History Commons^™

Interpreting San Cecilio: Ritual And Discourse In A Granadan Celebration., Martha M. Popescu

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The romería de San Cecilio is an annual, local short pilgrimage and celebration of the patron saint of Granada, a city in Andalusia, Spain. The romería takes place at the Abbey of Sacromonte, a monastery built on top of the site where San Cecilio’s remains were found as part of the famous discoveries of the Lead Books of Granada in the late sixteenth century. These books were ultimately declared to be Islamic forgeries, yet the romería persists today as a granadino, or Granadan, tradition. Consisting of both a Mass at the Abbey as well as a popular celebration, the …

Spirits And Spirituality: Temperance And Racial Uplift In Nineteenth-Century Nantucket, Ma, John T. Crawmer

Graduate Masters Theses

Studies of alcohol consumption have shown alcohol’s role in defining social boundaries based on class and ethnicity, but few have interrogated alcohol in the context of race. During the early-19th century, free black communities were encouraged to refrain from alcohol as part of a larger project of racial uplift. Black societies and churches perceived intemperance as not only immoral but a threat to community survival. Excavations of the Nantucket African Meeting House noted a considerable lack of alcohol bottles, but it was unclear whether temperance was equally observed at the neighboring Boston-Higginbotham House. This research uses a minimum number of …

We Are Gullah: A Community Approach To Preserving Gullah Geechee Historical Sites Of Significance, Peter Gaytan

All Theses

The National Register of Historic Places is an inventory established by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 that identifies architectural and archaeological sites significant to American history. The National Register was created to encourage the documentation, evaluation, and protection of America’s historic resources. Over 96,000 historic properties, sites, and structures are currently listed on the National Register. Despite the number of historic places listed on the National Register there is still an overwhelmingly low number of sites listed on the National Register relating to underrepresented communities. This thesis assessed the definition of significance laid out in the National Register …

The Perseverance Of Play: An Archaeological Analysis Of Residential Blocks With Preschools At The Amache National Historic Site, Megan Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to expand on the understanding of experiences of Japanese American children, specifically preschool-aged children, within the Amache National Historic Site, a WWII Japanese American internment facility located in Granada, Colorado. Through archaeological methods, GIS analysis, oral histories, and archival research, I analyzed the landscape and material culture of the five residential blocks within Amache that had designated preschools. I then compared these blocks with preschools to residential blocks without preschools to determine if there are any patterns and discernable differences between the two study areas. The findings of this research provide insight into how …

Naming Venus: An Exploration Of Goddesses, Heroines, And Famous Women, Kavya Beheraj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Humans have been observing and romanticizing Venus for more than 5,000 years. However, mapping its surface has nearly always been impossible, since the planet is shrouded in thick clouds. A breakthrough came just fifty years ago with the invention of radar imaging, leading to the discovery (and naming) of hundreds of new features in a relatively short length of time.

The rapid naming of Venus is a case study on the impact of planetary nomenclature — the process of naming features on other worlds. While the act of naming streamlines communication and humanizes alien landscapes, it is subject to bias, …

Dreaming Of Nuclear Futures: History, Toxicity, Panic, And Motherhood In Contemporary Pro-Nuclear Advocacy, Mikel Rand Inchausti

Senior Projects Spring 2023

What is the future of nuclear energy? What futures do we imagine in living alongside nuclear energy and nuclear waste? Who is advocating for those worlds? Read to find out. Enjoy!

The Function Of A Nail: An Archaeological Examination Of Three 18th- And 19th-Century Eastern Pequot Reservation Homes In Southeastern Connecticut, Salvatore A. Ciccone

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines three indigenous households excavated on the Eastern Pequot reservation in North Stonington, Connecticut. Architectural artifact and spatial analyses, combined with historical documents, are utilized to understand reservation building practices of Native Americans navigating colonialism in the 18th and 19th century. The homes are small in design with at least one window and one stone chimney each. They all possessed cellars, but not all are stone-lined. Nails and window glass serve as the primary architectural artifact classes in this work, with an emphasis on their manufacture and modification. Examining nail and glass type, quantity, modification, and spatial patterns …

The Rhythm Of The Land: Women’S Use Of Plants During The Pigeon Phase Of Magic Waters (31jk291) In Cherokee, North Carolina, Kelly Dean Santana

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on the paleoethnobotanical remains of the Pigeon phase village component of the Magic Waters site, 31JK291. The Pigeon phase represented the early Middle Woodland period in the western North Carolina region and spans from approximately 200 BC to AD 200, situated in between the earlier Swannanoa phase (1000 BC to 200 BC) and the later Connestee phase (AD 200 to AD 800; Ward and Davis 1999). The site of Magic Waters is located adjacent to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Hotel in Cherokee, Jackson County, North Carolina, among the Blue Ridge ecoregion of the Appalachian Summit. The site …

La Casita Center: An Accompaniment Based Approach To Social Justice And Social Service., Ben Harlan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Casita Center is a Louisville based nonprofit organization that accompanies Latinx immigrants in the Louisville Metro area. and that is led and staffed by Latina immigrants. In this thesis, I investigate how employees of this Latinx-immigrant led nonprofit organization, navigate challenges to both administer service and build community using the model of accompaniment. Organizations like La Casita are critically important for Latinx newcomer communities in the United States and as neoliberal and nativist-inspired policiescontinue to oppress and marginalize, La Casita provides a model for what it means to center inclusion, belonging, community, and solidarity. In a global landscape of …

An Ethnography Of Voodoo Tourism And Heritage Sites In New Orleans, Lousiana, Bryant Long

Master of Arts in Art and Design Theses

This thesis considers how Voodoo is presented and experienced in various tourism and heritage sites within New Orleans in the present moment. A variety of visual representations, verbal narratives and multimedia performances were documented and analyzed through participant observation. Current tourism relies on the city’s ghost stories, mythology, as well as Voodoo practices and lore, raising questions about the melding of fact and fiction in the potential perpetuation of sensational ideas about the city and its African heritage. Cultural sites discussed in this thesis include Congo Square, the New Orleans Voodoo Museum, Voodoo Authentica, the New Orleans Museum of Art, …

Historical Ecology Of Norse Greenland: Zooarchaeology And Climate Change Responses, Konrad Smiarowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis invokes Historical Ecology approach to better understand human impacts on marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and the creation of cultural landscapes and seascapes in Norse Greenland. It also investigates climate impacts on human economic strategies, as they vary substantially by island and region in the North Atlantic but were especially important in arctic Greenland.

The analysis centers on the animal bone data and uses both existing and newly generated zooarchaeological collections to contribute to the study of Norse Greenland and its place in human ecodynamics research. The newly analyzed archaeofauna shows that the culturally Nordic European settlers used to …

Changing To Stay The Same: Spatial Analyses Of Tobacco Pipes From 18th- And 19th-Century Eastern Pequot Households, Stephen P. Anderson

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines indigenous smoking practices using European white ball clay pipe disposal patterns on the Eastern Pequot reservation in North Stonington, Connecticut. The Eastern Pequot used European-made smoking pipes in their day-to-day life during the 18th and 19th centuries. Material and spatial analyses of pipes and their disposal patterns detail how Eastern Pequot smoking practices changed and continued in the North American colonial world.

Smoking and tobacco use are unique in North American colonialism as the practice originates with the continent’s Indigenous people and was transformed by the English. Questions around cultural change and continuity in smoking due to …

Freyre’S Plantation Playground: The Changing Landscape Of The Sugar Plantation Monjope, Catherine Elizabeth Lavoy

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation investigates the changing landscape of the sugar plantation Monjope in Pernambuco, Brazil from the mid-seventeenth to the end of the twentieth century. I examine this plantation’s changing landscape as part of a number of larger social, economic and environmental forces; in particular the development of racially based labor. Established in the sixteenth century, Monjope was one of the many Brazilian sugar plantations that relied on African slavery for labor until the end of the nineteenth century. I argue the plantation’s built environment in conjunction with the larger plantation landscape was part of a global trend of controlling labor …

The Colbert-Walker Site (22le1048): History And Archaeology Of A Chickasaw Home, Council House, And Travelers’ Stand, Raymond Taylor Doherty

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In late 1813, at a time of increasing violence on the Southern frontier, Chickasaw leader George Colbert (Tootemastubee) left his home and ferry on the Natchez Trace to move back to relative safety in the heart of the Chickasaw Nation. He returned to the place that had once been his father’s plantation and made what he described as a “shelter from the weather.” He later hired skilled craftsmen to build a large and finely carpentered new home on the site. The Colbert-Walker site (22Le1048), near present-day Tupelo, Mississippi, has long been said to be the location of this structure, which …

(Re)Constructing Homescapes: “Archaeological Remote Sensing” And Ground-Truthing Of The Walker Place Homestead At Spirit Hill Farm, Tate County, Mississippi, Gabriel Griffin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on an early nineteenth-century homestead known as the Walker Place homestead at Spirit Hill Farm in northern Mississippi. The goal of this thesis is to conduct a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and shovel test survey to explore how changing landscapes simultaneously (re)create and destroy senses of place or Homescapes. Homescapes have received little attention in the field of archaeology and have not been applied to Euro-American Homescapes. I apply this theoretical construct in a novel way as a venture to further develop an avenue in archaeology to be collaborative and understand the past in a way that accurately …

Exchange And Social Interaction In The Tennessee River Valley: A Geospatial Approach To The Analysis Of Late Archaic Archaeological Sites, Justin S. Bailey

Masters Theses

The cultural manifestation known as the Shell Mound Archaic persisted in the lower Midwest and Midsouth region of the Eastern United States for over four millennia beginning in the Middle Archaic ca. 8900 cal BP and terminating at the end of the Late Archaic ca 3200 cal BP. A geospatial approach is applied to the analysis of exotic material exchange of the Late Archaic (ca. 5800-3200 cal BP) to assess how foraging peoples in the Tennessee River Valley interacted and persisted during this time. Exotic material items manufactured from copper, marine shell, steatite, and other nonlocal materials demonstrate distinct spatial …

Puritan Patriarchal Construction Of American Sexual Morality And Woman's Worth: A Daughter's Response, Savannah Mather

Honors Projects

While modern conceptions of Puritanism regard it as an artifact of American history, whose woman-killing theologies are long buried and forgotten, the bible in my father’s closet and the recently leaked Supreme Court draft to overturn Roe. Vs. Wade would argue otherwise. Cotton Mather’s favorite book Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion outlined both the ideals and detriments of the Anglo-American female identity. In this text, white women were taught to absolve themselves of the “nakedness” in dress Puritan settlers associated Indigenous people with. A woman’s ability to align herself to the ideals of chastity determined her own and her …

The Role Of Native Hawaiian Spiritual Practices In Social Systems And Environmental Stewardship, Christina A. Hornbaker

Social Sciences

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Native Hawaiian spiritual practices played a role in social systems and stewardship practices. Lightfoot and colleagues (2013) suggest that more archaeological research is needed on traditional resources and environmental management practices. The authors point out that “landscape management practices… are subtle and not prone to leaving smoking guns in the archaeological record” (Lightfoot et al. 2013), which makes such sites difficult to document without ethnographic accounts. Due to this subtlety, I will mainly be pulling information from interviews or oral histories from Hawaiian descendants, early explorers and missionary accounts, ethnographers, and …

North Of The Grid: The Black Experience Of 17th -19th Century Rural New York City, Stephanie E. Barnes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, transatlantic slavery was a racial project and template for race-making which created a country that relied on institutions that were organized and performed through social stratification. Today, the nation still operates on systemically racist institutions that have benefited whites while disadvantaging ‘others.’ The narratives presented in American history are rooted in whiteness and benefit the white community while marginalizing nonwhites. Over two hundred years of slavery history in this country has been purposely manipulated and left out. My research focuses on using an historical archaeological framework to research and share the lives of free and enslaved …

Beakers, Berkemeiers, And Roemers: Glass Drinking Vessels From The 17th-Century Dutch Settlement Of Fort Orange, New Netherland, Kristina Staats Traudt

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines 17th-century glass drinking vessel remains uncovered during the 1970-1971 Fort Orange excavations in Albany, New York. Fort Orange was a colonial outpost established by the Dutch West India Trading Company on behalf of the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic in 1624. The fort served as an important trading post within the colony of New Netherland. Drinking vessels are studied in order to determine any traceable patterns of preference in form, decorative elements, or use. Vessels of note include roemers, berkemeiers, goblets, and varying forms using Venetian and Façon de Venise decorative techniques. The analysis is separated …

A Comparative Analysis Of Montpelier's, Monticello's, And Mount Vernon's Collaborative Effort With Their Descendant Communities, Rachel Gregor

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Historical homes and plantation sites focus interpretation on the life and legacy of the white owners of the property and the architectural and decorative elements of the home. In order to tell the whole-truth history of these sites, there must be an active discussion regarding the lives of the enslaved population, especially since the enslaved individuals were the reason the white owner was able to be successful. While very little written historical records exist for enslaved communities in comparison to those that survive for the white plantation owner, the surviving documentation, when coupled with archaeological evidence and especially the oral …

Interpreting The Socio-Symbolic Value Of Jet And Amber Artifacts As Markers Of Religious Transformation In Early Christian Britain, Rachel C. Strohl

Theses and Dissertations

During the Medieval period in Britain, changes in the lived materiality of religion aided in the reinforcement of new ideologies. Christian missionaries and foreign invaders introduced new religious structures and cultural paradigms from the Continent that included novel symbolic forms and material markers. In pre-Christian contexts, jet and amber are thought to have been used for religious purposes due to their presumed magical properties, such as burning and generating a static charge. These materials also served as lucrative exports throughout Europe and beyond before the introduction of Christianity. Textual records from the Mediterranean as well as archaeological evidence for the …

Tales From The Tooth Worm: Reconstruction Of The Historic Oral Microbiome At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Ashley Brennaman

Theses and Dissertations

Paleomicrobiological investigations of the human oral microbiome have primarily focused on samples of ancient origin, while fewer targeted studies of younger archaeological samples from the historic era have been conducted. However, the study of archaeological samples from the recent past, particularly the nineteenth century, can yield pertinent insights into the shifting temporal patterns of oral microbial diversity. For example, the sugar-rich diet associated with the Industrial Revolution of the mid-nineteenth century caused a shift in the composition of the oral microbiome towards a pathogenic state. Recent research has also demonstrated that the oral microbiomes derived from samples of modern and …

Evidence Of Lives Not Seen: The Bioarchaeology Of Material Personhood At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Catherine Rebecca Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Cadaverized individuals in nineteenth and twentieth-century America were overwhelmingly poor, indigent, institutionalized, and unidentified. Their bodies were utilized to transform medical students into professionals while they, in turn, were transformed from human to medical waste, and disposed of as such. The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery was one such disposal site utilized from 1882-1925. Archaeological excavations at the site recovered cadaverized remains in multiple individual burial contexts. Analysis of mortuary patterns provides a richly nuanced medium through which this project examines the creation of social personhood and the formation and maintenance of community boundaries. These shared patterns, evident in burial …

Two Cemeteries In One: An Historic Archaeological Analysis Of The Cemeteries That Comprise Today’S Liberty Cemetery In Trevor, Wisconsin, Sydne Morgan Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an historic archaeological comparison of the two cemeteries that comprise today’s Liberty Cemetery in Kenosha County, Wisconsin: the Old Cemetery (1844-1883) and the New (1885-1924). Salem, Wisconsin’s first settlers arrived in the 1830s, and shortly thereafter some began burying their dead at a place called Liberty Corners. The burial grounds continued to grow, and within a few years, the church across the street began overseeing it. The church transferred the graveyard to a private organization in 1884, and that group mixed a new cemetery—called Liberty Cemetery—into the same grounds as the old one. This thesis compares these …

Contextualizing The 2019 “Chile Despertó” Movement: The Impact Of Historical Relational Processes On Mobilization And Repression, Tanya Leon

International Studies (MA) Theses

To expand our theoretical and empirical understanding of mobilization and repression in Latin America, this thesis asks three critical questions. Are economic indicators sufficient predictors of social movement emergence in Latin America? What other factors contribute to large-scale mobilization in Latin America? How do government’s respond to large-scale Latin American social movements? Specifically, when, and why do democratic governments choose to employ repression against social movements? Accordingly, I construct a quantitative model to test the correlation between rise in protest and worsened economic conditions. I apply it to a comprehensive dataset of political events in multiple South American countries throughout …

From Serbia To Xinjiang; A Comparative Analysis Of Genocidal Regimes, Drake Mitchell Olson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Rather than seeking to give a causal explanation of genocide and ethnic cleansing, I ask the more pointed question “are there patterns present at the societal level that signal the potentiality of genocide in a given cultural context?” Through examination of two socially and temporally distinct instances of genocide, the Bosnian genocide and the Uyghur genocide, I argue that there exist certain patterns which precede historical instances of genocide and that these antecedent phenomena contribute to the potential for genocide in those societies. I identify three broad trends that contribute to the potential of genocide: the cultivation of ethnic nationalism …

Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the relationships and partnerships developing around the First Baptist Church -- Nassau Street Archaeology Project in Colonial Williamsburg. Exploring the defining of "descendant community" and the contributions of tourists through the lens of Erving Goffman's stages and participant frameworks, this project looks at the past, present, and future of this project.

A Cross-Cultural Trek Of Nomadism Through Metaphoric Criticism, Gabrielle Wilkosz

All Theses

How has the worldwide phenomenon of nomadism—present day, recent past, and ancient past—been characterized through metaphor by writers, orators, and auteurs? Using metaphoric criticism, I show how the rhetoric of twenty-first-century "van-lifers" builds on a long global history of displacement that ranges from Central Asia to Malaysia to the Grand Canyon. This project’s three case studies span two decades each, comprising the Kitan people of Central Asia (1207-1227); Bukat people of Borneo in Malaysia (1930-1950), and contemporary "van-lifers" of the US (2001-21). This MA thesis parses a newfound connection between the language of nomadism and Burkean “truth”; the language of …

Resurrecting Gaelic: Modernity And Heritage Language Revival In Scotland In A Comparative Perspective, Sean Coady

Student Research Submissions

Many people from across the world have little or no connection to their heritage languages. Whether this loss is caused by conquest, colonialization, or simply lack of parent-child transmission, many believe that they are missing an integral part of their cultural identity and want to reclaim the languages of their forebearers. There is wide debate about how, why, and if this linguistic reclamation and revitalization should happen because, in the face of modernity and language evolution, the best solutions are not always clear. What constitutes successful language revitalization in the modern world, and why does it happen? Gaelic in Scotland …