Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Acknowledgment Of Culture And Stereotypes: Black Participants’ Perceptions Of Specific Therapist Behaviors, Tsotso T. Ablorh

Graduate Masters Theses

Mental health disparities for Black people of diverse ethnicities compared to people of other racial identities has been well-documented (Alegría et al., 2008; Maura & Weisman de Mamani, 2017). Research addressing this pervasive systemic and interpersonal problem often focuses on client-related factors that create or intensify barriers to care. However clinician-related factors (i.e., racial identity, multicultural training, implicit biases, behavior, etc.) also have a significant impact on barriers to care, retention in therapy, and clinical outcomes for people of African descent (Larrison & Schoppelrey, 2011; Owen, Imel, Adelson, & Rodolfa, 2012). Researchers suggest that the favoring of historically white perspectives, …

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 …

Migration And Identity In Host-Communities: Global North And South Influence On Ecuadorian Identity, Jefferson F. Cruz Ruales

Graduate Masters Theses

In the South American region that encompasses Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, patterns of human mobility have been predominantly influenced by various forms of internal conflict and limited economic prospects. The relative political, social, and economic stability which Ecuador has experienced in the region since the beginning of the 21st century, however, has made it a desired destination for many of its neighbor’s displaced populations and opportunity seekers. Similar factors have also enticed certain populations proceeding from areas of higher global development to settle into the nation’s tranquil environment. These Ecuadorian circumstances allow two very distinct groups of individuals, who exist …

More Than Just A School: Medicinal Practices At The Abiel Smith School, Dania D. Jordan

Graduate Masters Theses

The Abiel Smith School, located on the North Slope of Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the oldest Black schools in the United States in one of the oldest free Black communities. The Abiel Smith School was constructed between 1834 and 1835 as a means to resist racial discrimination in the public school system. The Smith School is central to Beacon Hill’s Black history because it helped Black Bostonians advance in society and mitigate against the effects of racism through education. However, the Smith School may have served a dual role in the Black community. Medicinal bottles excavated …

Education Inequity By Design: A Case Study Of The Duval County Public School System, 1954–1964, Carolyn B. Edwards

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This historical case study examined inequity by design of the Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Florida, between 1954 and 1964. Duval County’s response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 highlighted the historical influence of White supremacy within this school system, suppressing Black education through a dual school system. Political, economic, and judicial decisions supported the system’s resistance to desegregation and perpetuated education inequity. The author sought to understand the overt and covert political, economic, and judicial influences behind the Duval County Public Schools’ inequity by design to determine if these influences are generally …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Community Through Consumption: The Role Of Food In African American Cultural Formation In The 18th Century Chesapeake, Alexandra Crowder

Graduate Masters Theses

Stratford Hall Plantation’s Oval Site was once a dynamic 18th-century farm quarter that was home to an enslaved community and overseer charged with growing Virginia’s cash crop: tobacco. No documentary evidence references the site, leaving archaeology as the only means to reconstruct the lives of the site’s inhabitants. This research uses the results of a macrobotanical analysis conducted on soil samples taken from an overseer’s basement and a dual purpose slave quarter/kitchen cellar at the Oval Site to understand what the site’s residents were eating and how the acquisition, production, processing, provisioning, and consumption of food impacted their daily lives. …

Observing The Experience Of Racism Through Social Background, Leïla J. Dieye

Graduate Masters Theses

This study explores racism through the eyes of the one that experiences it. If different types of racism have already been established, the initial premise of the study is that some factors make its experience unique, such as one individual’s markers of identity and his history.

Data have been collected from in-depth interviews with ten participants belonging to five ethnic groups (Latino, African American, Asian, African and Middle Eastern). Those participants were asked to reflect on a specific moment when they witnessed racism, and on why it made them think that event in particular was racist. Then, they were asked …

Smoking As A Form Of Persistence In A Christian Nipmuc Community, Jessica Ann Rymer

Graduate Masters Theses

The goal of this thesis is to determine the role that smoking played in the gatherings taking place at the Sarah Burnee/Sarah Boston farmstead and what its presence meant for the Nipmuc who gathered there. Previous work has firmly established that the farmstead functioned as a site of communal feasting for the Hassanamesco Nipmuc using ceramic and faunal evidence, and Heather Law in her 2008 thesis suggested that the site may have operated as an “informal tavern” based on her analysis of the glass assemblage. In all of these studies clay tobacco pipe fragments were utilized for stem bore diameter …

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 …

Still Waiting: An Analysis Of The Permeation Of Racial Stereotypes In Top-Grossing Black Romance Films From The 1960s To The 2000s, Jasmine Boyd-Perry

Honors College Theses

In this study, I compare how films portray relationships involving Black people, over the course of 5 decades. I do this by analyzing the characters and relationships in the top-grossing film from each decade (1960’s through 2000’s), that have a focus on Black love. I started this journey curious about how the silver screen portrayed how Black people loved romantically. As a person who regularly frequents my local major movie theatre, I had become tired of only seeing Black actors in comedies, Black men in drag and buddy dramas. I also grew tired of the sappy love stories featuring White …

Bolling V. Sharpe And Beyond: The Unfinished And Untold History Of School Desegregation In Washington, D.C., Bryce Celotto

Honors College Theses

While the Brown V. Board of Education case is constantly referenced when discussing educational equity and desegregation, Bolling v. Sharpe stands as another important education civil rights case and is perhaps more telling of the story of education in the United States. Bolling V. Sharpe was argued and decided in the United States Supreme Court over the course of 1952 to 1954. Similar to Brown v. Board in terms of intent, Bolling v. Sharpe aimed to desegregate public schools in Washington, D.C. in order to give African-American students equal access to a high quality public education on par with that …

Native Interactions And Economic Exchange: A Re-Evaluation Of Plymouth Colony Collections, Kellie J. Bowers

Graduate Masters Theses

This research furthers our understanding of colonial-Native relations by identifying and analyzing artifacts that indicate interaction between Native Americans and English settlers in Plymouth Colony archaeological collections. This project explores the nature of these interactions, exposing material culture's role in both social and economic exchanges. Selected 17th-century collections were excavated in modern Plymouth, Massachusetts, and nearby Marshfield and Kingston. My examination includes identifying materials exchanged between the Wampanoag and English settler groups in archaeological collections through scholarly literature and comparative 17th-century sites. This project draws on the documentary resources to provide contextualized insights on the relationships formed by and around …

Altered Lives, Altered Environments: Creating Home At Manzanar Relocation Center, 1942-1945, Laura W. Ng

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to understand how individuals exiled from their homes due to racial prejudice cope with institutional confinement. Specifically, this study focuses on the World War II mass incarceration of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast of the United States after Japan's attack on the American naval base Pearl Harbor. Under the guise of national security and without due process, the United States government forcibly removed over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and imprisoned them in camps spread throughout the country. This thesis examines institutional confinement at one Japanese American carceral site: an incarceration camp …

Final Rest At The Hilltop Sanctuary: The Community Of Mount Gilead Ame Church, Meagan M. Ratini

Graduate Masters Theses

The Mount Gilead AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, perched on a mountain in Buckingham, Pennsylvania, has been a focal point of African American heritage in the area for over a hundred and seventy-five years. Though the second church building, dated to 1852, is still standing with its cemetery beside it, very little about its history has been thoroughly explored. Oral histories link the church with the Underground Railroad, a highly clandestine operation--yet the church itself was built of stone and advertised its location during the height of the movement of self-emancipated people out of the South. While it is said …

Germs, Pigs And Silver: King Philip's War And The Deconstruction Of The Middle Ground In New England, Benjamin M. Roine

Graduate Masters Theses

Early in the seventeenth century Algonquians peoples of southern New England and English colonists built a middle ground which benefitted both groups. Trade, the existence of competition from Dutch and French colonies and powerful Algonquian tribes maintained this middle ground. However, as trade items, such as beaver pelts and wampum became rare or lost value and continued English immigration to New England weakened Dutch claims to the area, the middle ground began to crumble. As English-style farms and livestock changed the ecology of New England and the colonists sought to assert their will, Algonquians lost the ability to live as …

Understanding Slave Subsistence In The Context Of Changing Agricultural Practices: Paleoethnobotany At Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest, Samantha J. Henderson

Graduate Masters Theses

During the 18th and 19th centuries, enslaved people at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest utilized provisioned, gardened, and wild plants from local environments surrounding their homes to provide for their own subsistence. The Wingo's quarter was home to a number of these enslaved individuals at the end of the 18th century. Using macrobotanical data, I describe the subsistence strategies of the people living at this quarter, showing how enslaved Africans and African Americans at Wingo's utilized different sources of food to shape their foodways. Additionally, edible and inedible botanical remains provide a picture of the local environment around Wingo's within which …

Cultural Continuity In A Nipmuc Landscape, Joseph Bagley

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the lithic assemblage from the 2005-2012 field seasons at the Sarah Boston site in Grafton, Massachusetts. The Sarah Boston site is associated with a multi-generational Nipmuc family living on the site during the late 18th through early 19th centuries. In total, 163 lithic artifacts, primarily quartz flakes and cores, were found throughout the site with concentrations north of a house foundation associated with the Nipmuc family. Reworked gunflints and worked glass were examined as examples of lithic practice associated with artifacts that are conclusively datable to the period after European arrival. Presence of quartz artifacts in an …

Subsistence In The Shrinking Forest: Native And Euro-American Practice In 19th-Century Connecticut, William A. Farley

Graduate Masters Theses

Southeastern Connecticut in the 19th century represented a setting in which Native Americans living on reservations were residing in close proximity to Euro-American communities. The Mashantucket Pequot, an indigenous group who in the 19th century resided on a state-overseen reservation, and their Euro-American neighbors both utilized local and regional resources in order to achieve their subsistence goals. This thesis seeks to explore the differences and similarities of the subsistence practices employed by these two groups. It further seeks to examine the centrality of forest landscapes to both Mashantucket and Euro-American subsistence, and to interpret the importance of the reservation to …

Beef, Mutton, Pork, And A Taste Of Turtle: Zooarchaeology And Nineteenth-Century African American Foodways At The Boston-Higginbotham House, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Michael Andrew Way

Graduate Masters Theses

In 1774, nearly ten years before slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, an emancipated African American weaver named Seneca Boston purchased a tract of land in the Newtown section of Nantucket, Massachusetts. It is here that over the next thirty years Seneca Boston and his Wampanoag wife, Thankful Micah, would build a house, now known as the Boston-Higginbotham House, and raise six children. The Boston-Higginbotham House was home to the descendents of Seneca Boston and Thankful Micah for over one hundred years. Throughout the 19th century a vibrant and active African American community was developing in Newtown, and several generations of …

A Macrobotanical Analysis Of Native American Maize Agriculture At The Smith's Point Site, Kelly A. Ferguson

Graduate Masters Theses

The Smith's Point site was a seasonally inhabited Native American encampment in Yarmouth, Massachusetts occupied from the Middle Woodland through the early Colonial periods. Excavations at the site in the early 1990s yielded the remains of a multi-component site including both an agricultural field and an adjacent living area. The macrobotanical remains from the agricultural and living area features were examined for this thesis project in order to investigate subsistence practices at the site. The findings show that Native Americans actively shaped these ecological niches for purposes such as maintaining and improving their subsistence base. These landscape management activities included …