Thumb Screws: Decorative Mortuary Hardware Recovered from the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "In Small Things Remembered II: An Archaeology of Affective Objects and Other Narratives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Coffin hardware recovered from historic cemetery excavations serve as temporal, economic, and social markers. The Milwaukee County Poor Farm cemetery burials were carried out by County officials as part of a county-mandated and county-funded program. While most coffins and coffin hardware represent the desire on the part of Milwaukee County officials to be fiscally frugal, there are notable exceptions to the utilitarian nature of the coffin hardware recovered. Thumb screws recovered from three burial locations out of a total of almost 2400 excavated burial locations, represent the few instances of decorative mortuary hardware. One of these burials is that of Gertrude West whose remarkable story is used to interpret the remaining two unidentified burials. Artifact, osteological, documentary, and spatial data are analyzed to understand the unidentified individual interments considering what is known about the historical context of the Gertrude West burial.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• In Small Things Remembered II: An Archaeology of Affective Objects and Other Narratives

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow