Materializing Wealth And Scarcity In Historic Central New York

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Poverty And Plenty In The North", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Central New York has experienced cycles of economic prosperity and stagnation. We examine these cycles in the 19th and early 20th centuries through the lived experiences of residents on one plot of land: the Barnabas Pond Farmstead. Originally delineated and constructed between 1797 and 1805 by settlers from Connecticut, the homestead was successively occupied by five families through the present. Excavations conducted in summer 2022 allowed us to trace the phases of construction of a series of out-buildings on the property and recover material culture assemblages from all phases of the occupation. Correlating these different lines of archaeological and historical data to elucidate the inhabitants’ changing domestic infrastructure and use of space in conjunction with the nature of daily activities, and their access to and integration with local, regional, and global markets we explore the inhabitants’ material expression of wealth under changing historic and economic conditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Poverty And Plenty In The North   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow