Wealth, Status, and Agricultural Production at a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Farmstead in Upstate New York

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We examine a sample of surface-survey-collected ceramics from the Cook Farmstead, which was in operation in Fenner, NY, during the second half of the nineteenth century. After the farm stopped operation around the turn of the century, the house remained in that location until the late 1930s, when it was moved a mile down the road. Since that time, the area containing the house has been largely undisturbed. The well-bounded dates, good census records, and small number of occupants for this site make this a good case for examining ceramic assemblages as they relate to particular residents. As such, we examine the relationship between farm economic production, household wealth, and status display using ceramic wares and farm production data from census records. Results suggest that household wares were related to status display in the nineteenth century, which contrasts with twentieth-century behavior where buildings and landscapes were more often used. We explore how and why that shift in the relationship between wealth, status, and materiality occurred.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36324.0