Preserving the Peripheries and Excavating at the Edges: An Examination of the Drinking Spaces at Two Protected Frontier Sites

Megan Victor

Preserving the Peripheries and Excavating at the Edges: An Examination of the Drinking Spaces at Two Protected Frontier Sites

Year: 2016

Summary

Frontier spaces are busy, dynamic zones of meeting, and change, yet often in the realm of research and preservation, these locales are given peripheral attention in favor of more well-established metropoles. I examine two sites: Smuttynose Island, in the Isles of Shoals, Maine, and Highland City, Montana. Thanks to the efforts of the Smuttynose Island Steward Program and the United States Forest Service (especially the Passport in Time Program), these two frontier resource-extraction communities have been preserved and protected. Through them, I have been able to undertake archaeological excavations to examine the actions of frontier inhabitants. Using the framework of informal economy, trade networks, social negotiation, and commensal politics, I examine the drinking spaces found at both sites and argue that the processes at work within frontier communities driven by natural resources are the same, whether the site is a 17th century fishing establishment or a 19th century mining town.

Cite this Record

Preserving the Peripheries and Excavating at the Edges: An Examination of the Drinking Spaces at Two Protected Frontier Sites. Megan Victor. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434669)