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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2011

Anthropology

Colonial

Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Conclusion: Meditations On The Archaeology Of Northern Plantations, Stephen A. Mrozowski,, Katherine Howlett Hayes, Heather Trigg, Jack Gary Sep 2011

Conclusion: Meditations On The Archaeology Of Northern Plantations, Stephen A. Mrozowski,, Katherine Howlett Hayes, Heather Trigg, Jack Gary

Northeast Historical Archaeology

A summary of the methods employed and the conclusions reached after nine seasons of archaeological fieldwork are presented. Emphasis is placed on the success and limitations of the methods employed in the investigations at Sylvester Manor and results of those investigations. Although excavations concentrated on the plantation core, additional areas examined produced little in the way of archaeological features. The results, although preliminary, point to a major role for Native Americans as laborers during the earliest phases of the plantation’s operation. Landscape evidence also suggests an evolving economy as the Manor transitions from a provisioning operation to a commercial farm/tenant …


Zooarchaeological Evidence For Animal Husbandry And Foodways At Sylvester Manor, Sarah Sportman, Craig Cipolla,, David Landon Sep 2011

Zooarchaeological Evidence For Animal Husbandry And Foodways At Sylvester Manor, Sarah Sportman, Craig Cipolla,, David Landon

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Analysis of over 12,000 zooarchaeological specimens recovered from Sylvester Manor provides archaeological evidence to complement the limited historical information about stock raising and food consumption on the plantation. The analyzed collection derives from the south lawn midden deposit at the site, and contains primarily the remains of domestic sheep, cattle, and pigs. The domestic animal ages, based on tooth eruption and wear, suggest aspects of the animal husbandry system. The patterns of skeletal part representation suggest most of the bones from the midden are refuse from household consumption rather than waste from exported foodstuffs. The Sylvesters and their tenant farmers …


Cider, Wheat, Maize, And Firewood: Paleoethnobotany At Sylvester Manor, Heather Trigg, Ashley Leasure Sep 2011

Cider, Wheat, Maize, And Firewood: Paleoethnobotany At Sylvester Manor, Heather Trigg, Ashley Leasure

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The paleoethnobotanical analysis program at Sylvester Manor is designed to investigate the relationships between the Sylvesters, their workers, and the botanical environment. Most of the contexts sampled provide information about domestic household consumption. The site residents used large quantities of oak for fuel and possibly building construction. Documents provide more robust information about the production of crops and interactions with Native peoples, suggesting that local Native Americans provided a source of labor for the production of crops.


The Laboratory Excavation Of A Soil Block From Sylvester Manor, Dennis Piechota Sep 2011

The Laboratory Excavation Of A Soil Block From Sylvester Manor, Dennis Piechota

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This article describes a method of retrieving a large intact soil block from the midden area of the Sylvester Manor site. The soil was micro-stratigraphically excavated within a laboratory setting and analyzed using new approaches to the direct observation of micro-artifact distributions and trace residues on soil surfaces. Low technology analytical methods were selected from fields unrelated to archaeology but readily accessible to workers in a standard archaeological processing laboratory. Preliminary findings are presented in the hope that new low-cost field and laboratory methods can be developed. For example particle mapping of micro-artifacts by direct observation of soil profiles is …


Material Culture And Multi-Cultural Interactions At Sylvester Manor, Jack Gary Sep 2011

Material Culture And Multi-Cultural Interactions At Sylvester Manor, Jack Gary

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The material culture recovered from Sylvester Manor’s 17th-century deposits not only informs our understanding of the plantation’s depositional history but also is characteristic of cultural interactions between Europeans, Native Americans, and possibly Africans. The mixture of cultural material in these deposits suggests intense and sustained cultural interactions that have lead to the production and use of certain materials outside of their cultural norms. Several of these items are European goods altered for use in Native or possibly African cultural systems, while other items reflect the creolization of material culture by blending morphological and stylistic attributes of two material cultures. These …


The Use Of Soil Micromorphology At Sylvester Manor, Eric Proebsting Sep 2011

The Use Of Soil Micromorphology At Sylvester Manor, Eric Proebsting

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Soil micromorphology is a vibrant sub-discipline of archaeology that studies sediment fabric, color, composition, shape, layering, and sorting using intact soil cores and thin sections. This technique takes into account the dynamic relationship between people and the world in which they live, and has contributed useful archaeological data to the Sylvester Manor Project. This paper constructs a landscape history for portions of the South and West lawns using soil cores and thin sections. Results reveal how Sylvester Manor’s lawn, Midden, and Brick and Mortar Layer were composed, as well as how they were changed over time by plant and animal …


Field Excavations At Sylvester Manor, Katherine Howlett Hayes Sep 2011

Field Excavations At Sylvester Manor, Katherine Howlett Hayes

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This chapter describes the overall field strategy and summarizes nine seasons of field excavations at Sylvester Manor. All tested site areas are described, with greatest detail given to the areas relevant to the research questions on the early plantation period, as well as the pre-Contact/Colonial Native American occupation areas. This overview of the excavations also provides a broad interpretation of the results relating to the early colonial landscape, associations between site areas, and the longer term Native American occupation of the site.


Geophysical Explorations At Sylvester Manor, Kenneth L. Kvamme Sep 2011

Geophysical Explorations At Sylvester Manor, Kenneth L. Kvamme

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Geophysical surveys were undertaken at the Sylvester Manor Estate, on Shelter Island, New York, in the summer of 2000. This work helped identify and map components of the buried cultural landscape at this plantation where Dutch, English, Native Americans, and enslaved Africans labored in the second half of the 17th century and later. A second goal was to map features of historic gardens that are known to have existed, and explore the possibility of cultural features in a distant “West Peninsula” area. Ground-penetrating radar, magnetic gradiometry, and electrical resistance surveys were employed. The electrical resistance data, acquired at 25 cm …


The Archaeology Of Sylvester Manor, Stephen A. Mrozowski, Katherine Howlett Hayes, Anne P. Hancock Sep 2011

The Archaeology Of Sylvester Manor, Stephen A. Mrozowski, Katherine Howlett Hayes, Anne P. Hancock

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This chapter introduces the history of the Sylvester Manor Project. It emphasizes the importance of the interdisciplinary approach employed during the project and the overall goals of the investigations. A discussion of pluralistic space and its importance as a central theme of the investigations is also presented. This is followed by a discussion of the Native American history of Shelter Island and its European colonization with particular attention given to the initial establishment of Sylvester Manor as a provisioning plantation, its connections to two large sugar plantations on Barbados, and its subsequent transformation into a commercial estate.


A “Fashionable Tailor” On Water Street:Nineteenth-Century Tailor’S Chalks Fromst. John’S, Newfoundland, Temple Blair, Barry C. Gaulton Apr 2011

A “Fashionable Tailor” On Water Street:Nineteenth-Century Tailor’S Chalks Fromst. John’S, Newfoundland, Temple Blair, Barry C. Gaulton

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Excavations related to a large sewer construction project in St. John’s, Newfoundland exposed several examples of tailor’s chalk lost during the Great Fire of 1892. Made from pipe clay, these objects may be the first of their kind identified on an archaeological site in North America. This paper introduces the changing social and economic position of tailors and other clothing-related trades in St. John’s. Tailor’s chalks are discussed within the context of the clay tobacco pipe industry, particularly the non tobacco-related objects produced, and within the tailoring trade throughout the early modern period.