Teasing Out The Details: Re-examining A 19th-Century Boardinghouse Site In Lowell, MA

Summary

Archaeological sites excavated under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 provide scholars a wealth of data at their fingertips.  Due to the time and financial constraints of excavation, many collections are initially analyzed, stored in state and local repositories and forgotten.  However, both academic and cultural resource management (CRM) collections are an invaluable source of new data.  The re-examination of these assemblages can tease out more detailed or nuanced meaning from the artifacts.  This paper focuses on the Jackson Appleton Middlesex Urban Revitalization and Development Project (JAM), a CRM site in Lowell, MA.  Through the re-analysis of this collection associated with the Hamilton Manufacturing Company’s boardinghouses, the data provide new insight into temporal patterns of ceramic usage among 19th-century textile mill workers further developing our understanding of social class during Lowell’s golden industrial age.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Wealth of Data: Rising to the challenge of decades of curated collections   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 586