Historical Archaeology: Contents & Abstracts, Vol. 41, 2007

Vol. 41, No. 1 – Spring: Contents; Abstracts

Vol. 41, No. 2 – Summer: Contents; Abstracts

Vol. 41, No. 3 – Fall: Contents; Abstracts

Vol. 41, No. 4 – Winter: Contents; Abstracts

VOL. 41, No. 1 – Contents

Between Art and Artifact, Diana DiPaolo Loren and Uzi Baram, Guest Editors

  • INTRODUCTION

    • Between Art and Artifact: Approaches to Visual Representations in Historical Archaeology
      • Diana DiPaolo Loren and Uzi Baram
  • ARTICLES

    • Still Life with Tobacco: The Archaeological Uses of Dutch Art
      • Julia A. King
    • Corporeal Concerns: Eighteenth-Century Casta Paintings and Colonial Bodies in Spanish Texas
      • Diana DiPaolo Loren
    • “True Portraitures of the Indians, and of Their Own Peculiar Conceits of Dress”: Discourses of Dress and Identity in the Great Lakes, 1830–1850
      • Rob Mann
    • The Archaeological Gaze: Surveying the Landscape of Social Power in Portraiture in Colonial New England
      • Lorinda B. R. Goodwin
    • Fixing Farms: Pondering Farm Scenes from the Vanity Press
      • LouAnn Wurst
    • Mapped Landscapes: The Politics of Metaphor, Knowledge, and Representation on Nineteenth-Century Irish Ordnance Survey Maps
      • Angèle Smith
    • Imaging the Scottish Highlands
      • Amy Gazin-Schwartz
    • Images of the Holy Land: The David Roberts Paintings as Artifacts of 1830s Palestine
      • Uzi Baram

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VOL. 41, N0. 1 – Article Abstracts

Julia A. King

Still Life with Tobacco: The Archaeological Uses of Dutch Art

Abstract: Historical archaeologists often make considerable use of 17th-century Dutch still life and genre art to document and interpret material life in the early colonial period. In colonial Chesapeake archaeology, this art has been used to identify artifacts, to reconstruct the material and social contexts in which artifacts were used, and to imagine what the past was like in early Maryland and Virginia. This paper argues for a more critical approach to the use of Dutch art in the interpretation of colonial life by comparing the rep­resentations of women smoking tobacco in Dutch art with archaeological evidence of women’s tobacco consumption at early domestic Chesapeake sites. Although smoking by women is rarely depicted in Dutch art, archaeological data indicate that Chesapeake women regularly consumed tobacco. Museum representations of early colonial women, which also draw heavily on Dutch art in their depictions of the colonial past, rarely show tobacco smoking. These representations and the archaeological evidence raise important questions about the relationship between artistic and archaeological context and about social attitudes concerning tobacco use in the 17th and the 21st centuries.

Diana DiPaolo Loren

Corporeal Concerns: Eighteenth-Century Casta Paintings and Colonial Bodies in Spanish Texas

Abstract: Eighteenth-century casta paintings from northern New Spain depict the ethnic and racial combinations resulting from mes­tizaje, such as mulatto. Casta paintings offer rich insights on the quotidian practices of colonial individuals, including dress, diet, and household practices; this is information that archaeologists desire. Experiences, however, often differed drastically from the world represented in images as indi­viduals reworked colonial categories in identity formation. These paintings represent a static image of a supposedly highly structured and regulated colonial world that was imposed on colonial peoples through their bodies. Visual and archaeological evidence provide different stories, drawn from official versions and lived experiences. Casta paintings, ethnohistorical documents, and material culture are used to explore how the imagined, ordered world depicted in casta paintings meshed with daily life in colonial communities in Spanish Texas and the place of the body in the Spanish colonial world.

Rob Mann

“True Portraitures of the Indians, and of Their Own Peculiar Conceits of Dress”: Discourses of Dress and Identity in the Great Lakes, 1830–1850

Abstract: During the 1830s and 1840s frontier artist George Winter painted the Potawatomi and Miami Indians of the Wabash Valley. Winter’s paintings existed at the intersection of com­peting colonial discourses. Like many “Indian painters” of his time, Winter believed he was capturing the final images of a vanishing race. At the same time, Winter’s work runs counters to the imagery of “nakedness” and “savagery” that characterize many Anglo-American paintings of Native Ameri­cans during this period. By holding these visual sources in “productive tension” (Stahl 2001:15–16) with documentary and archaeological sources, the role dress played in the con­struction of identity by members of Great Lakes fur trade society during the 19th century can be unraveled.

Lorinda B. R. Goodwin

The Archaeological Gaze: Surveying the Landscape of Social Power in Portraiture in Colonial New England

Abstract: Portraiture, particularly of family scenes, can be seen as a collaboration, perhaps even a conspiracy (in the best sense of the word), between the artist and the sitters in the attempt to preserve a moment, not necessarily a photo-realistic record of persons and artifacts but a reflection of aspirations and real social achievement. While social interaction in the polite world might be seen as fleeting, guided improvisation, por­traits self-consciously fix a more permanent impression: spaces, artifacts, and personal posture are carefully chosen to convey a sense of status and power. In the abstract, the organization of human bodies and artifacts in a domestic space is often indicative of individual and family power; in the material world, objects ranging from room decor to the sitters’ adornments are much more personal statements of power and identity within (and beyond) the household. The portraiture of the merchant class of England and her American colonies is considered here.

LouAnn Wurst

Fixing Farms: Pondering Farm Scenes from the Vanity Press

Abstract: Historical archaeologists are familiar with the illustrated farm views found in late-19th-century local history publications. Analysis of the farm views from the town of Hector in Schuyler County, New York, shows that they do not simply represent the wealthiest farmers or earliest settlers, but they do seem to cluster in family groups of fairly prosperous families representing the second generation of the area’s second wave of settlement. The drawings are accurately rendered in terms of the house and the spatial layout of the farms, but topographical features are generally more mythic. This indicates that the buildings were meant to be recognized from the drawings, probably by people who already knew them. The family relationships connect these separate, individual drawings into nodes within a larger community network.

Angèle Smith

Mapped Landscapes: The Politics of Metaphor, Knowledge, and Representation on Nineteenth-Century Irish Ordnance Survey Maps

Abstract: Historical archaeologists routinely use historical maps in their interpretations of the past. Nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland illustrate that maps are simultane­ously document, artifact, and metaphor. These colonial maps, which shape understanding of the sociohistorical period, are used as “snapshot” documents of the past to complement the archaeological record. Maps as documents control the knowledge of the landscape and so are often used as a meta­phor of that control and power. Historical maps serve better with the recognition that they, too, are artifacts. As visual representations of landscapes, thinking about maps as artifacts highlights maps as the sites of contestation and negotiation, visually representing the social relations of power and the contesting of different understandings of landscapes.

Amy Gazin-Schwartz

Imaging the Scottish Highlands

Abstract: Illustrations of 18th-, 19th-, and early-20th-century settlements and people in the Highlands of Scotland structure images of rural life in these areas. Published illustrations often emphasize the poverty, isolation, and hardship of Highland rural life, and these themes are mirrored in many historical and archaeological accounts of the period. Popular literature, in particular literature about the Highland clearances, also emphasizes hardship and powerlessness. These photographs, documents, and accounts interact in constructing a particular kind of Highland past, and a simplified set of power rela­tions, that may not adequately examine the complexities of rural life. By integrating an analytical study of images with a study of reminiscences and of archaeological remains, the historical relationships that produced them may be better understood.

Uzi Baram

Images of the Holy Land: The David Roberts Paintings as Artifacts of 1830s Palestine

Abstract: Historical archaeology is delineating the impact of Western European influence and imperialism on the Middle East, particularly the period the Ottoman Empire ruled over the eastern Mediterranean (1516–1917). Material assemblages from the Ottoman period illustrate the global connections that entangled the eastern Mediterranean with Western European capitalism after the 16th century. Other categories of material culture illustrate such global interactions: the accounts of travelers to the Holy Land in the form of books, paintings, and photographs. These accounts have been understood as part of the Western domination of the Middle East. Ori­entalist paintings as artifacts of Ottoman Palestine are the focus here, complex interventions in the assumptions about the Holy Land that can be appropriated for archaeological understandings of Palestine’s past. The paintings of landscape artist David Roberts (1796–1864) are used as an example. He traveled through Palestine in the late 1830s and created an unparalleled collection of images.

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VOL. 41, No. 2 – Contents

J. C. Harrington Medal in Historical Archaeology: William M. Kelso
John L. Cotter Award in Historical Archaeology: Carol McDavid

  • INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES IN CRM
    • Interdisciplinary Approaches in CRM: Archaeology, History, and Geography
      • Paul Courtney
    • Topical Convergence: Historical Archaeologists and Historians on Common Ground
      • Barbara J. Little
    • A Test Case of Transdisciplinary Research Theory and Practice: Adena, the Home of Thomas Worthington
      • Neal V. Hitch and Craig S. Keener
    • Historians and Archaeologists: An English Perspective
      • Paul Courtney
    • Crossing the Great Divide
      • Iain Stuart
  • FORUM
    • What Are We Really Learning through Publicly Funded Historical Archaeology (and Is It Worth the Considerable Expense?)
      • William B. Lees and Julia A. King
    • What This Place Needs Is a Few More Cats
      • Margaret Purse
    • Making Connections: Beyond the Confines of Compliance
      • Vergil E. Noble
    • What Are We Learning? Who Are We Serving? Publicly Funded Historical Archaeology and Public Scholarship
      • Barbara J. Little
    • Response to Comments by Little, Noble, and Purser
      • William B. Lees and Julia A. King
    • A DICTIONARY OF BLACKSMITHING TERMS
      • John D. Light

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REVIEWS

Edited by Charles R. Ewen

  • Breisch and Hoagland: Building Environments: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, Vol. X
    • Donald W. Linebaugh
  • Brooks: An Archaeological Guide to British Ceramics in Australia, 1788–1901
    • Mark Staniforth
  • Carter and Cromley: Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes
    • Gabrielle M. Lanier
  • Chung and Wegars: Chinese American Death Rituals: Respecting the Ancestors
    • Jessica Zimmer
  • Claney: Rockingham Ware in American Culture, 1830–1930: Reading Historical Artifacts
    • Kim Christensen
  • Coe: The Line of Forts: Historical Archaeology on the Colonial Frontier of Massachusetts
    • David R. Starbuck
  • Conyers: Ground-Penetrating Radar for Archaeology
    • Kate Mckinley
  • Curet, Dawdy, and La Rosa Corzo: Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology
    • Tina R. Greene
  • Dixon: Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City
    • Mark Warner
  • Fagan: Writing Archaeology: Telling Stories about the Past
    • Barbara J. Little
  • Forte, Oram, and Pedersen: Viking Empires
    • Katharine Woodhouse-Beyer
  • Gardiner and Allen: Before the Mast: Life and Death aboard the Mary Rose
    • Lawrence E. Babits
  • Garman: Detention Castles of Stone and Steel: Landscape, Labor, and the Urban Penitentiary
    • Eleanor Conlin Casella
  • Gulliford: Preserving Western History
    • Chris Merritt
  • Harmon, McManamon, and Pitcaithley: The Antiquities Act: A Century of American Archaeology, Historic Preservation, and Nature Conservation
    • Hester A. Davis
  • Holtorf: From Stonehenge to Las Vegas: Archaeology as Popular Culture
    • Kelly J. Dixon
  • Hunter: Ceramics in America 2005
    • James G. Gibb
  • Hyland: The Herculaneum Pottery: Liverpool’s Forgotten Glory
    • William B. Liebeknecht
  • Jennings: Cheap and Tasteful Dwellings: Design Competitions and the Convenient Interior, 1879–1909
    • Richard Veit
  • King: Cultural Resource Laws and Practice: An Introductory Guide
    • Thomas A. Crist
  • King: Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective
    • James D. Brinkley
  • Lapham: Hunting for Hides: Deerskins, Status, and Cultural Change in the Protohistoric Appalachians
    • Kristina Killgrove
  • Mrozowski: The Archaeology of Class in Urban America
    • David A. Gadsby
  • Nichols: The Confederate Quartermaster in the Trans-Mississippi
    • Gordon P. Watts, Jr.
  • Palka: Unconquered Lacandon Maya: Ethnohistory and Archaeology of Indigenous Culture Change
    • Sallie Vaughn
  • Rakita, Buikstra, Beck, and Williams: Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium
    • Jeff Wanser
  • Rickard: Mocha and Related Dipped Wares, 1770–1939
    • Patricia M. Samford
  • Rountree: Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown
    • David A. Brown
  • Skowronek and Ewen: X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy
    • Roger C. Smith
  • Sprague: Burial Terminology: A Guide for Researchers
    • James G. Parker
  • Stojanowski: Biocultural Histories in La Florida: A Bioarchaeological Perspective
    • George R. Milner
  • Tibbles: Transatlantic Slavery: Against Human Dignity
    • Anna S. Agbe-Davies
  • Vesilind: Lost Gold of the Republic: The Remarkable Quest for the Greatest Shipwreck Treasure of the Civil War Era
    • James P. Delgado
  • White: American Artifacts of Personal Adornment, 1680–1820: A Guide to Identification and Interpretation
    • Thomas E. Beaman, Jr.
  • Wilkie and Farnsworth: Sampling Many Pots: An Archaeology of Memory and Tradition at a Bahamian Plantation
    • Jane Eva Baxter
  • Zarinebaf, Bennet, and Davis: A Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece: The Southwestern Morea in the Eighteenth Century
    • Benjamin Saidel

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VOL. 40, No. 2 – Article Abstracts

Barbara J. Little

Topical Convergence: Historical Archaeologists and Historians on Common Ground

Abstract: Although historical archaeologists and historians seem to operate in different worlds, they often coexist in the same agencies and companies under the umbrella of cultural resource management (CRM) or, outside the United States, cultural heritage management. While the disciplines’ jour­nals, coursework, and career paths are separate, historical archaeologists and historians may end up working on the same projects or within the same programs. Outside the academy, their disciplines have developed side by side. The professions have been connected through much of the 20th century, often in the context of public interpretation and policy. This common ground of public history and public archaeology can provide a firm foundation for interdisciplin­ary cooperation in serving public interest in the past. An interconnected development of the disciplines is presented before considering cross-disciplinary work and the importance of such work to the public.

Neal V. Hitch and Craig S. Keener

A Test Case of Transdisciplinary Research Theory and Practice: Adena, the Home of Thomas Worthington

Abstract: By the mid-1990s, the Ohio Historical Society had institution­alized a team approach to produce historical knowledge and interpretation at public sites. This approach follows a mode of research, referred to as transdisciplinary, by which many forms of new knowledge are being created in a postacademic setting. In this new setting, research is completed for the benefit of society and is produced through the cooperative efforts of several key specialists. Archaeological research at Adena, the plantation estate built by Thomas Worthington in 1807, just north of Chillicothe, Ohio, shows how trans­disciplinary research has emerged as the dominant form of research at historic sites. Three distinct periods of research at the site are used to show how methodological approaches to research at public institutions have progressed over time to promote a theoretically based team approach to knowl­edge production.

Historians and Archaeologists: An English Perspective

Abstract: Some historical differences between the intellectual roots of archaeology in Europe and the United States will be out­lined in order to focus on the relationship between history and medieval/postmedieval archaeology, using England as a specific case study. In particular, the importance of English “landscape history” as an interdisciplinary project will be discussed. Some philosophical and theoretical aspects will be briefly reviewed, but here the primary focus is on the practical issues created by trying to apply interdisciplinary approaches within the context of commercial archaeology.

Iain Stuart

Crossing the Great Divide

Abstract: This examination of how historical archaeology relates to other academic disciplines such as history and geography identifies some approaches to historians that act to create a disciplinary backwater or archaeological ghetto where life is untroubled, and mainstream research about the past flows past untouched by archaeological evidence. It argues that historical archaeologists need to pursue their own interests in the past in engagement with the documentary and the archaeological records. The key to successful interdisci­plinary work is having a clear understanding of the other disciplines as well as having confidence in what historical archaeology can offer.

William B. Lees and Julia A. King

Forum: What Are We Really Learning through Publicly Funded Historical Archaeology (and Is It Worth the Considerable Expense?)

Abstract: Historical archaeology has become an established discipline within the last 30 years, yet to some its value is unrecog­nized or open to question. The reason for this can be found in several areas. As a discipline, historical archaeology has yet to develop a coherent approach to the study of the historic past or to the identification of sites that are truly worthy of preservation or study at public expense. Reports of excavations are cumbersome and difficult to use by other archaeologists, let alone by professionals in other disciplines or the interested public. We are probably spending consider­able money on sites that really do not warrant the effort. As a whole, our literature does clearly illustrate the value of our accomplishments. To remedy what is in reality a decades-old problem requires leadership from the profession and from individual professionals. We need to redefine what we as a discipline are attempting to accomplish and how it is best accomplished, redefine priorities for publicly funded archaeology, establish a meaningful threshold of significance, reinvent our reports, challenge other scholars with our findings and interpretations, and insist that publicly funded projects result in publicly oriented products.

John D. Light

A Dictionary of Blacksmithing Terms

Abstract: Blacksmithing remained an omnipresent and essential trade in the west only so long as wrought iron was the basic ferrous commodity of western society. The introduction of the Bes­semer process, beginning in the late 1850s, heralded the age of mass-produced steel and modern industrial manufacturing technologies, and with it the irreversible decline and eventual demise of blacksmithing. Many of the skills and secrets of working wrought iron, once acquired and passed on through a long-standing oral tradition shared among blacksmiths has, like its practitioners, also disappeared. This dictionary attempts to provide many of the orally preserved terms, once in use among blacksmiths in North America, as uncovered by the author during a career of study and research on the subject of blacksmithing.

Résumé: La forge n’est demeurée un métier omniprésent et essentiel en Occident qu’aussi longtemps que le fer forgé a été la substance ferreuse de base dans la société occidentale. L’apparition du procédé de Bessemer, vers la fin des années 1850, annonça l’âge de la production en série de l’acier, des technologies de fabrication industrielles modernes, et, par le fait même, le déclin irréversible et l’effondrement éventuel du travail de forge. Plusieurs techniques et secrets du travail du fer forgé -autrefois acquis et transmis grâce à une vieille tradition orale partagée par les forgerons- ont, comme ses praticiens, disparu. Ce dictionnaire tente d’apporter autant de termes, utilisés jadis parmi les forgerons en Amérique du Nord, que l’auteur en a découvert tout au long d’une carrière d’étude et de recherche sur la forge.



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VOL. 41, No.3 – Contents

Maritime Archaeology in Ireland, Brian Williams, Guest Editor

  • INTRODUCTION
    • Maritime Archaeology in Ireland
      • BRIAN WILLIAMS

    ARTICLES

    • A Preliminary Analysis of Historic Shipwrecks in Northern Ireland
      • COLIN BREEN, RORY QUINN, AND WES FORSY
    • The Assimilation of Marine Geophysical Data into the Maritime Sites and Monuments Record, Northern Ireland
      • RORY QUINN
    • Investigations of Taymouth Castle, a Nineteenth-Century Composite Ship Lost off the Coast of Northern Ireland
      • CLAIRE CALLAGHAN, COLIN BREEN, AND MOIRA NÍ LOINGSIGH
    • The French Shipwreck La Surveillante, Lost in Bantry Bay, Ireland, in 1797
      • COLIN BREEN AND WES FORSYTHE
    • Bantry Bay, County Cork, a Fortified Maritime Landscape
      • WES FORSYTHE
    • The Sequence of Early Christian Period Horizontal Tide Mills at Nendrum Monastery: An Interim Statement
      • THOMAS C. MCERLEAN, CAROLINE EARWOOD, DERMOT MOORE, AND EILEEN MURPHY
    • Archaeology of the Strangford Lough Kelp Industry in the Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth Centuries
      • THOMAS C. MCERLEAN
    • On the Banks of the Bann: The Riverine Economy of an Ulster Plantation Village
      AUDREY J. HORNING
    • “Guns, Harpoons, Lances, Casks and every [necessary] article”: An account of the History and Archaeology of an Eighteenth-Century Shore-Based Whaling and Basking Shark Fishery in Donegal Bay
      • RORY WILLIAM ADAMSON MCNEARY

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VOL. 40, No. 3 – Article Abstracts

Colin Breen, Rory Quinn, and Wes Forsythe

A Preliminary Analysis of Historic Shipwrecks in Northern Ireland

Abstract: Recent marine survey programs have generated a GIS (geographic information system) distribution of historic wreck sites around the coast of Northern Ireland. These data lead to an understanding of the nature and extent of submerged cultural resources and provide statistical information on the spatial and temporal distribution of historic wrecks, allowing for the reconstruction of past maritime activity. This is important baseline data used for the production of integrated research and management plans for the protection of the resources.

Rory Quinn

The Assimilation of Marine Geophysical Data into the Maritime Sites and Monuments Record, Northern Ireland

Abstract: Northern Ireland has been subject to significant maritime influences throughout its known 9,000-year human history. In 1997, the University of Ulster, in partnership with the Environment and Heritage Service, embarked on a program of seabed mapping in an attempt to record the submerged and buried archaeological resources. To date, the geophysical research program has imaged about 80 19th- and 20th-cen­tury wrecks and about 100 targets of further “archaeological potential.” One method of integrating the results of geophysi­cal surveys into the Maritime Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) is the use of the classification scheme CEBESSt, an alphanumeric wreck-site classification scheme based upon six site-specific variables: Composition of hull, Energy of wreck environment, Burial, Exposure, Structural integrity, and Substrate type, with t corresponding to time (the year of wrecking, if known). The classification is designed for use within a database scheme that allows for interrogation through character recognition and pattern matching.

Claire Callaghan, Colin Breen, and Moira Ní Loingsigh

Investigations of Taymouth Castle, a Nineteenth-Century Composite Ship Lost off the Coast of Northern Ireland

Abstract: Taymouth Castle was a fully rigged ship, wrecked off the coast of Northern Ireland in January 1867. The importance of the wreck lies in the preservation of a quantity of its cargo, which provides a unique insight into the material culture of the trade of northwestern Europe with the Far East in the 19th century. It also demonstrates the enlightened approach that government in Northern Ireland has towards the documentation and management of the submerged shipwreck resource in its coastal waters.

Colin Breen and Wes Forsythe

The French Shipwreck La Surveillante, Lost in Bantry Bay, Ireland, in 1797

Abstract:  Survey work was undertaken on the wreck of the French frigate La Surveillante, part of a planned invasion force of Ireland in an attempt to overthrow English rule, which was lost in Bantry Bay off the southwestern coast of Ireland in January 1797. Some of the published background history of French frigates describes a similar type to La Surveillante. Archaeological investigations found that preservation on the wreck is exceptional for Irish waters and that its study offers a valuable insight into the structure, morphology, and role of the frigate in the later part of the 18th century.

Wes Forsythe

Bantry Bay, County Cork, a Fortified Maritime Landscape

Abstract: Coastal fortification is an important component of the maritime cultural landscape, charged with the protection of settlements and the repulsion of hostile parties. Bantry Bay in southwest­ern Ireland features a range of martial monuments, ranging from medieval castle sites to 19th-century gun emplacements, within an outstanding maritime landscape. The monuments display great continuity in siting, often at vantage points overlooking sheltered anchorages and bays, reflecting the importance of maritime communication in the region. Their evolution and proliferation show the contemporary military trends as well as the wider political and economic concerns of a society in conflict.

Thomas C. McErlean, Caroline Earwood, Dermot Moore, and Eileen Murphy

The Sequence of Early Christian Period Horizontal Tide Mills at Nendrum Monastery: An Interim Statement

Abstract:  A pioneering archaeological survey of the intertidal zone in Strangford Lough was undertaken between 1995–2000. In the course of the work, excavation was undertaken at a stone structure that produced evidence for three sea-powered hori­zontal mills. The mills are situated beside the famous early monastery of Nendrum. They formed an important part of the monastic complex from the early 7th through to the 8th centuries. The archaeological evidence demonstrates the high level of development in mill technology at that period.

Thomas C. McErlean

Archaeology of the Strangford Lough Kelp Industry in the Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract:  An archaeological survey of the maritime cultural landscape of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland found rich and varied remains of structures relating to the kelp industry. Adding this information to historical documentation provided great insight into the rapid rise of an economic asset in the 18th century and its equally rapid decline in the early-19th century. Kelp provided an essential material for major industries of the industrial revolution and was a major source of income in coastal Ireland. This paper traces the imprint left on the foreshore and coastal archaeology of an Irish Sea lough by the exploitation of seaweed for making kelp.

Audrey J. Horning

On the Banks of the Bann: The Riverine Economy of an Ulster Plantation Village

Abstract: Research excavations at Movanagher, the chief Londonderry Plantation settlement of the Mercers’ Company of London, focused upon the role of the River Bann in the local and regional economy. Sited in 1611 near an ancient ford on the second longest river in Ireland and adjacent to established salmon fisheries, eel fisheries, extensive timber tracts and abundant clay resources, Movanagher was designed for profit, not defense, and ultimately succumbed to the Irish Rebel­lion of 1641. The archaeology of this green-field site with its mill, fisheries, brickworks, bawn, and scattered dwellings provides valuable insight into the central role of the river, both in daily life and in the process of the plantation itself. It highlights the mindset, motivations, and ultimate miscal­culations of the English who planned the settlement, while underscoring the complexity of relations between natives and newcomers.

Rory William Adamson McNeary

“Guns, Harpoons, Lances, Casks and every [necessary] article”: An account of the History and Archaeology of an Eighteenth-Century Shore-Based Whaling and Basking Shark Fishery in Donegal Bay

Abstract: Landowners were probably the most important social, economic, and political force for change in 18th-century Ireland and were in the strongest position to shape the economy and environment of the island (Kelly 1985). In southwestern Donegal, a whaling company was founded by local landed entrepreneurs and merchants on the back of attempts to develop the fisheries of the northwest in general. Although this was not a longstanding venture, it pre-dates the later Norwegian-run whaling stations on the West Coast by some 130 years (Fairley 1981). Documentation consists of generalized accounts, including various petitions to the Irish Parliament for financial aid, as well as accounts in contemporary journals. Documentary data is not captured at the individual site level and, because of this, the location of the shore-based station is not definite. A site in the townland of Port, near Inver, is tentatively suggested as a possible location for a tryworks (the name given to the iron pots used for boiling the oil out of the blubber of whales), or at least a location where the activity of flensing or cutting-in (the process of removing blubber from the whale’s carcass) was carried out.

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VOL. 41, No. 4 – Contents

  • EDITORIAL
    • Making Editorial Waves
      • REBECCA ALLEN
  • ARTICLES
    • Archaeological Evidence of Economic Activities at an Eighteenth-Century Frontier Outpost in the Western Great Lakes
      • MICHAEL S. NASSANEY, JOSÉ ANTÓNIO BRANDÃO, WILLIAM M. CREMIN, AND BROCK A. GIORDANO
    • Keeping Edison’s Secrets: Archaeological Documentation of Thomas A. Edison’s Menlo Park Patent Vault
      • MICHAEL J. GALL, RICHARD VEIT, AND ALLISON SAVARESE
    • Tell-Tale Trees: Historical Dendroarchaeology of Log Structures at Rocky Mount, Piney Flats, Tennessee
      • HENRI D. GRISSINO-MAYER AND SASKIA L. VAN DE GEVEL
    • Transformations in San Diego County Gravestones and Cemeteries
      • SETH MALLIOS AND DAVID CATERINO
    • Pottery in the Mormon Economy: An Historical, Archaeological, and Archaeometric Study
      • TIMOTHY JAMES SCARLETT, ROBERT J. SPEAKMAN, AND MICHAEL D. GLASCOCK
    • Eliciting Contraband through Archaeology: Illicit Trade in Eighteenth-Century St. Augustine
      • KATHLEEN DEAGAN
    • An Historic Chinese Abalone Fishery on California’s Northern Channel Islands
      • TODD J. BRAJE, JON M. ERLANDSON, AND TORBEN C. RICK
    • Silences and Mentions in History Making
      • PETER R. SCHMIDT AND JONATHAN R. WALZ
    • Image, Text, Object: Interpreting Documents and Artifacts as ‘Labors of Representation’
      • BARBARA L. VOSS
    • Privies and Parasites: The Archaeology of Health Conditions in Albany, New York
      • CHARLES L. FISHER, KARL J. REINHARD, MATTHEW KIRK, AND JUSTIN DIVIRGILIO
    • Nativism, Resistance, and Ethnogenesis of the Florida Seminole Indian Identity
      • BRENT R. WEISMAN
  • REVIEWS
    • Edited by Charles R. Ewen
    • Agnew and Bridgeland: Of the Past, for the Future: Integrating Archaeology and Conservation
      • DIANE WALLMAN
    • Archer and Bartoy: Between Dirt and Discussion: Methods, Methodology, and Interpretation in Historical Archaeology
      • ROBERT C. CHIDESTER
    • Beaudry: Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing
      • LAURA SEIFERT
    • Brickley, Buteux, Adams, and Cherrington: St. Martin’s Uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin’s-in-the-Bull-Ring, Birmingham, 2001
      • TIMOTHY B. RIORDAN
    • Cabak and Groover: Plantations without Pillars: Archaeology, Wealth, and Material Life at Bush Hill
      • JOHN P. MCCARTHY
    • Campisi: Eighteenth-Century Native Communities of Southern New England in the Colonial Context
      • JULIA A. KING
    • Carnes-McNaughton and Steen: In Praise of the Poet Archaeologist: Papers in Honor of Stanley South and His Five Decades of Historical Archaeology
      • GARRY WHEELER STONE
    • Chang-Rodríguez: Beyond Books and Borders: Garcilaso de la Vega and La Florida del Inca
      • JEFFREY M. MITCHEM
    • Conolly and Lake: Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology
      • DAVID A. BROWN
    • De Cunzo and Jameson: Unlocking the Past: Celebrating Historical Archaeology in North America
      • DIANA ZELTMANN
    • Dellino-Musgrave: Maritime Archaeology and Social Relations: British Action in the Southern Hemisphere
      • DAVID J. STEWART
    • Egan: Material Culture in London in an Age of Transition: Tudor and Stuart Period Finds c. 1450–c. 1700 from Excavations at Riverside Sites in Southwark
      • MARSHALL JOSEPH BECKER
    • Fowler and Wilcox: Philadelphia and the Development of Americanist Archaeology
      • DANIEL G. ROBERTS
    • Furst: Rock Crystals and Peyote Dreams: Explorations in the Huichol Universe
      • LEAH HARRELL
    • Geier, Orr, and Reeves: Huts and History: The Historical Archaeology of Military Encampment during the American Civil War
      • KEITH T. HEINRICH
    • Greene and Scott: Finding Sand Creek: History, Archaeology, and the 1864 Massacre Site
      • GILBERT O. BURKMAN
    • Hall and Silliman: Historical Archaeology
      • TODD A. HANSON
    • Johnson, J.: Remote Sensing in Archaeology: An Explicitly North American Perspective
      • JOHN ROBY
    • Johnson, M.: Ideas of Landscape
      • JOHN M. CHENOWETH
    • Kelso: Jamestown: The Buried Truth
      • SARAH C. HEFFNER
    • Laing: The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland c. A.D. 400–1200
      • JAMES LYTTLETON
    • Mainfort and Davidson: Two Historic Cemeteries in Crawford County, Arkansas
      • CHANA KRAUS-FRIEDBERG
    • Mason: Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North American Indian Oral Tradition
      • JO PHIPPS
    • Russell: Images, Representations and Heritage: Moving beyond Modern Approaches to Archaeology
      • STEVEN HOLM
    • Yoffee and Crowell: Excavating Asian History: Interdisciplinary Studies in Archaeology and History
      DEBRA G. SHEFI

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VOL. 41, No. 4 – Abstracts

Michael S. Nassaney, José António Brandão, William M. Cremin, And Brock A. Giordano

Archaeological Evidence of Economic Activities at an Eighteenth-Century Frontier Outpost in the Western Great Lakes

Abstract: During the late-19th and early-20th centuries, antiquarian collectors amassed hundreds of artifacts from the vicinity of Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), a mission-garrison-trading post complex established by the French in the late-17th century along the St. Joseph River in   southwest Michigan. George Quimby (1939, 1966) later used these materials to establish a chronology for post-contact Native American sites in the western Great Lakes region, although the research potential of the collections was limited by their lack of provenience. Subsequent fieldwork conducted in 2002 and 2004 by Western Michigan University located intact deposits from this site. Excavations have identified a number of cultural features and associated archaeological materials that suggest the locations of buildings and discrete activity areas. The undisturbed deposits encountered at the site of Fort St. Joseph can inform researchers about everyday economic activities at an important trading post in the North American interior.

Michael J. Gall, Richard Veit, and Allison Savarese

Keeping Edison’s Secrets: Archaeological Documentation of Thomas A. Edison’s Menlo Park Patent Vault

Abstract: Archaeologists recently conducted fieldwork at the site of Thomas A. Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory. Excavations revealed and documented a long-forgotten subterranean vault used by Edison to store patent drawings, scientific laboratory notebooks, office records, and other valuable documents associated with the operation of his pioneering industrial research and development facility. The vault highlights Edison’s concern with the collection and protection of company documents and his intellectual property, as well as his ongoing attempts to control the dissemination of information regarding his inventions.

Henri D. Grissino-Mayer And Saskia L. Van De Gevel

Tell-Tale Trees: Historical Dendroarchaeology of Log Structures at Rocky Mount, Piney Flats, Tennessee

Abstract: The Rocky Mount site has important historical and cultural significance for the State of Tennessee because it was built by one of its earliest settlers and served as the capital of the territory from 1790 to 1792. Questions arose concerning whether the two main log structures—known as the Cobb House with adjoining dining room—were built by William Cobb between 1770 and 1772. The authors used tree-ring dating to determine the year(s) of construction of these two log structures. Three nearby reference tree-ring chronologies anchored the Rocky Mount tree-ring chronology from 1667 to 1829. Cutting dates obtained from 19 logs revealed that the Cobb House was built beginning in 1827 and finished by 1828, while the dining room was begun in 1829 and finished by 1830. An additional six logs had outermost dates between 1820 and 1825. These 25 logs demonstrate, instead, that Michael Massengill constructed the house and dining room between 1827 and 1830.

Seth Mallios And David Caterino

Transformations in San Diego County Gravestones and Cemeteries

Abstract: San Diego County, California, USA, is home to more than 100 cemeteries and nearly 300,000 individually marked graves. Analysis of the region’s cemeteries and grave markers by members of the San Diego County Gravestone Project has pinpointed significant patterns in commemoration strategies, evident through temporal, spatial, and formal trends. The material expressions of death seen in southern California graveyards reflect changing mortuary attitudes and parallel other diachronic cultural phenomena of modern American society during the 19th and 20th centuries. In offering an overview of every San Diego County cemetery, this work develops a classification for the region’s graveyards. It also uses spatially controlled stylistic evolutions to pinpoint different degrees of regularity in gravestone change. These trends reveal attenuation in the communication and spread of ideas regarding mortality from urban areas to more rural settings in San Diego County.

Timothy James Scarlett, Robert J. Speakman, And Michael D. Glascock

Pottery in the Mormon Economy: An Historical, Archaeological, and Archaeometric Study

Abstract: Pottery production was important to Latter-day Saint communities and distinguished these towns from their non-Mormon neighbors. The potters and workers left scant records that reveal how their wares fit into Utah’s theocratically organized economy. Potters and potteries of 19th-century Utah and the Mormon Domain were part of an archaeological survey conducted between 1999 and 2000. The research project yielded examples of kiln wasters that could be subjected to instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). The results demonstrate the utility of integrating primary records and archaeometric tools in the study of historical era economic processes. Data also indicate the applicability of the approach for potteries in close geographic proximity and to determine patterns of variation within site assemblages. The authors propose an
anthropological research program to explore the economics of religion in Mormon Utah, combining the analytical power of archaeometry with the contextualized questioning possible in historical archaeology.

Kathleen Deagan

Eliciting Contraband through Archaeology: Illicit Trade in Eighteenth-Century St. Augustine

Abstract: The study of contraband (illicit trade) should offer a uniquely appropriate focus for the multi-evidentiary strengths of historical archaeology, in that it demands the articulation of largely undocumented economic activity (reflected materially in archaeological remains) with legal mandates and formal regulations about commerce. Problematic issues in realizing this are presented by the recognition of contraband goods and activities in the archaeological record and by the difficulties in articulating archaeologically derived periodicity with textbased periodicity of contraband in a given community. With those concerns in mind, the analysis of excavated data from six 18th-century households of St. Augustine is described here with extensive historical documentation of contraband activity in Spanish Florida and the Spanish Americas in general to explore the notion that historical archaeological integration of data about contraband can reveal useful information not knowable from either source alone. Results suggest that at a community-wide scale of analysis, the archaeological data essentially reify and add detail to the already existing documentary accounts of contraband trade. A household scale of analysis and comparison reveals how people with specific economic, occupational, religious, ethnic, and social identities engaged in contraband as a strategy in ways that were not previously known. This helps define the contours of economic possibility and creates a more nuanced understanding of the structure, opportunity, and dynamics of economic choice and agency within a community.

Todd J. Braje, Jon M. Erlandson, And Torben C. Rick

An Historic Chinese Abalone Fishery on California’s Northern Channel Islands

Abstract: Beginning in the 1850s, Chinese abalone fishermen developed an intensive commercial fishery focused on the abundant black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) stocks of Alta and Baja California. They systematically harvested and dried tons of abalone meat and shells from intertidal waters and shipped them to markets in mainland China and America. Several legislative attempts were made to curtail Chinese involvement in the fishing industry, claiming they were harvesting abalone without regard to size. Recent research documents the abundance, distribution, and constituents of historic abalone sites and discusses the impact of “Chinese” abalone fishermen on San Miguel Island, California. Thousands of shell measurements show that the Chinese harvested larger abalones than those collected by Native American foragers for 10,000 years prior to European contact, providing important data on local ecology during the early historic period.

Peter R. Schmidt And Jonathan R. Walz

Silences and Mentions in History Making

Abstract: Until historical archaeologists accept the historicities of societies lying partially or wholly outside the orbit of Western influences, they will not confront the anthropological conundrum of silencing others’ pasts. History making—framing archaeological practice with questions that count and critically analyzing the conflicts and congruencies among sources—transcends disciplinary boundaries and accounts for any moment in which historical representation unfolds. Several scholars have recently suggested different perspectives on archaeology applied to historical questions in Africa, including representations about the methods and theoretical views of historical practice in Africa. Given the more than a century of historical archaeology in Africa, it is compelling to evaluate key statements for both shortcomings as well as productive insights. Disjunctive and supplemental practice as well as critical interrogation of local historiographies and materialities have a long application in Africa and best realize the ultimate goal of history and anthropology, making new pasts and exposing the potentialities of a truly historical archaeology.

Barbara L. Voss

Image, Text, Object: Interpreting Documents and Artifacts as ‘Labors of Representation’

Abstract: How can historical archaeologists best integrate documentary images and texts with archaeological evidence? The concept of “labor of representation” draws attention to the physical efforts, strategic decisions, and political projects inherent in representational practices, allowing archaeologists to rigorously account for the social production of historical documents without negating their evidentiary value. Contextual analysis of Joseph de Urrutia’s plan drawings of Spanish-colonial presidios demonstrates this approach, revealing systematic representational conventions. Overall, Urrutia depicted the settlements as more homogeneous and with more formal spatial order than was likely the case. The plan drawings are also shaped by an ideological boundary between military order and civilian disorder. Archaeological investigations that have taken the Urrutia drawings to be reliable “as-built” plans have tended to neglect or misinterpret those elements of the archaeological record that are most closely related to local, indigenous, and vernacular cultural practices.

Charles L. Fisher, Karl J. Reinhard, Matthew Kirk, And Justin Divirgilio

Privies and Parasites: The Archaeology of Health Conditions in Albany, New York

Abstract: Large numbers of parasites were identified in archaeological samples collected from privies and other features in excavations in Albany, New York. This information provides the largest database available for the study of parasite infections in historical period American cities. The greatest numbers of parasites were in contexts related to the expansion of the city in the late-18th century. Parasites remained, but their quantities decreased in the 19th century during another period of rapid population growth. The city was able to control parasite infection during this period through several means, including new techniques of privy construction, new water supply systems, and medical treatments. Use of medical treatments against parasites varied among residents of the city and was evident in the archaeological record.

Brent R. Weisman

Nativism, Resistance, and Ethnogenesis of the Florida Seminole Indian Identity

The Seminole Indians of Florida call themselves the “unconquered people,” referring to the years of the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) when the U.S. Army failed to remove them to Indian Territory. Although the Seminoles have diverse origins and a deep cultural foundation in the prehistoric Southeast, their modern identity can be traced to this era of military conflict. Nativistic resistance movements aided by a strengthening of clan ties formed an adaptive response to the threat of cultural extinction and fueled the process of Seminole ethnogenesis. Using the archaeological record in conjunction with historical and anthropological sources brings a new perspective to the study of ethnogenesis by identifying material dimensions of Seminole resistance and unity. Specifically, the presence and absence of aboriginal versus European American pottery, the presence of military buttons at Seminole sites, and evidence for the ceremonial exchange of wealth by clans are examined as material evidence for the process of identity formation.

 

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