Measuring Variability in Jaw Harps on Enslaved Sites
Author(s): Crystal L. Ptacek; Christine Devine
Year: 2020
Summary
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
During excavations of an early 19th-century quarter site for enslaved field laborers at Monticello, archaeologists have recovered four jaw harps. This high quantity stands in contrast to other excavations at sites at Monticello. This paper aims to contextualize this find. We trace temporal and spatial trends in the abundance of jaw harps in a sample of slavery-related sites in North America and the Caribbean, using data from DAACS and other sources. We evaluate whether these trends are best explained by variation in market access, wealth, and payoffs to musical performance among slave societies. We also examine dimensions of metric variation in these artifacts and how they are related to performance characteristics like pitch and loudness. We assess temporal and regional trends for metric variation in the sample and the implications for variation in performance.
Cite this Record
Measuring Variability in Jaw Harps on Enslaved Sites. Crystal L. Ptacek, Christine Devine. 2020 ( tDAR id: 457138)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
jaw harps
•
Material Culture
Geographic Keywords
United States of America
Temporal Keywords
18th and 19th centuries
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 879