Whither The Tavern Pattern?

Summary

A rigorous vessel form comparison of two archaeological assemblages in the collections of Plimoth Plantation, those recovered from the Wellfleet tavern site on Great Island, and the Joseph Howland site, located in Kingston, Massachusetts, represented the first careful study of a tavern component in relation to a domestic one.  This paper evaluates the original interpretive framework of that early study, framed in terms of occupational differences of site owners, in view of the changing perspectives that both the ethnography of drinking and the archaeology of feasting have afforded our understading of taverns as critical social centers of colonial communities.  While still functionalist in orientation, newer interpretive approaches highlight the multiple economic and poltical roles that alcohol-based sociability played in the maturation of colonial society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Through the Bar Window: An Examination of Alcohol and Drinking Spaces in the Archaeological Record

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 446