Showing papers in "Historical Archaeology in 2016"

Archaeologies of Emergent Presents and Futures

Abstract: This article traces the genealogy of the subfield that has become known as the “archaeology of the contemporary past” and argues for its more thorough integration with an expanded field of historical archaeology. One of the central challenges for archaeology over the coming decades will be to find a way to engage with emerging, contemporary, sociomaterial phenomena and, hence, with issues of both contemporary and future ecological, social, political, and economic concern. Drawing on the framework for a new internationally collaborative, interdisciplinary research project, Heritage Futures, that seeks to understand the material-discursive processes of heritage and other heritage-like fields as distinctive forms of future-assembling practices through the application of a range of archaeological ethnographic methods, the article concludes that the potential for an expanded field of historical archaeology lies in its ability to engage with emergent futures by way of archaeological ethnographies that are attuned to the sociomaterial aspects of these and other future-assembling practices.

Landscapes of Japanese American Internment

Abstract: The archaeology of Japanese and Japanese American internment has burgeoned in recent years, in large part developing out of research conducted by the National Park Service, and, to a more limited extent, cultural resource management firms and archaeologists working within the context of academia. This article places these previously conducted research projects in dialogue by looking at the challenges inherent in studying both demographically large and small internment camps. In particular, it focuses on the challenge of reconstructing context and provenience information, as well as consumption and depositional practices within internment camps.

Recent Directions and Future Developments in Geographic Information Systems for Historical Archaeology

Abstract: Geographic information systems (GIS) have become a core tool of archaeology by allowing the rapid comparison of complex datasets and supporting wholly new forms of analysis. This development is not surprising, since archaeology was one of the first disciplines to embrace the new technology as it became more commonplace in the 1980s. The past three decades have seen a proliferation of archaeological GIS studies, with the majority focusing on prehistoric contexts. While early examples of GIS for historical archaeology do exist, serious engagement with the technology did not emerge until the 2000s. The following article provides a much needed overview of the current state of archaeological GIS for historical archaeology. This includes a brief summary of previous and ongoing research to demonstrate the unique possibilities that emerge when historical archaeologists utilize GIS to its fullest potential. This overview groups the use of GIS into three familiar categories of inventory, geospatial analysis, and mapmaking. Building on this overview, the author examines emerging uses of GIS for historical archaeology. These new directions rely on historical archaeology’s unique approach to studying the past, which relies upon the combination of artifacts, documents, and ethnohistory. These emerging forms of practice include counter-mapping, new forms of immersive 3-D GIS, and the possibilities of computer simulation. The article concludes with a frank discussion of the challenges that may hinder these potentials and the possibility for theory building between historical archaeology and other disciplines.

Archaeology and the Time of Modernity

Abstract: In this article an archaeological critique of the time of modernity is proposed. This critique is developed through three main themes: materiality, multi-temporality, and ethics. Materiality is key to producing relevant archaeological accounts of the time of modernity: historical archaeology has to follow the time of things, rather than the temporal frameworks inherited from history and other fields. Multi-temporality is at the heart of modernity, which has to be understood as a heterogeneous phenomenon in which multiple, often incompatible, temporalities coalesce and clash, rather than as an homogeneous time of change and acceleration. Finally, the blurring of the past/present divide that is manifested through universal justice, political temporalities, and indigenous memory practices poses an important challenge to archaeology, but, at the same time, provides a unique opportunity to make the discipline socially relevant.

Categories in Motion: Emerging Perspectives in the Archaeology of Postcolumbian Indigenous Communities

Abstract: This essay provides a personal and somewhat polemical assessment of recent developments in the historical archaeology of sites occupied by indigenous groups, and very tentatively predicts future trends. Three conceptual areas—holism, vantage point, and the social practice of archaeology—are identified as zones for future improvement. In terms of holism, greater empirical and analytical attention needs be paid to the full range of interacting parties, including both settler and indigenous interlocutors, in order to better understand processes of mutual influence. Vantage-point analysis can be used to better capture the details of historical settings through attempts to understand the spatial dimensions of power relations and, also, to further the deployment of local indigenous concepts in scholarship. In terms of the social practice of archaeology, trends in authorship and the lack of integration of “dirt” archaeology and decolonizing methods in archaeological writing remain problematic.

The Practice and Theory of New Heritage for Historical Archaeology

Abstract: New heritage refers to the intersection of new media technologies and traditional heritage studies. This includes the use of digital technologies to virtually reconstruct archaeological objects and contexts. This article presents readers with an overview of these approaches through two case studies drawn from African American archaeology. The first case study explores the reconstruction of Kingsley Plantation, near Jacksonville, Florida. This study uses SketchUp and Google Earth to create and share the site. The second case study examines a similar project in Rosewood, Florida, that combines a wider range of data, while exploring a mixed methods approach to sharing the virtual reconstruction. The authors also examine the ways such work intersects with historical archaeological studies of African American identity and landscape.

Historical Archaeology Outlook: A Latin American Perspective

Abstract: This article begins with the history of historical archaeology as an American discipline spreading to the rest of the globe. It then considers that the discipline will develop more and more on peripheral areas, and that an Anglo-Saxon emphasis on capitalism and globalization will be challenged by cultural, even nationalist, subjects and perspectives, as these differences will play a growing role in 21st-century politics and academia. A Latin American approach is then proposed, stressing local issues and cultural specificities and such innovative concepts as transculturation and mixed societies. The archaeology of slavery and rebellion is emphasized. A comparative approach is a fertile strategy with which to explore the different ways Latin America material culture may be used to study exploitation and resistance in a process linked to identity building in different countries. The article then concludes by predicting that, from its origin as a “WASP” discipline, historical archaeology may really become the study of material culture relevant to people worldwide.

Meeting at Market: The Intersection of African American Culture, Craft, and Economy and the Landscape of Charleston, South Carolina

Abstract: Markets were integral to the development of Charleston’s urban landscape, and the interaction between African Americans and market spaces shaped Charleston. The archaeology of the South Carolina low country highlights African Americans’ role in Charleston’s market economy and the significance of this economy in forging an African American cultural identity, the Gullah. The linkage between markets and African American space in Charleston persists, and these connections indicate that markets and the market economy have deep-seated meanings to the Gullah.

Capitalism in Motion

Abstract: In this article, we take up Oilman’s (2014) challenge that historical archaeology should explore the motion of capitalism both in space and time. We discuss capitalism as a dynamic totality and use this to develop the implications for historical archaeology in two different but interconnected ways. First, we use the rich context of Lowell, Massachusetts, to provide a detailed analysis of how capitalism developed in a single place. The second case uses several archaeological sites from across the U.S. to highlight capitalism’s motion from the perspective of a single commodity, coal. We link labor and the environment, past and present, to highlight the folly of seeing the exploitation of workers and the environment is as an accepted part of capitalist economic development. Understanding capitalism in motion is more than just a future research direction for historical archaeology because without these critical understandings people may not have a future at all.

Cowrie Shells, Global Trade, and Local Exchange: Piecing Together the Evidence for Colonial Virginia

Abstract: Cowries of the species Monetaria moneta and Monetaria annulus are marine gastropods native to the Indo-Pacific Ocean. Both species served historically as currency in West Africa. Archaeologists have interpreted cowries at North American historical sites as evidence of African or African American identity and spirituality. Economic historians studying colonial economic systems do not consider cowries in North America at all. The temporal and spatial distribution of these shells in Virginia suggests that their use in the 18th-century colony merits critical examination. Cowries were concentrated in colonial ports that served the transatlantic slave trade. Shells may have been used subsequently in the colony as currency in an economy characterized by a chronic shortage of coin. A regional analytical scale reveals a more complex picture of the temporal, spatial, and social distribution of cowries than has been understood to date, underscoring the roles that cowries played in local and regional responses to colonialism.

From Colonial Representation to Materiality: Spanish Settlements on the Valdés Peninsula, Patagonian Coast (1779–1810)

Abstract: Fil: Buscaglia, Silvana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas; Argentina

The Significance of Hotel-Ware Ceramics in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Hotel ware is a durable, vitrified, ceramic tableware introduced to North America in the late 19th century. The ware became very popular in the first half of the 20th century, with production peaking in the late 1920s and again in the late 1940s. Hotel ware was prized for its toughness and cost-effectiveness, and was the ware of choice in nearly every commercial and institutional setting of that period. Ceramics recovered from trash middens at the site of Riding Mountain Prison Camp, an institution in Canada that held German soldiers during the Second World War, inform a brief case study that shows that hotel ware was employed in the institution to maximize economic efficiency, to simplify provisioning for a large group of imprisoned men, and to contribute to sanitation and healthfulness.

Toward a South Asian Historical Archaeology

Abstract: This article briefly reviews historical archaeologies of South Asia. In 1996 Charles Orser argued that historical archaeology needs to consider its own definition more broadly and internationalize its scope (Orser 1996). Such an approach would define the contours of the modern world more concretely. This program of research has been widely adopted, yet it has been hampered, to a certain extent, by its hemispheric focus on the Atlantic World. South Asia, as a key constituent of the Indian Ocean, troubles this approach to historical archaeology and demands consideration of other circulations, epicenters, and agendas in the development of the modern world. This article considers that trade, landscapes, and material culture all point to a modern world in which the Atlantic World is not the only epicenter.

Dynamic Landscapes: The Emergence of Formal Spaces in Colonial Virginia

Abstract: Archaeologists studying the domestic landscapes that took shape in the Chesapeake region from the 1670s to 1730 typically conclude that these early settlements were the product of frontier environments, where functional utility dominated and aesthetic design had little value for all but the very wealthiest members of society. Reevaluation of two early Virginia plantations, Newman’s Neck and the Clifts, suggests that the relationships between colonists and their domestic places bears further examination, and that, among lesser gentry, intentional design in early colonial landscapes is, in fact, evident. Analysis of this design can shed light on the changing dynamics of power relations within the family, the social relations of labor, and the ways that colonists reinterpreted changing aesthetics within the Atlantic World.

Transatlantic Currents: Exploring the past, present and future of global historical archaeology

Abstract: The past, present, and future of global historical archaeology is addressed first through a comparative analysis of the development of the discipline in North America and the British Isles, and second by a consideration of the recent expansion of interest around the world and particularly in postcolonial contexts. Drawing from a range of global case studies, it is argued that the most productive way forward for the discipline lies in its ability to engage productively with contemporary societal problems and global challenges in locally rooted and contingent ways.

Historical Archaeology and Heritage in the Middle East: A Preliminary Overview

Abstract: While not a traditional focus of archaeological research in the region, historical archaeology has a growing presence in the Middle East. Themes explored by colleagues interested in the post-1500 archaeological record include both topics of globalization and colonialism relevant to historical archaeology around the world and topics specific to local cultural and historical postmedieval developments—and sometimes both simultaneously. Such has been the growth in relevant studies in the past two decades that a preliminary overview of historical archaeology from Anatolia to Oman and Cairo to Khorasan can now be offered.

Marks from the Past, Signs of the Future—the Dikenga of Historical Archaeology

Abstract: Historical archaeology’s recognition of a mark known as the Bakongo dikenga and found on colonoware pottery, as well as other artifacts, is used to examine the history of this research and suggest its future progression. The dikenga is also used as a metaphor for historical archaeological inquiry. This article explores the intersection between personal experience and scholarly research within the cycle of theories and perspectives that influence archaeological progression and the study of the dikenga.

Bristol-Glazed Stoneware on Rural Indiana Farms: Effects of Technology Adoption on Consumer Choice

Abstract: White Bristol slip-glazed utilitarian stoneware occurs on many 19th-century sites in the United States. British and American potteries produced Bristol-glazed pottery, but at different times and in different forms. American potters used Bristol slip glaze after the 1880s, about 50 years after the British developed it. A behavioral approach to technology adoption uses the performance characteristics of stoneware glazes to identify the economic and perceptual characteristics that made Bristol glaze attractive to industrialized potteries then and not earlier. Historical documents clarify the rate and locations of adoptions. Documents also suggest that consumers may have played a role in choosing the white Bristol over the brown Albany-type slip glazes, although both had similar economic benefits. A set of rural Indiana sites shows how the production histories of salt, Albany, and Bristol glaze affected the range of possible consumer-choice and glaze-type representations in archaeological assemblages.

Urbanization and Landscape Change in Early-Eighteenth-Century Boston: The Environmental Archaeology of Town Dock

Abstract: The creation of the urban built landscape is perhaps one of the most dramatic examples of anthropogenic environmental change. This paper explores the creation of the urban landscape in downtown Boston during the early 18th century. Archaeological excavations next to Faneuil Hall, Boston’s iconic market building, recovered evidence for land-making processes and the filling of Town Dock. The macrobotanicals, pollen, faunal remains, and insects in the landfill reveal, at very different scales, the changing nature of the urban environment from the area immediately around the site to the broader region. A study of these data in the context of the filling of Town Dock thus provides a detailed view of human actions in the creation and structuring of the urban landscape.

Intersecting Landscapes: A Palynological Study of Pueblo, Spanish, and Anglo-American Land Use in New Mexico

Abstract: The southwestern United States provides an opportunity to study the environmental impacts of culturally diverse peoples within a single geographic region. Using palynological data from a 600-year period, we examine the effects of differing land-use strategies employed by Pueblos, Spanish colonists, and Anglo-Americans around the village of La Cienega, New Mexico. The data indicate that, prior to Spanish colonization, Puebloan peoples had successful agricultural practices that created a diverse anthropogenic landscape. Successive waves of Spanish colonists, beginning in the 16th century, and Anglo-American colonists, in the 19th century, brought new plants, animals, and agricultural technologies that interacted with existing indigenous strategies. This history of the landscape of the Southwest reveals the subtle reorganization of the anthropogenic landscape resulting from the interaction and persistence of these three cultural traditions.

Horizons beyond the Perimeter Wall: Relational Materiality, Institutional Confinement, and the Archaeology of Being Global

Abstract: As historical archaeologists, how might we begin to unpick the complex material webs of trades, migrations, and technologies that constitute globalization? How should we simultaneously understand the local and transnational meanings of our study sites? Through examples based around the 19th-century transportation of British felons to the Australian penal colonies, this article considers how recent work in relational theory offers fresh directions for exploring how the process of “being global” enmeshes humans, artifacts, and landscapes into ever-wider meshworks of connection and significance. It suggests that by traveling along the dynamic awful lines of globalization from the inside out, we archaeologists can consider not only what alternatives could have been, but what might be in our future.

The Archaeology of Underground Mining Landscapes

Abstract: The mining industry is known for leaving dramatic landscapes in its wake, and among these are the workings hidden below the surface. As dangerous places, underground mines exerted important holds over community life and shaped the formation of mining identities. Despite this centrality to the mining life, historical archaeological research underground remains limited because the hazards have never dissipated. This article establishes prospective ground for the archaeology of underground mines, taking its lead from several pioneering studies in order to better assess the nature of recoverable archaeological information. In particular, it is argued that the material evidence from the workplace enables localized insights into scalar transformations occurring in the industry, the cultures of work practice, and the mechanisms by which miners coped with uncertain environments. This article also considers strategies by which future investigations might safely proceed.

Texas mission ceramics: origins of manufacture and distribution during the eighteenth century

Abstract: Nearly 800 ceramic sherds from 10 Spanish colonial sites in Texas were analyzed using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) as a tool for understanding the local-resource production and distribution of Native American pottery, lead-glazed coarse earthenwares, and tin-glazed wares (majolica). The chemical characteristics of their pastes were compared to identify similarities that might indicate sources of manufacture. Data were also compared to other INAA studies. Combined with accounts of known supply stations and supply routes into Texas, the authors were able to identify three manufacturing locales for Native American pottery and five for lead-glazed wares. Evidence of a period of transition between Native American technologies and European technologies was also inferred.

The United States–Mexican War Soldiers of Greenwood Island, Mississippi: An Historical, Archaeological, and Bioarchaeological Analysis

Abstract: The analysis of the remains of six soldiers recovered on the Mississippi Sound represents one of the few bioarchaeological studies of soldiers from the USA-Mexican War (1846–1848), a time of Manifest Destiny coupled with extensive immigration. The soldiers at Camp Jefferson Davis do not represent those who fell during fighting, but, most likely, those who died from dysentery, which was rampant during the war. Overall, results of analysis closely mirrored expectations based on historical records. All were young adult males of European ancestry. They were of average stature and exhibited typical rates of nutritional deficiencies and childhood-growth disruptions for the time. The soldiers showed evidence of robust physical activity, but trauma was relatively rare, with only one possible battlefield injury seen. When the findings are situated in historical context, they provide unique insight into health conditions of both the military and civilian components of American society during the mid-19th century.

The Multiple Landscapes of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest

Abstract: The ongoing archaeological research into the historic landscapes of Poplar Forest strives to develop a comprehensive understanding of the human interactions that shaped the ornamental grounds, plantation, and natural environment in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This article will explore the results of three projects that have offered valuable perspectives on how these related landscapes intersect at Thomas Jefferson’s retreat and plantation in Bedford County, Virginia. The environmental and material culture analyses associated with the retreat’s ornamental plant nursery, double row of paper mulberry trees, and north tree clumps and oval flowerbeds demonstrate ties to the environmental transformations brought about by Jefferson’s vision for the property.

Small Arms and Munitions from a Texas Coastal Shipwreck

Abstract: In February 1998, the National Underwater Maritime Agency discovered a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico, located in the historic pass to Matagorda Bay, Texas. It was initially believed the wreck might be the French supply vessel L’Aimable that sank in 1685 and was part of LaSalle’s expedition to the Texas coast. Subsequent investigation of the site by the Texas Historical Commission discovered the vessel likely dated to the late 18th or early 19th centuries. The small collection of artifacts recovered were comprised of British and Spanish military arms, copper sheathing, rigging elements, assorted munitions, and other materials. Artifact analysis and research indicates the shipwreck dates to the early 19th century and may be associated with privateering and/or naval activities that played a part in the territorial and political changes around the Gulf of Mexico during this time.

Gunflint Production and Lithic Tool Use at the Monhantic Fort Site, a Mashantucket Pequot Fortified Village (1675–1677)

Abstract: The Monhantic Fort site is a Mashantucket Pequot fortified village occupied during King Philip’s War (1675–1677). Archaeological investigations resulted in the recovery of over 900 pieces of European flint (English and continental European) derived from ballast cobbles, believed to be primarily associated with the wartime production of gunflints. The majority of the gunflints are bifacial (86%), indicating a process of manufacture distinct from contemporaneous English manufacture. While many lithic tools had been replaced with European metal tools by this time, the flint assemblage also contains a number of objects indicating use of lithic tools in domestic contexts. Spatial analysis of the flint assemblage in the context of domestic and nondomestic spaces indicates individual production of gunflints and tools, rather than specialized production confined to a single workshop area by a limited number of individuals. Comparison of the flint assemblage at Monhantic Fort with a contemporaneous domestic site at Mashantucket and the Aptucxet Trading Post in Bourne, Massachusetts, supports the contention that the fort assemblage was the result of the wartime production of gunflints.