Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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 Architectural artifact and spatial analyses, combined with historical documents, are utilized to understand reservation building practices of Native Americans navigating colonialism in the 18th and 19th century.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 …

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 …

An Archaeological Study Of Pit Cellars And Ethnic Identity In Tennessee, Daniel Whitaker Howard Brock

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines pit cellars in Tennessee. Pit cellars are pits excavated into the ground typically underneath historic structures and are often referred to as subfloor pits, root cellars, or hidey holes. Archaeologists believe these pits were generally used for the storage of food or personal items and can provide valuable household-level information normally not obtained from other features. These pits were usually filled quickly after their use and often contain artifacts which provide data on diet, personal space, kinship, gender, race, ethnicity, class, spiritual beliefs, and the conditions of slavery. Pit cellars were also regularly constructed by their users …

American Apotheosis: Ceramics And The Production Of National Identity In Post-Revolutionary New York City, Diane F. George

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study begins in the present with questions about the genealogy of American national identities in a time when they are fraught, exclusionary, and often dangerous. It examines ceramic tablewares and teawares from the post-Revolutionary War period in New York City, seeking to uncover the identities that were formed by the middle- and upper-class merchants, businessmen, and their families who may have used the wares. The theoretical framework is the concept of identity and the belief that people use material culture in social arenas in active and complex ways to produce, reproduce, announce, challenge, and change who they or the …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

Storage Organization And Analysis Of Artifacts, Rebecca Glatz

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

I worked with the Institute for Human Science and Culture at the Drs. Nicholas & Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology and Department of Anthropology at the University of Akron to help create an inventory of the collections that are being stored in the storage of the Cummings Center. After I finished the general inventory, I selected a collection of interest to do further research on an item level. The collection was processed and photographed and this paper is a report of what I learned about the collection and a guide of how to process a collection for …

Archaeology Of Disease And Medicinal Practices In 18th-Century Boston, Massachusetts, Kaitlyn N. Ball

Graduate Masters Theses

This research explores the knowledge of medical techniques during the early 18th century in Boston, Massachusetts, a period of modernization and changing attitudes toward disease. By analyzing archaeoparasitological samples, written accounts, and artifacts associated with medicinal practices, I shed light on attempts to treat parasitic diseases encountered by those living in urban Boston. The collections I have selected to analyze are samples of urban Boston life and provide ideal contexts for parasite preservation. I analyze samples from the Parker-Emery household privy (c. 1720-1750) in the North End and compare them to samples from the early 18th-century Town Dock landfill in …

Mapping Historical Archaeology And Industrial Heritage: The Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure, Daniel Trepal, Don Lafreniere, Timothy Stone

Michigan Tech Publications

While a vibrant and growing research literature exists on the value of GIS to archaeology in general, the application of geospatial digital data to the subfield of historical archaeology is less well developed, especially in North America. This is particularly true for the era of industrialization, where the archaeological record is accompanied by a comparatively rich historical record. Historical and industrial archaeology are fundamentally bound up in the interplay between material and historical data, and it is in enhancing the dialogue between these two evidentiary bodies that interdisciplinary geospatial approaches are most fruitful to these subdisciplines. Drawing on recent discussions …

Dating The Morris House: A Study Of Heritage Value In Nova Scotia, Jonathan Fowler, Andre Robichaud, Colin P. Laroque

Northeast Historical Archaeology

In 2009, a group of concerned citizens in Halifax rallied to the banner of The Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia and the Ecology Action Centre to save an 18th century building from demolition. Their case for preserving the building hinged on its unique heritage value, it having formerly housed the office of Charles Morris,Nova Scotia’s first Chief Surveyor. Thanks to their efforts, the Morris House was temporarily relocated to a nearby vacant lot while a new apartment building gradually rose in its place. Although researchers had believed the Morris House pre-dated 1781, the year of Charles Morris’s death, its precise …

Cultivating Historic Farms: A Study Of Late-Nineteenth Century Maryland Farms, Sarah N. Janesko

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This study examines late-19th century farmsteads in Anne Arundel County, Maryland to measure and explain changes in agriculture and the effect of farming strategies on the local landscape. Agricultural census data from 1850–1880 in the county’s First Election District are used to measure significant changes in crop production after the Civil War. From this local level analysis, one farmstead is analyzed to understand those agricultural changes at the household level. Results from exploratory statistics, two-sided independent t tests, and one-way analysis of variances demonstrate that mean production of tobacco, wheat, and corn decreased significantly in the decades after the Civil …

Manipulating The Landscape: A Mark, Not Just On The Land, But On The Minds Of Men, Kathleen E. Clifford

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Comparative studies of landscapes and architecture provide additional insights to research already available on mid- to late-eighteenth-century plantations and the mindsets of the colonial elite that oversaw their construction. Many examples exist of plantation owners modifying landscapes rather than using natural topography, suggesting the plantation layout is a mirror of the owner’s personal worldview or, on a deeper level, a projection of future aspirations. By mapping plantation landscapes and comparing spatial layouts, it may be possible to see patterns in how planters structured themselves socially within their own class and used their plantations as a means to rise within their …

Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony

Theses and Dissertations

Poor Laws enacted in the early 19th-century condemned the most destitute to confinement in almshouses, poor farms, and workhouses. These laws paralleled contemporary Anatomy Acts that turned the unclaimed bodies of individuals who died at those institutions over to medical facilities for dissection, often simultaneously removing anatomization as a punishment for murder. In essence, pauperism became punishable by anatomization. Thus, dissection served the dual purpose of reinforcing social identity amongst the lower class and privileging the social identity of upper-class medical students. This study is an analysis of the material medical waste recovered from the graves of individuals interred at …

Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony

Theses and Dissertations

Poor Laws enacted in the early 19th-century condemned the most destitute to confinement in almshouses, poor farms, and workhouses. These laws paralleled contemporary Anatomy Acts that turned the unclaimed bodies of individuals who died at those institutions over to medical facilities for dissection, often simultaneously removing anatomization as a punishment for murder. In essence, pauperism became punishable by anatomization. Thus, dissection served the dual purpose of reinforcing social identity amongst the lower class and privileging the social identity of upper-class medical students. This study is an analysis of the material medical waste recovered from the graves of individuals interred at …

Comales And Colonialism: An Analysis Of Cuisine And Ceramics On A 17th-Century New Mexican Estancia, Adam C. Brinkman

Graduate Masters Theses

The archaeological site of LA 20,000 is an early colonial Spanish estancia, or ranch, in New Mexico that was occupied between A.D. 1630 to 1680. Spanish estancias became the homes and work spaces for people with a wide range of cultural backgrounds. In this thesis, the author analyses the ceramics and ground stone assemblage of LA 20,000 to understand the daily practice of cuisine on this rural frontier. Cuisine has important symbolic components related to an individual’s identity. Through the practice of cuisine, inhabitants consumed foods that fit conceptions of acceptability, enacted preparation and cooking methods that were taught intergenerationally, …

“The True Spirit Of Service": Ceramics And Toys As Tools Of Ideology At The Dorchester Industrial School For Girls, Sarah N. Johnson

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the ceramics, both full-scale and toy, and dolls recovered from the Industrial School for Girls (1859-1941) in Dorchester, MA, in order to assess the ways in which the Managers who ran the School used material culture to enculturate the girls, as well as how the girls used material culture to shape their own identities. This site provides a unique opportunity to study the archaeology of a single-gender, and predominately single-class and single-age. The Industrial School for Girls, as an institution whose aim was to better the lives of poor girls and give them economic opportunities, as well …

Deconstructing City Hall Park: The Development And Archaeology Of The Common, Alyssa Loorya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

City Hall Park in lower Manhattan, once known as The Common, has a long history of public use dating as far back as the Dutch in the seventeenth century. As the site has been continually occupied for almost 400 years, it is an integral part of New York City’s only recognized Archaeological District. Over half a million artifacts, numerous structural features, and human burials have been recovered and documented on archaeological projects since the 1980s.

While archaeological work at City Hall Park has been undertaken multiple times by multiple archaeologists, all have been instigated by construction projects. As a result, …

Adorned Identities: An Archaeological Perspective On Race And Self-Presentation In 18th-Century Virginia, Johanna Hope Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

Institutionalized slavery helped to create the concept of race in the American mind and forced people into new social categories based on superficial bodily characteristics. These new social categories resulted in the formation of identities that were continuously negotiated, reinforced or challenged through daily bodily practices of self-presentation that included ways of dress, adornment, and physical action. Because slavery was defined on the body, an embodiment approach to plantation archaeology can shed new light on the construction of racial identities. This historical archaeology project combines an archaeological analysis of personal adornment artifacts with a close reading of travel sketches, mass-produced …

Tactics, Strategies, Spaces, And Places: The Spatial Constructions Of Race And Class On Virginia Plantations, Andrew Philip Wilkins

Doctoral Dissertations

This research incorporates overseers into the discussion of how constructed space and social relations informed and shaped one another on colonial and antebellum Virginia plantations. Studies of plantation space and landscape often contrast slave owners and slaves in dualistic views of plantation societies. My question is how the organization, use, and meaning of spaces at multiple scales intersected with the historical constructions of race and class. I address this question through a detailed examination of plantation layouts, quarter arrangements, outdoor spaces, and architectural spaces to identify meaningful distinctions or similarities between the spaces created for and by slaves and overseers. …

Seeing The Forest And The Trees: Tracing Fuel Use And Landscape Change On The Eastern Pequot Reservation 1740-1850, Kalila Herring

Graduate Masters Theses

Gathering fuel wood was a regular chore for most people throughout time and certainly was a part of life for people living in 18th- and 19th-century Connecticut. During this period, the landscape was being altered due to rapidly expanding agriculture and, by circa 1850, would be at the peak of deforestation. During this period, the Eastern Pequot, a Native American nation in North Stonington, were living on their reservation (established in 1683) in a colonial environment and dealing with timber theft, a reduced land base, overseer control, and the overall environmental changes occurring in Connecticut. This thesis examines the charred …

Forget-Me-Not: American Consumerism And Its Impact On Philadelphia Gravestones, 1800-1930, Melissa A. Elgendy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the relationship between the growing consumer ideology brought about by the American Industrial Revolution and changing gravestone characteristics in Philadelphia, PA between 1800-1930. Examining their connection uncovers how consumerism impacted individual’s sense of self and viewed their place in society, which are then reflected in material culture.

Wood Charcoal Analysis From Coan Hall (44nb11), Sierra Snively Roark

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Ghost Walls: The Story Of A 17th-Century Colonial Homestead, By Sally M. Walker, Garry Wheeler Stone

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Ghost Walls: The Story of a 17th-Century Colonial Homestead, by Sally M. Walker, 2014, Carolrhoda Books, Lerner Publishing, Minneapolis, MN, 136 pages, 105 photographs, 18 drawings, $20.95 (cloth).

Book Review: A History Of Boston In 50 Artifacts, By Joseph M. Bagley, Patricia Samford

Northeast Historical Archaeology

A History of Boston in 50 Artifacts, by Joseph M. Bagley, 2016, University Press of New England, Hanover, NH, 232 pages, 153 color illustrations, references, and index, $24.95 (cloth), $21.99 (eBook).

Book Review: Eating In The Side Room: Food, Archaeology, And African American Identity, By Mark S. Warner, Stéphane Noël

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Eating in the Side Room: Food, Archaeology, and African American Identity, by Mark S. Warner, 2015, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 208 pages, black and white illustrations, references, index, $74.95 (cloth).

Book Review: Tobacco, Pipes, And Race In Colonial Virginia: Little Tubes Of Mighty Power, By Anna Agbe-Davies, Sara Rivers Cofield

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Tobacco, Pipes, and Race in Colonial Virginia: Little Tubes of Mighty Power, by Anna Agbe-Davies, 2015, Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA, 184 pages, $94.00 (cloth), $34.95 (paper and eBook).

Book Review: The Archaeology Of Race In The Northeast, Ed. By Christopher N. Matthews And Allison Manfra Mcgovern, Alexandra Chan

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The Archaeology of Race in the Northeast, ed. by Christopher N. Matthews and Allison Manfra McGovern, 2015, University Press of Florida, Gainseville, 392 pages, $84.95 (cloth).

Book Review: Consumerism And The Emergence Of The Middle Class In Colonial America, By Christina J. Hodge, Stephen A. Brighton

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Consumerism and the Emergence of the Middle Class in Colonial America, by Christina J. Hodge, 2014, Cambridge University Press, 247 pages, black and white figures, references, index, $95.00 (cloth), $88.00 (eBook).

Book Review: Everyday Religion: An Archaeology Of Protestant Belief And Practice In The Nineteenth Century, By Hadley Kruczek-Aaron, Christa M. Beranek

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Everyday Religion: an Archaeology of Protestant Belief and Practice in the Nineteenth Century, by Hadley Kruczek-Aaron, 2015, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 237 pages, black and white figures, references, index, $79.95 (cloth).

Book Review: The Archaeology Of American Cities, By Nan A. Rothschild And Diana Dizerega Wall, Joseph Bagley

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The Archaeology of American Cities, by Nan A. Rothschild and Diana diZerega Wall, 2015, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 250 pages, $69.95 (cloth), $21.95 (paper).

Archaeological Evidence For Trade In Harz Roller Canaries, Scott D. Stull

Northeast Historical Archaeology

A previously unidentified redware vessel has been determined to be a watering pot for a canary cage. This artifact represents an archaeologically recoverable element of the international trade in songbirds, with the birds shipped from Germany to the United States and elsewhere around the world.