"A permanent blemish...in the centre of the village": Class and the National Cultural Heritage Movement in Plymouth, Massachusetts

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "New Research on the “Old Colony”: Recent Approaches to Plymouth Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The late 19th century saw the rise of the National Heritage movement in the United States. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, this movement focused squarely on the Pilgrims’ arrival on the Mayflower in 1620. In 1894, a group of prominent community members known as the Trustees of the Stickney Fund began purchasing property along the town’s oldest cemetery on Burial Hill. This neighborhood was described by contemporary author William T. Davis as a “blemish and disfigurement in the centre of the village.” Examining data from UMass Boston’s Project 400 excavations, I explore the material construction of class of Burial Hill’s inhabitants and critically examine the role class perception played in the rhetoric of the National Heritage movement in Plymouth and the policies Trustees of the Stickney Fund. These analyses are conducted with consideration for the themes of collective memory, landscape as memory, memorialization, material indications of status, and material inequality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Research on the “Old Colony”: Recent Approaches to Plymouth Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1082