining the social, economic and...
The Effect of Missionization on the Itza Maya from Isotopic and Biodistance Evidence (2015)
The Spanish victory over Itza factions in 1697 initiated a period of significant change in the Petén Lakes region, where the construction of Spanish missions and resettlement of indigenous populations likely altered patterns of population movement. We present trace element and isotopic values for eleven individuals buried in Structure T-31 at San Bernabé, a newly discovered mission near the modern town of San Miguel. Markedly different burial patterns, combined with new material culture, suggest...
Engendered Death: A Comprehensive Analysis of Identity in the Mission System of 17th Century Spanish Florida (2015)
Personal identity, while always fluid, was especially so in the borderlands that made up seventeenth-century Spanish Florida due to the collision of many different cultures within the colonial system. The Spanish missions set up by the Franciscans who travelled to the frontier of Spanish territory in Florida served as places wherein the Apalachee, the Guale, and the Timucua could negotiate issues of identity such as gender, social status, and age. Analysis of cemetery populations excavated from...
Exploring The Architecture Of "My Lord’s Gift": An Analysis Of A Ca. 1658 - Ca.1750 Archaeological Site In Queen Anne, County, Maryland (2017)
An archaeological rescue project in 1990 on the "My Lord’s Gift" site (18QU30) in Queen Anne, County, Maryland revealed a fascinating complex of colonial structures. This tract was granted by Lord Baltimore in 1658 to Henry Coursey, an Irish immigrant and important official in the colony’s government. Excavators found a variety of architecture represented at the site. The largest building they uncovered was the substantial cobble stone foundation of an unusual T-Plan house with a massive...
"Facilitating Frontier Trade: Supply Logistics at Fort San Marcos de Apalache, a Spanish Outpost in the Borderlands of La Florida, 1677-1796" (2015)
By the end of the eighteenth-century, the boundaries of Spain’s La Florida territory were informally defined by a series of outposts ranging west from St. Augustine to Pensacola. These outposts were strategically placed in order to secure supplies and regulate trade while maintaining Spanish-Indian relations in the territorial borderlands. Within these borderlands lay the fortified port of San Marcos de Apalache, initially established in 1677 in order to monitor the shipment of supplies from...
Fort Ouiatenon and the Indian and French Fur Trade on the Wabash River (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Fort Ouiatenon was established by the French in 1717 in response to Indigenous demands for a fur trade post in the Wabash River valley. For over four decades Ouiatenon was the site of interaction between French, Indigenous, and Metis people. Following an attack by Kentucky militia in 1791, most of the...
From Soto to Luna: Following a Mid-16th Century Trail of Glass Trade Beads in the Southeastern United States (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The University of West Florida has recovered at least 36 glass trade beads since the discovery of the Tristán de Luna y Arellano settlement in 2015. This paper compares the bead assemblage recovered from the Luna settlement site in Pensacola, Florida, with Soto's winter encampment, the Governor Martin site, in Tallahassee,...
Hanna’s Town: The Site, Its History, and Its Archaeology (2016)
Hanna’s Town, the first English court west of the Allegheny Mountains, was an important political and economic center in western Pennsylvania from 1769 until it was burned by a party of Seneca and English in 1782. After its destruction, the site was farmed for 150 years before it was acquired by Westmoreland County and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Over the past four decades a variety of professional, academic, and amateur archaeologists have excavated the site, generating...
Happy Anniversary! We didn't get a card but we found a lot of ship: Revisiting the Anniversary Wreck. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research in Maritime Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In July 2015, during the city’s 450th anniversary celebration, a buried shipwreck was discovered off St. Augustine, Florida by the St. Augustine Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, or LAMP. Test excavations in 2015-2016 revealed a remarkable amount of material culture, including barrels, cauldrons, pewter plates, shoe buckles, cut...
Histories and Trajectories of Socio-Ecological Landscapes in the Lesser Antilles: Implications of Colonial Period Zooarchaeological Research (2016)
The arrival and colonization of the Caribbean by Europeans beginning in the 15th Century transformed the already dynamic landscapes of the region. To accommodate the slave-labor supported colonial plantation system and its orientation towards market exports, the region witnessed the introduction of exotic plants and animals, creating a ‘creolization’ of flora and fauna. In this paper, I discuss how environmental archaeology contributes to a nuanced and diachronic understanding of the...
"The Hollanders Have Built A Fortress With Four Bastions:" A Synopsis Of The Archaeological Investigations At The Site Of Fort Casimir/Nieuwer Amstel, City of New Castle, Delaware. (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "More than Pots and Pipes: New Netherland and a World Made by Trade" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Fort Casimir was a 17th-century fortification defending the town of New Amstel, today’s New Castle, Delaware. Casimir was the center of power for the Dutch West India Company, and later, the City of Amsterdam on the South (Delaware) River. The fort changed hands four times – built by the Dutch in 1651,...
In Search of La Garita: The Archaeological Discovery of the Spanish Colonial Watch Tower and Powder House (2018)
The location of the Spanish Colonial Watch Tower and Powder House, built between 1808-1809, has been confirmed in San Antonio. These structures represented a significant military post that was, through its span of use, occupied by the militaries of Spain, The Republic of Mexico, The Republic of Texas, The United States, and The Confederate States of America. The long use of the structures ended in the late 19th century when the buildings were demolished and their locations were lost. The City of...
Indigenous Copper Production in Colonial Mexico (1533-1630) (2017)
During the entire colonial period, the South-Central region of Michoacán, Mexico was the main producer of copper in New Spain and one of the most important loci of production in the whole Spanish empire. Copper was a fundamental material for artillery, coinage and silver extraction, not to mention its importance in the manufacture of all sorts of daily life items. However, Spanish colonizers had an almost complete lack of copper extraction knowledge. On the other hand, the region had a natural...
Insufferable Conduct: The Slave Overseer in 18th-Century Virginia (2018)
Historical and archeological literature documenting plantation overseers in the American South is very limited and the extant sources focus almost entirely on overseers from the later antebellum period. The relevance of such information to colonial-period overseers, who are rarely identified in the archeological record and who left few documentary traces, is unclear. At the Accotink Quarter site (44FX0223) in Fairfax County, Virginia, intact historic features and artifact deposits indicated the...
Interactions with the Lower Creek: Historic Document Quantification (2015)
Historic documents are a useful tool in understanding post contact archaeological sites. Documents can show different forms of interaction between Europeans and Native Americans and chronicle events that are invisible in the archaeological record. Notations in archaeological reports often refer back to letters, journals, orders, laws, treaties, reports, newspaper articles and trade records, to support findings and give credence to interpretations of the past. However, use of historic documents...
Irrigation Canals as Subaltern Agents of Resistence: An Example from 19th Century Russian Turkestan (2017)
In the mid 19th century, Imperial Russia established domination over "Russian Turkestan," a large territory in Central Asia. A core part of the colonial mission was the transformation of Turkestan's arid environments into productive farmland. Though this was eventually achieved by the Soviets who constructed massive new irrigation systems in Central Asia, earlier imperial authorities failed in this task and struggled for decades to wrest control of water management from local populations. In...
It Takes a Village: Resurrecting Archeology at Fort Frederica National Monument (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archeology, Citizen Science, and the National Park Service" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2017, Fort Frederica National Monument reestablished its archeological research program, the first effort in 40 years. The National Park Service working in conjunction with local educators and researchers established education protocols, camps, and field school programs that would introduce archeology as part of...
Itinerant Agents: Colonial Representatives at the Obraje de Chincheros (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Itinerant Bureaucrats and Empire" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Obraje (textile mill) de Chincheros, located in the Apurímac region of Peru, was established in the late Sixteenth Century and operated throughout the Spanish colonial period. At the Obraje men, women and children worked long, hard hours to pay the taxes demanded of them from the colonial Spanish government. As men had to serve a forced labor...
Jamestown, Virginia: The Curators’ View (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Jamestown, England’s first successful settlement in North America, was established in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London as an economic venture. Though the colony struggled to survive, let alone profit for the first several years, the site transformed from a precarious outpost into a vital...