Miner’s Delight: An Investigation into the Material Culture of Social Drugs on the Frontier

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Considering Frontiers Beyond the Romantic: Spaces of Encroachment, Innovation, and Far Reaching Entanglements" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The early 19th century saw an influx of settlers, miners, and profiteers from both the established United States and foreign nations into the western frontier in search of wealth through the mining and smelting of lead. What they brought with them were consumption practices curated by personal taste, tradition, and resources. Excavations at the mining boomtown of Gratiots Grove in Southern Wisconsin has revealed a complex assemblage of glass artifacts indicative of these “carried” identities, status, knowledge of bodies, and relationships emerging within and outside the frontier. Glass alcohol bottles speak to the personal taste and tradition of the users, the contexts of consumption, while also defining the networks of procuring and methods of producing and supplying alcohol in this context. Through this collection, and ones like it, archaeology can contribute to the understanding of drinking culture, the political economy of alcohol and provisioning, and life on the western frontier.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Considering Frontiers Beyond the Romantic: Spaces of Encroachment, Innovation, and Far Reaching Entanglements   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1041