Privy to the Details: Biographies of the Teager/Weimer Site (45SN409) in Arlington, Washington

Summary

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

This paper represents the culmination of master’s thesis research on identity negotiation in the urbanizing frontier of Arlington, Washington. During the summer of 2021, I reanalyzed the privy assemblage associated with the Teager/Weimer site, which was originally excavated during cultural resource mitigation in 2008 and is now held at the Burke Museum in Seattle. In conjunction with the local pioneer and genealogical societies, I also conducted in-depth archival research. From these additional analyses, new details surrounding the social and family dynamics of three families who occupied the site from ca 1895 through the 1930s have surfaced. Using the biographical approach, I have crafted narratives surrounding specific artifacts from the assemblage that are deeply contextualized within their likely social context specific to each family. These families’ stories broadly draw upon themes of capitalism, gendered domesticity, and nationalism within the larger colonization and urbanization frameworks of the American West. This work exemplifies the ongoing utility of legacy collections and value of public engagement in conducting meaningful archaeological research.

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): 37100.0