Inequality and consumption patterns in the North Carolina piedmont

Summary

Rural farmstead archaeology is often overlooked in favor of research into larger, urban centers. Rural archaeology is an important area of research because for most of American history, the majority of the population lived in rural settings. In addition, the late-19th and early-20th centuries were periods of rapid change in the American South. Farm modernization and southern urbanization affected people at all levels of the socioeconomic ladder. This poster will display the results of an economic scaling analysis of ceramic assemblages from two different late-19th century sites in the piedmont of North Carolina. The analysis will include both locally produced ceramics as well as non-local wares that were mass produced and available commercially throughout the U.S. A statistical comparison of the overall value of the ceramics at each site will be used to explore how patterns of consumption in the rural South were affected by commercialism, socioeconomic status, and inequality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21746