On the Centennial of his Passing: San Diego County Pioneer Nathan "Nate" Harrison and the Historical Archaeology of Legend
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2020
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "On the Centennial of his Passing: San Diego County Pioneer Nathan "Nate" Harrison and the Historical Archaeology of Legend," at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Nathan “Nate” Harrison (1833-1920), San Diego County's first permanent African-American, is a local legend whose popular biography brims with enticing exaggerations and far-fetched fabrications. Harrison's actual life story included enslavement in the Antebellum South, boom-and-bust cycles in the California Gold Rush, and lawless adventures in the Old West. It was a microcosm of the diverse cultural heritages and volatile histories of the 19th-century United States. This session consists of a series of papers from participants in the Nathan “Nate” Harrison Historical Archaeology Project, highlighting insights from ongoing archaeological excavations at Harrison's original mountain homestead. It includes discussions of Harrison's daily life, cottage industries, landscape use, crafted identities, and continuing legacies. Since the existing documentary records concerning Harrison are rife with contradiction, invention, and revision, these analyses endeavor to contextualize the mythmaking and identity politics of the last two centuries with scientifically determined spatial, temporal, and formal realities in the ground.
Other Keywords
Identity •
Agency •
water •
Transportation •
Museum •
Photography •
Spatial Analysis •
Chemical Analysis •
Exchange •
Activity Areas
Temporal Keywords
1830-1920
Geographic Keywords
Coahuila (State / Territory) •
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Oklahoma (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
Texas (State / Territory) •
Sonora (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Chihuahua (State / Territory) •
Nuevo Leon (State / Territory) •
Delaware (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)
- Documents (9)
- Advances in Technology, Transportation, and Tourism: Archaeological Manifestations of the Late 19th-Century Emergence of Nathan Harrison as a Destination (2020)
- Chemical Analysis of Small Sealed Metal Containers from the Harrison Site (2020)
- Fired Rifle Cartridges as an Archaeological Tool for Dating Later Historical Sites: Harrington Histograms and Measures of Central Tendency (2020)
- An Historical Archaeology of Minstrelsy (2020)
- How Wild Was Nathan Harrison’s Old West: Unsolved Murders and Mayhem in late 19th and early 20th Century San Diego County (2020)
- Photography, Performance, and Identity: Social Constructions of a Local Legend (2020)
- Public Engagement, Archaeology Museology, and Sustainable Heritage Management in the Twenty-First Century Museum Experiences: A Case Study from the Harrison Site (2020)
- Spatial Patterns and Activity Areas at the Harrison Site: A Case Study in Multiple Lines of Evidence and Differential Uses of Space (2020)
- "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over": The Harrison Spring, Water Control, and Strategic Gift Exchange on Palomar Mountain (2020)