Archaeological Anthropology Commons^™

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

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

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

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

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

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 …

From Youghco To Black John: Ethnohistory Of Sylvester Manor, Ca. 1600–1735, Katherine Lee Priddy

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The 17th-century residents of Sylvester Manor were a culturally diverse group, comprised of Native Manhanset, European settlers, and enslaved Africans. To understand the archaeological remains of this plantation, documentary remains both specific to Sylvester Manor and more generally of the region have been examined. This article presents the synthesis of relevant historical documents, with an emphasis on the ethnohistoric component, drawing out perspectives on the Manhanset and African residents in their interactions with the Sylvester family and other European settlers.

Dedication To Mrs. Alice Fiske, Stephen A. Mrozowski

Northeast Historical Archaeology

No abstract provided.

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.

Acknowledgements, Stephen A. Mrozowski, Katherine Howlett Hayes

Northeast Historical Archaeology

No abstract provided.

In Memoriam: Lewis R. Binford, 1931-2011, Alan J. Osborn

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Obituary of archaeology and anthropology professor Lewis Roberts Binford, 1931-April 11, 2011.

Investigating The Origin Of Coprolites From Three Great Basin Caves, Chelsey Vandrisse, Duane P. Moser, David Rhode

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

The study of coprolites (mummified feces) is a relatively new endeavor, which enables investigations of the health and diet of ancient people and provides some of the oldest evidence to date for the human habitation in North America (2). In this project, 18 coprolites were examined from archeological digs at three Great Basin caves: the Bonneville Estates Rockshelter (UT), Hidden Cave (NV), and Top of the Terrace Rockshelter (UT). The main objectives were: 1) to verify human origin through the presence of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and 2) assuming human origin, characterize intestinal microflora of Native Americans prior to European contact. …

Urban Consumption In Late 19th-Century Dorchester, Jennifer Poulsen

Anthropology, Historical Archaeology Masters Theses Collection

This thesis examines the bottles recovered from an 1895 fill deposit at the Blake House site in Dorchester, MA, to determine what inconspicuous consumption reveals about the anonymous consumers of Dorchester in the late 19th century. The assemblage is composed of 1,892 pieces of bottle glass, representing food, alcohol, medicine, and household products, 73 with original paper labels. The analysis presented here demonstrates the consumers were from several households and included men, women and children from immigrant populations. Despite evidence for intensive recycling of bottles, indicating that these individuals were under economic stress, they had some amount of discretionary money …

Ghost Dancing And The Iron Horse: Surving Through Tradition And Technology, Alex K. Ruuska

Publication

This article explores how railroad technologies, so critical in constructing the imagined nation of the nineteenth-century United States, were simultaneously shaped by multiple social groups including the native communities of North America. This analysis demonstrates how Native Americans’ resistance to and use of railroad technologies contributed to the revitalization and construction of ritual practices and pan-Indian identities associated with the 1890s Ghost Dance. Using case studies of the Northern Paiutes of western Nevada and the Sioux nations of South Dakota, Native Americans’ utilization of railroad technologies are examined during two periods of encroachment, revealing shifting attitudes and practices towards Euroamerican …

Informe Técnico Final Del Trabajo De Campo Del Proyecto De Investigación Arqueológica Caylán (Temporada 2010), David Chicoine, Hugo Ikehara

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Southern Nevada Agency Partnership Cultural Site Stewardship Program – Program Expansion And Steward Retention: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending June 30, 2011, Margaret N. Rees

Cultural Site Stewardship Program

• One cultural site steward class was held this quarter adding 17 volunteers.
• Team focus is upon plan to transition project to state stewardship program

Recent Investigations Of Mission Period Activity On Sapelo Island, Georgia, Richard W. Jeffries, Christopher R. Moore

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Prior to their retreat to Florida in 1684, Muskogean-speaking Guale Indians inhabited much of what is now the Georgia coast. The arrival of Spanish missionaries in Florida and Georgia in the mid-1500s began what is known archaeologically as the mission period (1568-1684), a time of sustained interaction between the Spanish and the Guale people. Over time, population loss due to European-introduced diseases and conflict with English-backed Native American slave raiders resulted in a drastic reconfiguration of Guale society and the abandonment of the Guale's ancestral homeland (Worth 2007).

Sapelo Island (Figure 6.1) is the site of at least one Spanish …

The San Pedro Mission Village On Cumberland Island, Georgia, Carolyn Brock

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

The San Pedro de Mocama mission, located on Cumberland Island, Georgia, was the principal Spanish mission of the Mocama-speaking Timucua Indians from 1587 to the early 1660s. This paper describes some of the results of archaeological fieldwork and research (Rock 2006) completed at the mission village site, technically known as the Dungeness WharfSite (9CM14). (Figure 7.1).

Archaeologically, most mission studies have focused on the missions themselves, particularly on their churches, conventos, and kitchens. At the San Pedro mission village site, however, the church complex has not been located and may have been lost to erosion. Therefore, in the course of …

Backroom Treasures: Ct Scanning Of Two Ibis Mummies From The Peabody Museum Collection, Andrew D. Wade, Salima Ikram, Gerald Conlogue, Ronald Beckett, Andrew J. Nelson, Roger Colten

Anthropology Presentations

Museum collections of Egyptian human and animal mummies have great potential for research and museums often curate larger collections than those on exhibit. Scheduling access for medical imaging projects is often complicated for mummies on display because of the important environmental controls under which they are kept. Consequently, collections in storage are often more numerous and more readily available, in terms of time and physical access, than those on exhibit.

Application of computed tomography (CT) to the study of mummified remains allows for detailed three-dimensional evaluations, without the difficulties of superimposition that characterise plain film radiographs. Three-dimensional visualisation, multi-planar reformats …

Geographic Information Systems Correlation Modeling As A Management Tool In The Study Effects Of Environmental Variables’ Effects On Cultural Resources, Brian Wallace

Anthropology Graduate Projects and Theses

Utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) offers the field of Cultural Resource Management greater capacity in managing resources. New regression analysis tools recently released in ESRI ArcGIS software offer potential for determining more accurate statistical analyses of the relationships between cultural material and environmental variables. The contemporary trend of federal cultural resource managers and GIS analysts working with smaller budgets is to allocate fiscal resources for tools which will enable them to continue successfully managing their resource. ArcGIS software continues to be the industry standard in managing spatial data to accurately represent the existence, condition, and location of cultural material. With …