Utopia Excavated: Preliminary Results from the Amana Colonies
Author(s): Christian J. Haunton
Year: 2013
Summary
The seven Amana villages of east-central Iowa were founded in the mid 19th century by German pietists seeking a removed location in which to practice their unique form of communal Christianity. In 1932 the community voted to separate the governing body of the church from the political and economic facets of community life for the first time, this event is remembered today as the "Great Change." In summer of 2012 a group of outhouses were excavated at the Amanas as part of a project to look at the changes in material culture that surrounded the Great Change. This report will present the preliminary results of that fieldwork as well as recount the trials and triumphs of conducting privy excavations among a living population of interest. Outhouse puns will be minimal.
Cite this Record
Utopia Excavated: Preliminary Results from the Amana Colonies. Christian J. Haunton. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Leicester, England, U.K. 2013 ( tDAR id: 428428)
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Keywords
General
MIdden
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Privy
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Utopian
Geographic Keywords
North America
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United States of America
Temporal Keywords
19th/20th Century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 342