History of Home Health Care: Shifting Practices of Hygiene, Wellness, and Medicine in Eighteenth- to Nineteenth-Century Central 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.

In the early colonial context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States, understanding wellness practices include a dynamic view of what constitutes medicine, personal hygiene, and healthcare. At this time, European colonizers arrived in central New York, occupying traditional Oneida Land, and brought with them their views on wellness. These views changed through a process of getting to know a new environment and through the emergence of capitalism. Advertising and the formalization of the medical industry helped create and reinforce broader norms of wellness. However, how people experienced this in their daily lives is sometimes at odds with these broader social norms. Archaeologists can reconstruct how people practice wellness in their daily lives by examining house architecture, waste disposal patterns, and material culture associated with healthcare products. In this poster, we present the results of the analysis of material culture associated with health, wellness, and personal hygiene from the Reuben Long house in central New York. We contextualize these objects within a broader assessment of the changing norms and health outcomes in Oneida County. These insights help us understand the deep history of tensions between daily life and social norms associated with health and wellness.

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): 36617.0