Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Material Consumption Of An 18th-Century Middling Urban Craftsman In Boston, Massachusetts, Lauryn E. Sharp

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis studies how Caleb Parker, a blacksmith and craftsman who lived in the early- to mid-18th century, viewed and utilized refinement and genteel behaviors using the glass and ceramic artifacts recovered from a privy at his home at 23 Unity Street in Boston’s North End. Background research explores the concept of “partible refinement,” which speaks to the notion that the “middling sorts'' at this time, including craftspeople like Caleb Parker, had the agency to selectively use different components of refined gentility according to their personal consumer choice and tastes. This resulted in middling sorts incorporating both traditional and modern …

“Provisioned, Produced, Procured,” And Purchased?: A Macrobotanical Study Of Enslaved Individuals’ Economic Engagement In The Shenandoah Valley, Linda A. Seminario

Graduate Masters Theses

This research investigates enslaved peoples’ economic engagement in the Shenandoah Valley during the first half of the 19th century. In 2017, archaeologists excavated two features at the Belle Grove enslaved quarters in Middletown, Virginia— a root cellar and subfloor pit that were filled in when a log cabin burned down. The preservation of the macrobotanicals has allowed for an in-depth analysis of the plants with which enslaved individuals engaged and the relationship between plant acquisition and enslaved people’s regional formal economic involvement at a 19th-century plantation in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. These data sets have also allowed for an …

Sartorial Practices And Daily Life: Examining Black Womanhood In Nineteenth-Century Boston, Erica A. Lang

Graduate Masters Theses

During the nineteenth century, the northern slope of Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood was home to a free African American community. Central to the Beacon Hill neighborhood was the African Meeting House, which operated as a Baptist church, home, school, and meeting space for Black community members. Archaeological investigations have revealed the story of not just the African Meeting House, but the surrounding vicinity and larger community. The African Meeting House collection provides a case study to understand the ways racism, sexism, and classism impacted the quotidian lives of Black women in freedom. Using Black feminism as a theoretical framework, this …

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 …

Sisters And Stewards: Women And Community-Building At The African Meeting House On Nantucket, Ma, Sean A. Fairweather

Graduate Masters Theses

Despite the underrepresentation of the achievements of Black women in the historical record, scholars have recognized the centrality of their participation in social institutions such as the church. This thesis uses a documentary archaeology approach to highlight the tactics employed by Black and other women of color on Nantucket Island to foster community through the Black Baptist church housed in the African Meeting House during the nineteenth century. In the free but racially marginalized neighborhood of New Guinea, the African Meeting House was one of two churches that facilitated dignity and uplift for its members. The maintenance of the church …

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 …

Centers Of Community: A Spatial Analysis Of The Mid-19th Century Populaton Residing On Beacon Hill, Boston, Ma, Justin Malcolm

Graduate Masters Theses

The first Black church constructed in Boston, and the oldest extant Black church building in America, the African Meeting House was located on the North Slope of Beacon Hill; the predominant residence of Boston’s Black population during the nineteenth century. The African Meeting House has been the subject of several important archaeological investigations. In 1840, a schism within the African Meeting House congregation resulted in the establishment of the Twelfth Baptist Church. Historical contexts suggest that this neighborhood was highly segregated. A geographic and statistical analysis of the unique 1850 Boston City Census, which was made to yield spatial contexts …

Lithic Debitage And Geospatial Analysis Of Hemish Obsidian Procurement And Reduction Strategies In Colonial New Mexico, Adam Vitale

Graduate Masters Theses

This project evaluates Hemish (people of Jemez) obsidian procurement and reduction strategies through an analysis of over two thousand pieces of obsidian debitage and geospatial analysis of potential hiking pathways. This diachronic analysis provides insight on the variation of the Hemish people’s usage of obsidian for stone tool production from four markedly different social climates which are referenced throughout this study as the pre-Colonial Period (AD 1300-1539), the Early Colonial Period (AD 1540-1680), the Revolt Period (AD 1680-1692), and the Late Colonial or Reconquista Period (AD 1694-1696). Now called the Jemez Plateau, this area is characterized by a series of …

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 …

“The Circle Of Your Acquaintance”: Early 19th Century Ceramic Symbolism And Constructions Of Black Womanhood At The Boston-Higginbotham House, Nantucket, Ma, Lissa J. Herzing

Graduate Masters Theses

During the early 19th century, ideologies of womanhood were beginning to solidify in the national discourse of the United States. The concept of domesticity, the process of homemaking through material and spiritual means, was a key aspect of womanhood during this time, the transition from the Early Republic to the Victorian period. These ideals were prescribed to white middle- and upper-class women but were altered by Black women to serve their needs and adopted to combat negative stereotypes of Black people in a society permeated with racism. This was evident in the work of Maria W. Stewart, the first Black …

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 …

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 …

Creating Community: Examining Black Identity And Space In New Guinea, Nantucket, Jared Muehlbauer

Graduate Masters Theses

In the late 18th century, the abolition of slavery through manumission initiated a period of enormous change in the lives of people of African descent living on Nantucket, MA. Newly free, people of color living on the island immediately began to establish families and purchase property. At the end of the 1700s, they founded the community of New Guinea, located on the southwestern edge of the town of Nantucket. Though enslavement had been abolished and the whaling industry brought economic opportunity to Nantucket, the people of New Guinea continued to experience evolving forms of racial inequality, discrimination, and violence. To …

Spaces Of Time: An Archaeological Perspective On The Deborah Newman Homesite, Gary L. Ellis

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis serves as an archaeological perspective of a Nipmuc family and their land at Hassanamisco, combining documentary and archival research with archaeological, environmental, and conservational methods. Hassanamisco was the third Indigenous community in New England to accept the teachings of John Eliot during the mid-17th century. In 1727, seven Nipmuc families sold portions of their land in what is today Grafton, MA to 40 English families. Deborah Newman was the granddaughter of one of the original Nipmuc proprietors from this sale of ancestral Hassanamisco land, and through her grandfather’s claim she held rights to land and monetary compensation from …

“We May Have Profitable Commerce And Trade Together”: An Analysis Of 17th-Century Ceramics In Plymouth Colony, Elizabeth G. Tarulis

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes the formation of early English colonial trade networks through an examination of three Plymouth Colony sites. This research compares the 17th-century ceramics from Burial Hill (a recently discovered section of the core of the initial settlement, 1620-c. 1660) to two homesteads established later by Plymouth colonists, the Alden First Home Site (c. 1627- c. 1697) and the Allerton/Prence/Cushman Site (1631-c. 1691). A minimum number of vessels was established for each site and the country of origin was established for each vessel to determine the origin of consumer goods, specifically ceramics, in Plymouth Colony. These vessels were then …

Useful Materials: Pxrf Analysis Of 17th-Century Flat Glass From Plymouth Colony, Grace E. Bello

Graduate Masters Theses

This master’s thesis uses a portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer to date and identify flat green glass fragments from English colonial sites in New England. Three sites from the 17th-century Plymouth Colony produced flat glass tested in this thesis. These sites include the Burial Hill site (164 samples), the Alden site (764 samples), and the Standish site (21 samples). Based on the pXRF testing conducted, it was determined that 17th-century flat glass samples can be identified and dated using elemental and physical characteristics. Green window glass produced between 1567 and 1700 can be identified by the presence of a relative …

Small Towns And Mining Camps: An Analysis Of Chinese Diasporic Communities In 19th-Century Oregon, Jocelyn Lee

Graduate Masters Theses

Chinese Diaspora archaeology has focused historically on urban contexts or in-depth case studies, with minimal comparative studies. To expand such research, this thesis is a multisited analysis in Oregon using archaeological assemblages from the Jacksonville Chinese Quarter and four remote Chinese mining camps, museum material collection from a Chinese store in John Day, and store ledgers written in Chinese and English dating to the late-19th century. By situating the research in the framework of race, this thesis seeks to understand the ways that race and racialization impacted market access and affected consumption choices for Chinese immigrants in different classes. Chinese …

Form, Function, And Context: Lithic Analysis Of Flaked Stone Artifacts At A 17th-Century Rural Spanish Estancia (La 20,000), Santa Fe County, New Mexico, Clint S. Lindsay

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the flaked stone artifact assemblage recovered from LA 20,000, a 17th-century (ca. 1630-1680 AD) rural Spanish colonial estancia located near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Settlements like LA 20,000 were important locations of cultural interaction between Spanish colonists and local Indigenous peoples who often worked and lived together in multi-cultural households. By analyzing the procurement, production, and use of flaked stone artifacts to identify choices and activities performed at the site by the people who lived and labored there this study helps to fill gaps in the knowledge and understanding of 17th-century flaked stone artifact production and use …

Social Movements And Charitable Dress: An Examination Of 19th Century Adornment At The Industrial School For Girls In Dorchester, Massachusetts, Madelaine A. Penney

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis is an examination of the 19th century adornment assemblage recovered from the archaeological excavation of two features (1859-1884) at the Industrial School for Girls in Dorchester located at 232 Centre Street in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The school was administered by middle class Bostonian women that wished to train working class girls from broken, abusive, or unfit homes in professionalized domestic work. This thesis is a rare examination of a site that is single-gendered, and predominantly single-classed and aged with a large collection of documented activity. This investigation was conducted in order to question the values that the administration of …

Potters' Norms: Examining The Social Organization Of Ceramic Production Of Panamanian Majolica And Criolla Wares In Panama La Vieja (1519-1673), Jean-Sebastien Pourcelot

Graduate Masters Theses

During the 16th and 17th century, the colonial city of Asunción de Panamá (now known as Panamá la Vieja) rose to regional prominence as a strategic geopolitical and commercial port due to its pivotal role along a transcontinental commercial network that connected Spain and its South American colonies. In the 154 years it was occupied by residents from diverse cultural backgrounds, contemporary but technologically- and compositionally-distinct ceramic industries developed and flourished in this city. Panamá la Vieja’s ceramic record presents a unique opportunity to examine how coexisting but seemingly distinct potting communities organized their craft and to explore whether their …

Eat This In Remembrance: The Zooarchaeology Of Secular And Religious Sites In 17th-Century New Mexico, Ana C. Opishinski

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the faunal remains from LA 20,000, a 17th-century Spanish estancia near Santa Fe, New Mexico that was inhabited by a family of Spanish colonists and indigenous laborers. The data collected from these specimens are examined to better understand the diet of the site’s inhabitants, especially in conjunction with existing data on the plant portion of the diet at this site. Creating a more complete picture of the diet, the analysis covers Number of Identified Specimens (NISP), Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI), potential meat weight represented by the various species, bone modifications, and ageing and kill-off patterns. These …

Cultures And Comfort: A Study Of Personal Adornment At Avery's Rest, Julianne Danna

Graduate Masters Theses

Avery’s Rest was a diverse, thriving plantation in Sussex County, Delaware in the late 1600s and early 1700s. John Avery, a flavorful character from England by way of Massachusetts and Maryland, settled the plantation in the late 1600s and made his final home there with his wife and children. After his death, the same site was then occupied by his daughter, Jemima, and her husband.

Excavated by the Archaeological Society of Delaware, the numerous artifacts from the archaeological site provide a glimpse into the lives of settlers on the colonial frontier as they fought to survive environmental challenges, negotiated continuous …

Regional Variation In Grass, Sedge, And Cereal Cultivation During The Viking Age In Skagafjörður, North Iceland, Melissa M. Ritchey

Graduate Masters Theses

In Viking Age and Medieval Iceland, livestock forage was a critical resource in the Norse agropastoral economy. Cereal cultivation, typically an important part of the Norse economy, may have been more limited in marginal sub-Arctic Iceland. An analysis of macrobotanical seed assemblages from archaeological excavations at 42 Viking Age and Medieval farmsteads in the Skagafjörður region of North Iceland suggests both broad trends and substantial variation over time and space in agropastoral production practices. This study finds that the main components of livestock forage (grass, sedge, and perhaps cereal) are highly variable between regions and over time. Interestingly, barley (Hordeum …

Set In Stone: Recontextualizing The Lithic Assemblage Of A Seventeenth-Century Storage Cellar In Charlestown, Massachusetts, Anna M. Greco

Graduate Masters Theses

Feature 43 is a domestic structure that belonged to the wealthy seventeenth-century merchant community of Charlestown, Massachusetts, and was excavated in the early 1980s as part of the Maudlin Archaeological District. The extant collection has remained in storage for the last thirty years, demanding a recontextualization of the site, both in provenience and in historical context. Primary sources portray an image of a predominantly European settler household; however, a counter-narrative emerges from lithics found within the assemblage. While the ultimate goal is to analyze the patterns of lithic sourcing and production in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the findings hinge on …

Environments Explored: An In-Depth Analysis Of Soil Movement In Northern Iceland, Lauren Welch O'Connor

Graduate Masters Theses

The initial colonization of Iceland in the late 9th century had a profound impact on the fragile environment of the North Atlantic island. Settlement and the introduction of livestock resulted in widespread erosion and the replacement of woodlands with meadows and heaths. Changes in the environment are assumed to have played a role in determining settlement patterning and subsistence strategies. While marginal highland areas were most seriously affected, resulting in farmstead abandonment, the nature of changes in lowland areas and their impact on the productivity of individual farms is poorly understood. Local patterns of landscape change in Iceland could be …

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, …

Tools Of Teaching: Metal At Magunkaquog, Nadia E. Waski

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis provides the results of a comprehensive analysis of the metal artifact assemblage from Magunkaquog, a mid-17th- to early-18th-century “Praying Indian” community located in present-day Ashland, Massachusetts. Magunkaquog was the seventh of fourteen “Praying Indian” settlements Puritan missionary John Eliot helped in gathering between the years of 1651-1674 as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s attempts to convert local Native American populations to Christianity. Originally the site was discovered during a cultural resource management survey conducted by the Public Archaeological Lab (PAL), and further investigated by the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research (then known as the Center for Cultural …

An Analysis Of Form And Function Of Ceramic Rim Sherds From La 20,000, A 17th Century Estancia Outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, Caitlin M. Connick

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines a sample of ceramic sherds from LA 20,000 to determine the functional uses of the locally made ceramics and their relationship to food preparation, consumption, and identity. LA 20,000, the Sanchez site, is a Spanish colonial estancia, or ranching headquarters, located in La Cienega, New Mexico, roughly 12 miles southwest of Santa Fe and was occupied during the seventeenth century before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. It is important to understand Pueblo, or native made, ceramics because all ceramic assemblages recovered from 17th-century Spanish sites in New Mexico consist of a majority of native made ceramics. I …

“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 …

Palynological Investigations Of Agropastoralism And Ecological Change At La 20,000, New Mexico, Anya Gruber

Graduate Masters Theses

How did Spanish colonialism alter the landscape of north-central New Mexico? Agropastoral practices imported by Spanish colonists made indelible impacts on an anthropogenic landscape already shaped by hundreds of years of Pueblo agriculture. However, the precise nature of these changes is poorly understood. This project uses two sets of archaeological pollen data from LA 20,000, a Spanish rancho in New Mexico, to demonstrate how 17th century agriculture and animal husbandry made geographically specific, multifaceted changes to the environment. First, patterns analyzed from a pollen column illuminates fluctuations in plant communities over time, indicating localized ecological shifts. Second, sediments collected from …