The Suture: Medical Entanglements at 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.

Amid the incidental objects that shape everyday life, medical devices and implants stand out as artifacts that are so integral as to be subsumed within the body entirely yet reach beyond the individual to the world at large. These sweeping entanglements span both space and time, extending beyond the individual to encapsulate institutional activity, medical practice, and commerce. Analysis of medical devices recovered from the excavated burials at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery has helped to refine temporal estimates of site use and explicate medical conditions and experiences. These objects, as both material culture and body, bolster potential identifications and foster personal connections to the individuals interred at the cemetery. Utilizing mortuary and material culture analysis, medical records, portable X-ray fluorescence, and historic documentation, this paper explores the influence of these composite objects on the individual, the community, and the researcher.

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