Authors:Anatolijs Venovcevs Abstract: The subterranean root cellar is the quintessential feature of rural nineteenth-century archaeological sites in Ontario and much archaeological, historical, and architectural research on rural farmsteads has focused on defining and understanding these structures. However, this work has neglected an important component of this feature – the root cellar drain. This paper contextualizes these features within their broader nineteenth-century ideals of drainage and goes on to tackle the topic with the use of statistical analysis on the associated geographical, social, and economic attributes. The discussion presents opportunities that are present from the vast quantities of historical sites that have been excavated in the past several decades. Going beyond simple comparisons of small handfuls of sites, one future for historical archaeology lies in statistical approaches on vast quantities of data available in the grey literature. As a result, this study shows a slow but steady acceptance of scientific farming practices in rural Ontario but also resistance, variation, and contraction of the published agricultural literature at the time. This goes to show that even the humblest, most mundane archaeological features have interesting stories to tell. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:02:21 PDT
Authors:Richard F. Veit Abstract: This Clark-Watson Site in Perth Amboy, New Jersey is one of the richest early colonial sites in the state. It is named for two early property owners: Benjamin Clark a Scottish stationer and bookseller who moved to New Jersey in 1683 and John Watson (1685-1768), a noted 18th-century artist. Excavations at the site by William Pavlovsky unearthed an extraordinary collection of colonial artifacts. The archaeological assemblage provides an unparalleled glimpse into the material life of settlers in Perth Amboy during a period when the city aspired to be a center of international trade and was competing directly and ultimately unsuccessfully with the burgeoning city of New York, just twenty miles away. Trade networks linked Perth Amboy’s early settlers to the Netherlands, the Germans states, England, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America and reflect the growth of global trade networks in the 17th and 18th centuries. This article examines the collection in its cultural and historical contexts. It also argues for the reexamination of historic artifact collections, including those from amateur excavations for addressing important historical and archaeological questions. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:02:14 PDT
Authors:Lisa K. Rankin et al. Abstract: The way in which many people, perhaps particularly those in secure and affluent circumstances, view their ancestry and heritage, and display it to others, is often a matter of pride. In some contexts, however, the identification of ‘ancestors’ and ‘heritage’ can have critically important - and sometimes dire - political, social and spiritual ramifications. Here we examine examples in which archaeological and/or historical evidence points to a distancing or ‘active forgetting’ of ancestors and places associated with them. The motives for creating these ‘forgotten places’ are diverse and might include a fear of ‘ghosts’ or death, the desire to project a newly constructed or evolved political identity to outsiders or distant relations, as well as social-political and economic need to distance themselves from their ancestors. In this paper we will explore four examples from Indigenous settings in northern and eastern Canada where peripheral, or forgotten, spaces were actively constructed. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:02:04 PDT
Authors:John D. Archer Abstract: The community of Ferryland, located on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, is home to the remains of George Calvert’s initial attempt at colonial settlement in North America. Over 25 years of excavations and research at the site have produced an increasingly detailed image of life in the seventeenth-century community there. As part of this ongoing work, the project discussed in this paper explores the use and provisioning of a detached kitchen which would have served Ferryland’s Mansion House. Built between 1621 and 1627, the structure makes up one half of a detached service wing adjacent to the Mansion House, fitting a pattern common to English manor houses in the late Middle Ages but out of style by the seventeenth century. Despite the seeming anachronism of its architecture, however, the assemblage associated with the kitchen fits the range of objects and items which made the kitchen the heart of the seventeenth-century domestic household. The domestic goods, routines, and foods found in the kitchen would have helped to make the reproduction of European social life imaginable in communities such as Ferryland, making it possible for George Calvert, David and Sarah Kirke, and those like them to consider moving their households across the Atlantic to North America. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:01:56 PDT
Authors:Robyn S. Lacy Abstract: While the archaeology of death and burial is a popular avenue of research, considerations for burial practices during winter months in northerly climates when temperatures regularly drop below 0°C / 32°F aren’t regularly considered. Excavations in search of the early 17th-century burials associated with Sir George Calvert’s English colony in Ferryland, Newfoundland considered different options for winter body disposal. While burial on land presented the most plausible option in the colonial period, deaths during the winter would have posed a problem for settlers. With limited options for digging in frozen ground, the storage of dead bodies during the winter became commonplace throughout North America. The practice dominated the northeast coast in particular, but was not the only option. This paper explores the logistics of early winter burial practices such as winter storage and grave digging through structural evidence and oral testimony, and considers how these practices were adapted throughout the 18th to 21st centuries. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:01:48 PDT
Authors:Mallory Champagne et al. Abstract: The materiality of the French occupation at Anse à Bertrand, Saint-Pierre has been documented over three years of excavation to understand the commercial routes that provisioned the fisherman who inhabited the point from 1763 to 1815. By comparing the ceramics from that occupation to the temporally similar Habitation Crève Coeur in Martinique, the trade routes that connect France’s colonial territories can be further understood, highlighting the vitality of these labour forces to the French empire. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:01:39 PDT
Authors:Meghann Livingston et al. Abstract: Given its history and changing role within the French salt-cod fishery, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon was essential for French colonial expansion throughout the Atlantic World. Saint-Pierre’s sheltered harbour paired with the archipelago’s proximity to the Grand Banks made these islands an ideal locale for carrying out shore-based activities associated with the salt-cod fishery. In this way, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon can be viewed not only as an integral component of the French presence within the greater region but also as a unique cultural landscape within its own right. With particular reference to Anse à Bertrand, a site located on the southeastern edge of the Saint-Pierre harbour, this paper pieces together historical and archaeological data to explore the archipelago’s maritime cultural landscape during the 300-year life history of the site. Through analysis of historical records, archaeological features, and over 19,000 artefacts, this study is an initial documentation of the “way of life” of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon’s historical inhabitants from the establishment of permanent European settlement during the late 17th century through to the collapse of the Northeast Atlantic cod fishery in the late 20th century. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:01:29 PDT
Authors:Adrian LK Morrison Abstract: In the early eighteenth century, Canso, Nova Scotia housed an influential Anglo-American fishing and trading community with far-reaching connections across Europe and the Americas. The islands were inhabited by a small permanent population joined each year by hundreds of migratory workers who established seasonal operations along their shores. Despite high hopes for long-term development, success would be short lived. Canso was a volatile space: the islands were contested territory and existed within a tense and turbulent frontier. The settlement was attacked multiple times and was destroyed in 1744. This paper draws upon new research and previous archaeological studies to discuss the social history and material life of the early eighteenth-century Canso fishery; in particular it focuses on the consumption patterns and living conditions of those who lived within this frontier community. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:01:20 PDT
Authors:Alexa D. Spiwak et al. Abstract: Previous archaeological investigations have conclusively shown that the presence of Welshmen has co-occurred with the practice of local slate quarrying in Newfoundland since the early colonial ventures of the 17th century. The island experienced a resurgence in Welsh culture in the 19th century when a number of small slate quarries were established overlooking both the Bay of Islands on the west coast and Smith Sound in Trinity Bay. The following article outlines the history of these 19th-century Newfoundland quarries, as well as the social, political and economic factors which encouraged the migration of Welsh quarrymen across the Atlantic to remote and isolated areas of the island. The brief but intensive quarrying activity of the 19th and 20th centuries left indelible marks on the Trinity Bay landscape, and this article concludes by outlining preliminary explorations of archaeological remains near the town of Hickman’s Harbour on Random Island. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:01:11 PDT
Authors:Barry C. Gaulton et al. Abstract: Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula contains many examples of petroglyphs, historic graffiti and inscriptions/engravings dating from the 17th to 20th centuries. This paper highlights the sites of Kingman’s Cove (CfAf-25) and Brigus South (CgAf-21), the computational photography and conservation techniques used in their recording, and current interpretations on who made them, why, when, and what they represent. The results show the broad potential of historic inscriptions for understanding the movements of people who are often poorly represented in the documentary record, the importance of peripheral landscapes and features as foci for self-expression, place-making and remembrance, and the need for innovative methodologies to record these ephemeral and endangered features. Furthermore, these sites are often of continued relevance to local communities (whose intimate landscape knowledge is typically required for their study) while also bearing a contemporary legacy as seen in nearby similar spatially-focused areas of modern graffiti. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:00:59 PDT
Authors:Deirdre A. Elliott Abstract: This paper presents preliminary insights from an exploratory archaeological survey of the Hopedale region, Nunatsiavut. Despite its continued importance — from the 17th century as an Inuit whaling community — to the late 18th century with one of Labrador’s first Moravian missions, to today as the seat of the Nunatsiavut government, Hopedale has seen relatively little archaeological activity since the 1930s, and most of the islands and bays near the town had never been surveyed. A brief survey in the summer of 2018 recorded nearly 30 prehistoric, historic, and ethnographic sites, affirming the Labrador Inuit Association’s 1977 statement– “Our footprints are everywhere”. The majority of these sites are the remains of short- and long-term summer habitation sites, and speak to the extensive and intensive use of Hopedale’s outer coastal region by Labrador Inuit since the 16th century. Here I explore what this land use meant in terms of Labrador Inuit lifeways and mobility, and the intersection of Inuit and European presences (both transient and permanent) that these spaces represent. I thus demonstrate that, as well as being on the periphery of many worlds, Hopedale has a long history as a nexus of economic and social activity. PubDate: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 12:00:51 PDT
Authors:Victoria Anne Cacchione et al. Abstract: Excavated in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, a cache of 19th-century personal-adornment artifacts, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and organic materials provides an alternative view of mourning and memorialization practices in Victorian-era New England. The associated artifacts possess characteristics indicative of Victorian mourning symbols and material types. However, no other current examples of this mourning practice exist in the historical and archaeological records. Thus, this article will attempt to understand this discovery as an aspect of the private side of the traditionally public mourning practices and women’s efforts to create mourning customs that served in creating a feminine historical memory in the Victorian era. PubDate: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 11:04:20 PDT
Authors:Timothy Ives Abstract: This article offers a modest contribution to the ongoing debate among archaeologists, Native American cultural authorities, and avocational researchers concerning the historical origins of the stone-heap sites commonly found in New England’s forested hills. The author’s recent review of historical periodicals, mainly newspapers and agricultural journals, yielded many previously unknown references to farmers constructing stone heaps by hand in working fields and pastures. Popular perceptions of this apparently widespread phenomenon varied. While stone heaping provided opportunities for both young and old family members to prove their worth, some ideologically progressive farmers expressed a strong distain for the practice. By the late 19th century, the region’s abundant stone heaps discovered a new value as raw material for large roadbuilding projects and came to symbolize a simpler way of life that had slipped away as the industrial age gained strength. These findings underscore the possibility that some proportion of the stone-heap sites that contemporary stakeholders identify as elements of ceremonial stone landscapes were created by 19th-century farmers for practical reasons. PubDate: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 11:04:17 PDT
Authors:Marley R. Brown III Abstract: This commentary reflects on the ways Strawbery Banke Museum archaeology was affected by, and in turn, influenced the field of historical archaeology. It can be argued that in the late 1960s urban historical archaeology got its start in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The stories and narrative histories told in these articles are essential to the success of the Strawbery Banke archaeology program, as they reach to the heart of the importance the Portsmouth community attaches to this place. The process of community building has always been at work in Portsmouth and has been what makes Strawbery Banke the museum that it is today. The story of public archaeology and its development at Strawbery Banke discussed in these articles has been a key part of its institutional history. PubDate: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 11:04:13 PDT
Authors:Elizabeth Donison Abstract: Interning at Strawbery Banke Museum offers a unique and important experience. While providing insight into museum archaeology, public archaeology also plays an important role in interpreting sites. Planned work at the Penhallow House through the Heritage House Program was the reason for excavating and holding a field school in 2016 and 2017. The intern acts as the teaching assistant for the field-school students, a position that offers an advanced research and leadership opportunity for students with prior experience. Field-school participants are of various ages and backgrounds, making it pertinent to emphasize the archaeology department’s role in transmitting Portsmouth and New Hampshire history. The field school and an additional archaeology camp run by the education department help to inform museum visitors about ongoing research and discoveries in the Puddle Dock neighborhood. This article highlights the role that the archaeology department and its ongoing internship program hold relative to public archaeology’s importance at Strawbery Banke. PubDate: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 11:04:10 PDT
Authors:Alexandra G. Martin Abstract: The Strawbery Banke Museum archaeology department moved in with the collections department after the construction of a new Collections Center building in 2007. The department has made new use of tools, such as an online artifact database; electromagnetometry, which helped locate a turn of the 20th-century mikveh excavated in 2014; and GIS, which offers a new approach to site-wide analysis of the many excavations across the campus. Recent archaeological efforts have concentrated on work related to the museum’s Heritage House Program, intended to rehabilitate buildings for interpretive and rental spaces. Ongoing work at historical house sites has meant that the boundaries of excavation have been determined primarily by construction impacts rather than research questions. However, archaeology department research and excavations have continued to uncover significant new information supported by close collaboration with the curatorial and restoration carpentry staff. The museum’s ongoing commitment to public archaeology has offered field-school students, interns, and visitors alike a valuable opportunity to observe the importance of archaeological research in this context, both onsite and on social media platforms. PubDate: Wed, 15 Mar 2023 11:04:06 PDT
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