Thinking About Urban Approaches to Interpreting Class in the 19thC: Labor, Residence and Economic Choice at Rock Hall, Lawrence, NY.

Author(s): Jenna Wallace Coplin

Year: 2016

Summary

During the first half of 19th C, dramatic economic changes are evident at the household level. Straddling the urban-suburban divide, residents of Rock Hall on the South Shore of Long Island hybridized farming and summer tourism as they sought to improve their family’s position.  A microcosm of economic choices, this household combined labor and residence in ways that used, and rendered them beholden to, the urban juggernaut of the City while remaining rooted in a distinct local economic identity.

Diana Wall’s work has provided historical archaeology multiple pathways to consider working class households. The results have illuminated "differences in meaning" for occupants, specifically women, and reconnected the archaeological process to interpretation. This paper draws on Wall’s body of work in an effort to highlight urban influences on the local working class and use that light to consider regional class formation and differences in meaning for residents of Rock Hall.  

Cite this Record

Thinking About Urban Approaches to Interpreting Class in the 19thC: Labor, Residence and Economic Choice at Rock Hall, Lawrence, NY.. Jenna Wallace Coplin. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434541)

Keywords

Temporal Keywords
19th C

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): 613