Archaeology And Preservation Of Gendered Landscapes

Historical archaeology of landscapes initially followed the pattern of Classical Archaeology by studying elite men's gardens. Over time, particularly in North America, the field has expanded to cover larger settlement areas, but still often with ungendered and elite focus. The editors of this volume seek to fill this important gap in the literature by presenting studies of gendered power dynamics and their effect on minority groups in North America. Case studies presented include communities of Native Americans, African Americans, multi-ethnic groups, religious communities, and industrial communities. Just as the research focus has previously neglected the groups presented here, so too has funding to preserve important archaeological sites. As the contributors to this important volume present a new framework for understanding the archaeology of religious and social minority groups, they also demonstrate the importance of preserving the cultural landscapes, particularly of minority groups, from destruction by the modern dominant culture. A full and complete picture of cultural preservation has to include all of the groups that interacted form it.

This indispensable collection of essays is among the first to seriously link gender and landscape research, two major emerging topics in historical archaeology, and to explore the relationship between the two. Landscapes represent unique as well as collective experiences, so it is not without cultural significance that landscapes have historically been codified as female. The book represents an intersection of the study of landscape archaeology and space with the study of gender. By expanding the definition of landscape to include interior spaces, by challenging the equivocation of gendered space with feminized space, and by approaching the subject matter dialectically, the book promotes an in-depth understanding of the issues that arise when scholars apply gender issues to the study of space manipulation.

Mining was one of the primary elements of colonial enterprise in Australia and a factor in movement on colonial frontiers. In the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, mining—particularly of gold—saw transformations of the land itself, as well as in the way that people working in mining engaged with the landscape around them. Landscape archaeology provides a theoretical perspective that allows an articulation of how people created and understood the place in which they lived and worked. The impact of and narrative surrounding gold mining has meant that it has long been a focus of study, both historical and archaeological. The archaeology of mining has traditionally fallen under the umbrella of industrial archaeology, with analyses based on historical, economic and technological evidence. However this is changing. From an industrial focus, examining the remnants of mines and associated processing equipment, archaeology has progressed towards understandings of the social aspects of mining, recognising that people, not just equipment, occupied these landscapes. Nevertheless, there remains a separation between industrial/technology-based studies and purely social/ household-based archaeological studies—a division that overlooks the integration of home and livelihood. This work addresses these very challenges, using a landscape-based approach that articulates a nuanced, meaning-ladened and experienced mining landscape. Integrating the social and the industrial, the case study of Mount Shamrock, a gold-mining town in Queensland, Australia, demonstrates how this methodology can enhance our understanding of the past. The work presents an integration of social and industrial perspectives in a mining settlement, and provides an exemplar in the application of landscape theory to Australian historical archaeology. These concepts and approaches, developed in an Australian context, are of universal interest.

In many facets of Western culture, including archaeology, there remains a legacy of perceiving gender divisions as natural, innate, and biological in origin. This belief follows that men are naturally pre-disposed to public, intellectual pursuits, while women are innately designed to care for the home and take care of children. In the interpretation of material culture, accepted notions of gender roles are often applied to new findings: the dichotomy between the domestic sphere of women and the public sphere of men can color interpretations of new materials. In this innovative volume, the contributors focus explicitly on analyzing the materiality of historic changes in the domestic sphere around the world. Combining a global scope with great temporal depth, chapters in the volume explore how gender ideologies, identities, relationships, power dynamics, and practices were materially changed in the past, thus showing how they could be changed in the future.

Through international and multi-period chapters, this volume explores the origins and development of industrialisation from its emergence in 18th century Europe to its contemporary ubiquity. It interrogates the widespread exploitation of natural resources that forged industrialisation and its environmental and social legacy in our globalised world.

Improving the relationship between archaeology and local government represents one of the next great challenges facing archaeology –specifically archaeology done in urban settings. Not only does local government have access to powerful legal tools and policy mechanisms that can offer protection for privately owned archaeological sites, but because local government exists at the grassroots level, it is also often closer to people who have deep knowledge about the community itself, about its values, and about the local meaning of the sites most in need of protection. This partnership between archaeology and local government can also provide visibility and public programing for heritage sites. This book will explore the experiences, both positive and negative, of small and large cities globally. We have examined programs in the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly known as the British Commonwealth) and in the United States. These countries share similar perspectives on preservation and heritage, although the approaches these cities have taken to address municipal archaeology reveals considerable diversity. The case studies highlight how these innovative partnerships have developed, and explain how they function within local government. Engaging with the political sphere to advocate for and conduct archaeology requires creativity, flexibility, and the ability to develop collaborative partnerships. How these archaeological partnerships benefit the community is a vital part of the equation. Heritage and tourist benefits are discussed. Economic challenges during downturns in the economy are analyzed. The book also examines public outreach programs and the grassroots efforts to protect and preserve a community's archaeological heritage.

This volume expands understandings of crafting practices, which in the past was the major relational interaction between the social agency of materials, technology, and people, in co-creating an emergent ever-changing world. The chapters discuss different ways that crafting in the present is useful in understanding crafting experiences and methods in the past, including experiments to reproduce ancient excavated objects, historical accounts of crafting methods and experiences, craft revivals, and teaching historical crafts at museums and schools. Crafting in the World is unique in the diversity of its theoretical and multidisciplinary approaches to researching crafting, not just as a set of techniques for producing functional objects, but as social practices and technical choices embodying cultural ideas, knowledge, and multiple interwoven social networks. Crafting expresses and constitutes mental schemas, identities, ideologies, and cultures. The multiple meanings and significances of crafting are explored from a great variety of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, archaeology, sociology, education, psychology, women’s studies, and ethnic studies. This book provides a deep temporal range and a global geographical scope, with case studies ranging from Europe, Africa, and Asia to the Americas and a global internet website for selling home crafted items.

Alliance Rises in the West documents the experiences of a company town at a critical moment in the rise of working-class consciousness in nineteenth-century California. Through archaeological research Charlotte K. Sunseri overcomes the silence of the documentary record to re-examine the mining frontier at Mono Mills, a community of multiple ethnic and racial groups, predominantly Chinese immigrants and Kudzadika Paiutes. The rise of political, economic, and social alliances among workers symbolized solidarity and provided opportunity to effect change in this setting of unequal power. Urban planning and neighborhood layout depict company structures of control and surveillance, while household archaeology from ethnically distinct neighborhoods speaks to lived experiences and how working-class identities emerged to crosscut ethnic and racial divides imposed in capitalism. Mono Mills's Paiute and Chinese communities experienced exclusionary legislation and brutal treatment on the basis of racial prejudice but lived alongside and built community with European American laborers, managers, and merchants who were also on an economic periphery. These experiences in Mono Mills and other nineteenth-century company towns did not occur in a vacuum; capitalists' control and ideologies of race and class all doubled down as American workers used collective action to change the rules of the system. In this rare, in-depth perspective, close consideration of the ghost towns that dot the landscape of the West shows the haunting elements of capitalism and racial structures that characterized Gilded Age society and whose legacies endure to this day.