Domesticity Through Decoration: An Analysis of Early 19th-Century Ceramic Decorative Motifs from the Boston-Higginbotham House, Nantucket, MA.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "An Archaeology Of Freedom: Exploring 19th-Century Black Communities And Households In New England." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Boston’s of Nantucket, a family of African and Native American descent, greatly impacted the development of the free black community of New Guinea during the late 18th-19th centuries. During the 1820s-1830s, Mary Boston-Douglass, a woman who married into the Boston family, was the matriarch of the household, raising and caring for her children and their families. Mary’s roles as a woman and a mother were shaped by her experiences as a woman of color living in an affluent family and a growing community of color. Building upon previous research on the Boston-Higginbotham House site that considered ceramic types and frequencies, my analysis focuses on the ceramic decorative motifs in a privy assemblage from the 1820s-1830s. This analysis aims to expand our understanding of how domesticity was raced, classed, and gendered in this household, with Mary’s choices in ceramic purchases reflecting the ideals she and her family held.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• An Archaeology Of Freedom: Exploring 19th-Century Black Communities And Households In New England.   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 817