Visualizing the visible: Mapping Access and Commodities at a 19th century Farmhouse

Author(s): Quentin Lewis

Year: 2013

Summary

In this paper, I utilize GIS and other programs to explore the complexities of interior space in an early 19th century rural household. The E.H. and Anna Williams House in Deerfield, Massachusetts was lived in by the same family for much of the first half of the 19th century. The Williamses were wealthy, and filled their house with goods from around the world, in addition to the material necessities of running a working farm. Their house still stands today, as a museum, but what I will show is that visibility, access, and materiality were all intertwined in the interior layout in ways that are not necessarily obvious to modern visitors. GIS and visualization technologies, along with documentary and architectural analysis, provide the means for modeling how this interior space was used by the family, servants, and visitors who passed through the house's rooms and by the objects those rooms contained.  

Cite this Record

Visualizing the visible: Mapping Access and Commodities at a 19th century Farmhouse. Quentin Lewis. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Leicester, England, U.K. 2013 ( tDAR id: 428503)

Keywords

General
Consumption Gis visualization

Geographic Keywords
United Kingdom Western Europe

Temporal Keywords
Early 19th Century

Spatial Coverage

min long: -8.158; min lat: 49.955 ; max long: 1.749; max lat: 60.722 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 557