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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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- Boston (17)
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Articles 1 - 30 of 93
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
More Than Just A School: Medicinal Practices At The Abiel Smith School, Dania D. Jordan
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
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 …
The Troubled Backstory Of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: The Photo, The Feud, And The Secret Service, Garrison Nelson, Brenna M. Rosen
The Troubled Backstory Of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: The Photo, The Feud, And The Secret Service, Garrison Nelson, Brenna M. Rosen
New England Journal of Public Policy
The 1963 murder of President John F. Kennedy led to a reconsideration of the 1947 Presidential Succession Act, which mandated that the Speaker of the US House of Representatives was next in line to the vice president and the Senate president pro tempore was next in line to the Speaker. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was only fifty-five when he took the oath of office on November 22, 1963, but he had a well-known heart condition that would end his life nine years later. Seated behind Johnson when he met with Congress was the soon-to-be seventy-two-year old House Speaker …
“We May Have Profitable Commerce And Trade Together”: An Analysis Of 17th-Century Ceramics In Plymouth Colony, Elizabeth G. Tarulis
“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 …
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
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 …
Comales And Colonialism: An Analysis Of Cuisine And Ceramics On A 17th-Century New Mexican Estancia, Adam C. Brinkman
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
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 …
"The Right To Play" The Establishment Of Playgrounds In The American City, Kyle James Fritch
"The Right To Play" The Establishment Of Playgrounds In The American City, Kyle James Fritch
Graduate Masters Theses
The Right to Play is focused on the development of playgrounds in America at the end of the 19th century. This overall development is shown through a focus on Boston, the city that instituted the first playground in the country and mirrors the similar rise of playgrounds in other cities. Throughout the 1800s children in cities played in the streets or any abandoned lot they could find. However, parents wanted what they believed to be a safer and healthier environment for their children to play. Along with this, reformers believed that these mostly immigrant and poor children were in need …
“The True Spirit Of Service": Ceramics And Toys As Tools Of Ideology At The Dorchester Industrial School For Girls, Sarah N. Johnson
“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 …
Community Through Consumption: The Role Of Food In African American Cultural Formation In The 18th Century Chesapeake, Alexandra Crowder
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. …
Household Activities And Areas: A Reanalysis Of The John And Priscilla Alden First Home Site, Caroline Gardiner
Household Activities And Areas: A Reanalysis Of The John And Priscilla Alden First Home Site, Caroline Gardiner
Graduate Masters Theses
This thesis seeks to further understanding of early colonial life within New England through an examination of the John and Priscilla Alden First Home site in Duxbury, MA, excavated in 1960 by Roland Robbins. It specifically focuses on the composition and spatial distribution of the ceramic assemblage to discuss household activities and the spaces in which they were performed. The findings of the ceramic analysis detail a collection composed primarily of utilitarian vessels that indicate multiple subsistence farming activities including dairying. The spatial study reveals the significant patterning of these artifacts. It is proposed that these denote specific activity areas …
Identity Behind Glass: The Second Gore Place Greenhouse, Sean P. Romo
Identity Behind Glass: The Second Gore Place Greenhouse, Sean P. Romo
Graduate Masters Theses
This thesis examines the second greenhouse at Gore Place, a historic country estate in Waltham, Massachusetts. Gore Place was owned by and named for Christopher and Rebecca Gore, members of the 18th- and 19th-century political and economic elite in New England. The greenhouse was constructed in 1806, and excavation at the site took place in 2004, 2008, and 2012. The latter two projects were data recovery excavations, which exposed portions of the greenhouse’s foundations and interior, as well as several features in the yard surrounding the building. Historic greenhouses were prestigious structures, financially accessible only to institutions, governments, and the …
Chase Home For Children: Childhood In Progressive New England, Katherine M. Evans
Chase Home For Children: Childhood In Progressive New England, Katherine M. Evans
Graduate Masters Theses
This thesis aims to further the study of childhood in archaeology through the examination of a children’s aid institution in Progressive New England. Specifically, this research explores how the Progressive and Victorian aims of Chase Home for Children, as expressed in primary sources, are manifested in the material culture. Chase Home participated in the larger Progressive movement in its mission to train children “in the practical duties, to encourage habits of honesty, truthfulness, purity and industry, to prepare them to take their position in life as useful members of society” (Children’s Home Pamphlet 1878). An analysis of small finds from …
'Improvement The Order Of The Age': Historic Advertising, Consumer Choice, And Identity In 19th Century Roxbury, Massachusetts, Janice A. Nosal
'Improvement The Order Of The Age': Historic Advertising, Consumer Choice, And Identity In 19th Century Roxbury, Massachusetts, Janice A. Nosal
Graduate Masters Theses
During the mid-to-late 19th century, Roxbury, Massachusetts experienced a dramatic change from a rural farming area to a vibrant, working-class, and predominantly-immigrant urban community. This new demographic bloomed during America’s industrial age, a time in which hundreds of new mass-produced goods flooded consumer markets. This thesis explores the relationship between working-class consumption patterns and historic advertising in 19th-century Roxbury, Massachusetts. It assesses the significance of advertising within households and the community by comparing advertisements from the Roxbury Gazette and South End Advertiser with archaeological material from the Tremont Street and Elmwood Court Housing sites, excavated in the late 1970s, to …
Ceramic Consumption In A Boston Immigrant Tenement, Andrew J. Webster
Ceramic Consumption In A Boston Immigrant Tenement, Andrew J. Webster
Graduate Masters Theses
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Boston’s North End became home to thousands of European immigrants, mostly from Ireland and Italy. The majority of these immigrant families lived in crowded tenement apartments and earned their wages from low-paying jobs such as manual laborers or store clerks. The Ebenezer Clough House at 21 Unity Street was originally built as a single-family colonial home in the early eighteenth century but was later repurposed as a tenement in the nineteenth century. In 2013, the City of Boston Archaeology Program excavated the rear lot of the Clough House, recovering 36,465 artifacts, including …
Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey Report On The 2015 Field Season Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, David B. Landon, John M. Steinberg, Brian N. Damiata
Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey Report On The 2015 Field Season Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, David B. Landon, John M. Steinberg, Brian N. Damiata
Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications
In May and June of 2015, a field school from the University of Massachusetts Boston, in partnership with Plimoth Plantation, undertook a third season of work in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as part of Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey, a site survey and excavation program leading up to the 400th anniversary of New England’s first permanent English settlement in 1620, the founding of Plymouth Colony. This work was conducted under permit #3384 from the State Archaeologist’s office at the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The 2015 work focused on the eastern edge of Burial Hill along School Street in downtown Plymouth where …
'Very Quiet Day, Vague Tension': Digitizing And Sharing The Stories Of School Desegregation And Busing In Boston, Andrew Elder
'Very Quiet Day, Vague Tension': Digitizing And Sharing The Stories Of School Desegregation And Busing In Boston, Andrew Elder
Joseph P. Healey Library Publications
In the summer of 2015, University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston began to work with a number of area archival institutions to create “a digital library of material that can be widely disseminated for both curricular and scholarly use” related to the history of school desegregation and busing in Boston. Too often, the history of Boston school desegregation seems weighted down by some of the most visible characters involved – politicians, policy-makers, court officials – so we decided early on to focus largely on identifying materials that tell a more complex, personal history of school desegregation and busing …
Archaeological Investigation Of The Drive Circle And West Hyphen At Gore Place Waltham, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, Alexandra Crowder
Archaeological Investigation Of The Drive Circle And West Hyphen At Gore Place Waltham, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, Alexandra Crowder
Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications
In July of 2015, the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at UMass Boston conducted test excavations at Gore Place, the 1806 mansion house of Christopher and Rebecca Gore in Waltham, Massachusetts, to answer questions about changes in the landscape on the north side of the house. The excavations focused on areas of interest within the drive circle and against the west hyphen of the house. The project was carried out under State Archaeologist Permit #3559. The main results in the oval were the discovery of a Gore-period driveway under the grassy oval, indicating that the driveway was broader in front …
Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner, Shaun O'Connell
Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner, Shaun O'Connell
New England Journal of Public Policy
William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel about the leader of a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831, was highly praised after its publication in 1967. Then African American essayists in William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond took issue with the novel and rejected Styron’s asserted right to reimagine Nat Turner’s life and to assume his voice, claiming their rights of racial heritage and historical accuracy to castigate Styron for his offensive presumption. That distant argument of unshared assumptions and crossed purposes between high-minded and hypersensitive artists and intellectuals of another day may throw refracted …
New York Revisited (1992), Shaun O’Connell
New York Revisited (1992), Shaun O’Connell
New England Journal of Public Policy
The works discussed in this article include: City of the World: New York and Its People, by Bernie Bookbinder; New York, New York, by Oliver E. Allen; New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time, by Thomas Bender; The Heart of the World, by Nik Cohn; The Art of the City: Views and Versions of New York, by Peter Conrad; After Henry, by Joan Didion; Literary New York: A History and Guide, by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino; Our …
Imagining Boston: The City As Image And Experience (1986), Shaun O’Connell
Imagining Boston: The City As Image And Experience (1986), Shaun O’Connell
New England Journal of Public Policy
I want to discuss community and imagery, social division and literary unity, Boston poetry and prose. In most issues of NEJPP I will focus upon those recent books that fire our imaginations and help us shape our sense of local and regional place. In this issue, however, I want to look back at the tradition of imagery that resonates in Boston's history. Old ideas of Boston are quickly being buried under layers of architectural and cultural renewal. While the suburbs become more urbanized and the commuter roads more clogged, downtown Boston is in the midst of the greatest building boom …
Two Nations: Homeless In A Divided Land (1992), Shaun O’Connell
Two Nations: Homeless In A Divided Land (1992), Shaun O’Connell
New England Journal of Public Policy
The works discussed in this article include: Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, by Thomas Byrne Edsall with Mary D. Edsall; Why Americans Hate Politics, by E. J. Dionne, Jr.; A Far Cry from Home: Life in a Shelter for Homeless Women, by Lisa Ferrill; Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics, by Suzanne Garment; Songs from the Alley, by Kathleen Hirsch; Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, by James Davison Hunter; Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, by Jonathan Kozol; Parliament of …
Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey, Report On The 2014 Field Season, Burial Hill Plymouth, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, Justin A. Warrenfeltz, Richie Roy, David B. Landon, Alexandra Crowder, Katie Wagner
Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey, Report On The 2014 Field Season, Burial Hill Plymouth, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, Justin A. Warrenfeltz, Richie Roy, David B. Landon, Alexandra Crowder, Katie Wagner
Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications
In May and June of 2014, a field school from the University of Massachusetts Boston, in partnership with Plimoth Plantation, undertook a second season of work in Plymouth, Massachusetts, as part of Project 400: The Plymouth Colony Archaeological Survey, a site survey and excavation program leading up to the 400th anniversary of New England’s first permanent English settlement in 1620, the founding of Plymouth Colony. This work was conducted under permit #3384 from the State Archaeologist’s office at the Massachusetts Historical Commission. The 2014 work focused on the eastern edge of Burial Hill along School Street in downtown Plymouth and …
Native Interactions And Economic Exchange: A Re-Evaluation Of Plymouth Colony Collections, Kellie J. Bowers
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 …
Ubiquitous And Unfamiliar: Earthenware Pottery Production Techniques And The Bradford Family Pottery Of Kingston, Ma, Martha L. Sulya
Ubiquitous And Unfamiliar: Earthenware Pottery Production Techniques And The Bradford Family Pottery Of Kingston, Ma, Martha L. Sulya
Graduate Masters Theses
Redware ceramic sherds are frequently found in New England historical archaeological sites; however, detailed data has not always been published regarding excavated New England earthenware pottery production sites. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the small body of research on New England redware production through the study of the life and ceramic production techniques of the Bradford family pottery. Their workshop operated in Kingston, Massachusetts, from the 1780s to the 1870s, a time when stoneware production and industrial scale ceramics manufacturing took hold in America. Documentary study of the Bradford family and the ceramics industry shows that …
We Want To Create Our Own History: Youth Power And Leadership In The Boston Youth Justice Movement 2005-2008, Mark Warren, Perri Leviss, Sandeep Jani
We Want To Create Our Own History: Youth Power And Leadership In The Boston Youth Justice Movement 2005-2008, Mark Warren, Perri Leviss, Sandeep Jani
Office of Community Partnerships Posters
This collaborative research project aims to co-create new knowledge on the youth justice movement in Boston that will be useful to partner organizations in advancing their goal of building a stronger movement as well as to contribute to academic and broader public understanding of youth justice.
From Horse To Electric Power At The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site: Archaeology And The Narrative Of Technological Change, Miles Shugar
From Horse To Electric Power At The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site: Archaeology And The Narrative Of Technological Change, Miles Shugar
Graduate Masters Theses
The Metropolitan Railroad Company Site in Roxbury (Boston), Massachusetts, was first excavated in the late 1970s by staff of the Museum of Afro American History. Researchers recovered nearly 20,000 artifacts related to the site's life as a horsecar street railway station and carriage manufacturer from 1860 to 1891, its subsequent conversion into an electric street railway until around 1920, and finally its modern use as an automobile garage. Using the framework of behavioral archaeology, this project uses GIS-based spatial methods and newly collected documentary evidence to reexamine the site's assemblage of horse accoutrements and carriage manufacturing byproducts. Artifact distribution maps …
Altered Lives, Altered Environments: Creating Home At Manzanar Relocation Center, 1942-1945, Laura W. Ng
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 …
Disturbed But Not Destroyed: New Perspectives On Urban Archaeology And Class In 19th Century Lowell, Massachusetts, Katelyn M. Coughlan
Disturbed But Not Destroyed: New Perspectives On Urban Archaeology And Class In 19th Century Lowell, Massachusetts, Katelyn M. Coughlan
Graduate Masters Theses
Through the artifacts from the Jackson Appleton Middlesex Urban Revitalization and Devolvement Project (hereafter JAM) located in Lowell, MA, this research explores social class in nineteenth-century boardinghouses. This thesis is a two-part study. First, through statistical analysis, research recovers interpretable data from urban archaeological contexts subject to disturbance. Pinpointing intra-site similarities between artifacts recovered from intact and disturbed contexts, data show that artifacts recovered from disturbed and intact contexts in urban environments are not as dissimilar as previously believed. In the second phase using both intact and disturbed JAM contexts, the analysis of four boardinghouse features highlights two distinct patterns …
Final Rest At The Hilltop Sanctuary: The Community Of Mount Gilead Ame Church, Meagan M. Ratini
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 …