“Wide-Awake Merchants” and Reform-Minded Women: Archaeology of Alexandria, Virginia’s German Jewish Community

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Historical archaeological investigations of Jewish diaspora sites have often heavily relied on faunal remains, particularly the presence or absence of pig remains, as a proxy for Jewishness. Keeping kosher is not the only relevant component of Jewish diasporic identities or even the only component that is visible in the historical and archaeological records. Though faunal remains are an important piece of the puzzle, they do not tell the whole story of how individuals and communities understood and practiced their religious and cultural identities. Instead, clues linger in historic records, the ceramics and glass objects of everyday life, and in spatial patterns. This paper explores how several lines of evidence were woven together to not only identify the presence of Jewish Alexandrians but to also understand Jewish diasporic experiences in Alexandria, Virginia, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35998.0