New York City (Other Keyword)
1-12 (12 Records)
Salt-glazed stoneware vessels and sherds found on 19th century sites are generally assumed to be of North American manufacture, unless they are highly decorated, but sherds from 18th century sites are usually identified as German made. American potters, however, made highly decorated vessels in the German style beginning in the early 18th century and many vessels attributed to Europe were made in New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania. These vessels can be identified by their pastes and other...
An Archaeology of Aesthetics: the Socio-Economic and Ideological Elements of Coffin Plate Selection at the Spring Street Presbyterian Church (2013)
Material shifts among decorative coffin fittings reflect how past populations conceptualized death, memory, and social status. Coffin plates recovered during the excavation of four burial vaults (ca. 1820-1843) associated with the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, New York City, were simple and uniform in design, inscribed only with the names, ages, and death dates of the individuals with whom they were interred. This paper examines the socio-economic and ideological elements that may have...
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...
Creating A Unified Database Of New York City Artifacts (2016)
The Museum of the City of New York and Landmarks Preservation Commission partnered in 2013 to develop an inventory of archaeological artifacts owned by the City of New York. At the Museum, we have developed a database that maintains the hierarchy of Projects, Contexts and Artifacts within each archaeological project, while also allowing users to search at the individual artifact level. Artifact level searches allow comparison across all sites within the City’s holdings – opening up new research...
Creating Space in New York City: Historic Landbuilding in Brooklyn (2016)
Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field was the first municipal airport in New York City (1928) before its use by the U.S. military until the Vietnam War. Since 1972, the field has been administered by the National Park Service within the Gateway National Recreation Area- the first of its kind in an urban setting. The landform supporting Floyd Bennett Field is almost entirely anthropogenic having been created by numerous landfill episodes dating from 1878 to 1941. These efforts used two general...
The Creation of the New York City Archaeological Repository (2016)
Dozens of archaeological excavations have made important discoveries about the almost four-hundred year history of New York City and the people who have inhabited the area for thousands of years. In 2014, a climate controlled archaeological repository was established in Midtown Manhattan to appropriately curate the city’s collections. Previously, they were dispersed, often inaccessible, and kept in non-ideal conditions which meant they were often at risk and rarely used for research. Many...
Defining Historical Archaeology in New York City: New Terms, New Archaeology (2016)
Historical Archaeology was in its early stages as Diana diZerega Wall and her cohort, lead by Bert Salwen at NYU, began to excavate in New York City. Here I will discuss how the use terms like gender, class, and race were revolutionary at the time and how they have allowed us to investigate further subtleties such as the dialectic relationship between insider and outsider communities. Wall and her cohort have taught us to work with local descendant communities, bridged the gap between academia...
Evidence of Things Not Seen: The Archaeological Investigation of Abandoned and Redeveloped Cemeteries in New York City (2018)
In New York, where developable land is scarce and the pace of development can be overwhelming, the social and cultural meanings of space and place can quickly change as properties change hands. Throughout New York’s history, many cemeteries and burial grounds have been redeveloped, often without the removal of graves. Human remains associated with historic cemeteries are present beneath the city’s parks and parking lots, and in the backyards and below the basements of buildings large and small....
Examining Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century New York City through Patent Medicines (2016)
Patent medicines were immensely popular in the 19th century. They promised astounding cures, were unregulated and relatively inexpensive, and permitted individuals to self-medicate without an interfering physician. Archaeologists have often begun their interpretations of these curious commodities with the premises that they were lesser quality alternatives to physicians’ prescriptions and thus more appealing to poorer alienated groups (who used them passively as advertised) than to the...
Inclusive Collaboration: A Model for Archaeologists Working with Descendant Communities (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. The tensions resulting from American archaeology’s post-colonial roots are exposed in unique ways during the archaeological investigation of burial places associated with enslavement. In the aftermath of the investigation of Manhattan’s African Burial Ground, advisory...
Marking the Unmarked: The Confluence of Community Archaeology and Ground Penetrating Radar at the Hunts Point Slave Burial Ground, Bronx, NY (2018)
The 2010 discovery in a New York museum of a photograph labeled "Slave burying ground, Hunts Point Road," launched a Bronx elementary school's innovative preliminary research project leading to the identification of the unmarked and forgotten burial ground’s possible location. The City Parks Department subsequently initiated a documentary and Ground Penetrating Radar study that confirmed the enslaved burials to be segregated across the roadway from the 18th-century burial ground of the Hunt,...
‘Success to America.’ The Role of British Creamware in the Production of American National Identity. (2016)
Excavations at New York City’s South Street Seaport uncovered an early nineteenth century deposit within the foundation of a small building on the property of a wealthy merchant. Among the artifacts in the deposit was a creamware plate that paid homage to the "sacred" memory of George Washington. Along with this solemn memorial, the imagery on the plate included a neoclassic goddess waving an olive branch towards a mercantile ship on the horizon. Despite the irony, British potters produced many...