The Archaeology Of Gender In Historic America

In this volume, gender roles and relations in Deerfield, Massachusetts, are presented to illustrate the material and spatial expressions of the dominant Anglo-European ideologies (particularly corporate families, republican motherhood, and the cult of domesticity) of each respective time period in historic America.

Because some classes of people may not have been considered worthy of notice by dominant social groups in the past, they may be less visible to us today in historical and archaeological records; consequently, they remain less studied. This volume attempts to redress this oversight by presenting case studies of historical and archaeological research on various ethnic, racial, gender, and socioeconomic groups in colonial and post-colonial North America. These contributions illustrate how historical archaeologists and ethnohistorians have used documentary and archaeological evidence to retrieve information on neglected aspects of American history. They explore ways of making more visible Native Americans, African Americans, and Euro-Americans of differing ethnic groups and economic classes, and also shed new light on such groups as celibate religious communities, women in predominantly male communities, and working-class and middle-class women in urban communities. Material evidence on "those of little note" provides not only fresh insight into our understanding of daily life in the past, but also a refreshing counterpoint to the male- and Euro-centered analysis that has characterized much of historical archaeology since its inception. Readers will find many chapters rewarding in their application of sophisticated feminist theory to archaeological data, or in their probing of complex relational issues concerning the construction of gender identity and gender relationships. As the first archeaeologically-focused collection to examine the interconnectedness of gender, class, race, and ethnicity in past societies, Those of Little Note sets new standards for future research. CONTENTS I--Introduction 1. Through the Lens of Gender: Archaeology, Inequality, and Those "Of Little Note" / Elizabeth M. Scott II--Native American and African American Communities 2. Cloth, Clothing, and Related Paraphernalia: A Key to Gender Visibility in the Archaeological Record of Russian America / Louise M. Jackson 3. "We Took Care of Each Other Like Families Were Meant To": Gender, Social Organization, and Wage Labor Among the Apache at Roosevelt / Everett Bassett 4. The House of the Black Burghardts: An Investigation of Race, Gender, and Class at the W. E. B. DuBois Boyhood Homesite / Nancy Ladd Muller III--All Male and Predominantly Male Communities 5. "With Manly Courage": Reading the Construction of Gender in a 19th-Century Religious Community / Elizabeth Kryder-Reid 6. The Identification of Gender at Northern Military Sites of the Late 18th Century / David R. Starbuck 7. Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining West / Donald L. Hardesty IV--Working Women in Urban Communities 8. Mrs. Starr's Profession / Donna J. Seifert 9. Diversity and 19th-Century Domestic Reform: Relationships Among Classes and Ethnic Groups / Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

Historical archaeologists often become so involved in their potsherd patterns they seldom have time or energy left to address the broader processes responsi ble for the material culture patterns they recognize. Some ofus haveurged our colleagues to use the historical record as a springboard from which to launch hypotheses with which to better understand the behavioral and cultural pro cesses responsible for the archaeological record. Toooften, this urging has re sulted in reports designed like a sandwich, having a slice of "historical back ground," followed by a totally different "archaeological record," and closed with a weevil-ridden slice of "interpretation" of questionable nutritive value for understanding the past. The reader is often left to wonder what the archae ological meat had to do with either slice of bread, since the connection be tween the documented history and the material culture is left to the reader's imagination, and the connection between the interpretation and the other disparate parts is tenuous at best. The plethora of stale archaeological sandwiches in the literature has re sulted at the methodological level from a too-narrow focus on the specific history and archaeology ofa site and the individuals involvedon it, rather than a focus on the explanation of broader processes of culture to which the actors and events at the site-specific level responded.

Case studies of nineteenth-century sites from New York City to the American West  The Archaeology of Prostitution and Clandestine Pursuits synthesizes case studies from various nineteenth-century sites where material culture reveals evidence of prostitution, including a brothel in Five Points—New York City’s most notorious neighborhood—and parlor houses a few blocks from the White House and Capitol Hill. Rebecca Yamin and Donna Seifert also examine brothels in the American West—in urban Los Angeles and in frontier sites and mining camps in Sandpoint, Idaho; Prescott, Arizona; and Fargo, North Dakota. The artifact assemblages found at these sites often contradict written records, allowing archaeologists to construct a more realistic and complicated picture of daily life for working-class women involved in commercial sex.  Recognizing the agency involved in practicing a profession that has never been considered respectable, even when it wasn’t outright illegal, Yamin and Seifert also look at the agency of other individuals who participated in illicit activities, defying society privately or even publicly. The authors demonstrate the various ways disempowered groups including immigrants, African Americans, women, and the poor wielded autonomy while constrained by cultural norms. They also consider similar, contemporary expressions of agency, with particular attention to ongoing arguments surrounding the legalization of prostitution. Juxtaposing today’s debates alongside the clandestine pursuits of the past reveals how dominant moral standards determine what individual choices are publicly permissible.  A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney  Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This new edition of the first comprehensive feminist, theoretical synthesis of the archaeological work on gender reflects the extensive changes in the study of gender and archaeology over the past 8 years. New issues—such as sexuality studies, the body, children, and feminist pedagogy—enrich this edition while the author updates work on the roles of women and men in such areas as human origins, the sexual division of labor, kinship and other social structures, state development, and ideology. Nelson provides examples from gender-specific archaeological studies worldwide to examine such traditional myths as woman the gatherer, the goddess hypothesis, and the Amazon warriors, replacing them with a more nuanced, informed treatment of gender based on the latest research. She also examines the structure of the archaeology in her attempt to understand and change a discipline that has made women all but invisible both as researchers and objects of research. Honored as a Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book, Nelson's work will continue to be the benchmark for archaeologists interested in gender as a subject of research and in the profession.

'Gender in Archaeology' provides a feminist theoretical synthesis of the flood of archaeological work on gender. The author examines the roles of women & men in areas as human origins, the sexual division of labour, kinship & other social formations.

Archaeology is one of our most powerful sources of new information about the past, about the lives of our ancient and not-so-ancient ancestors. The contributors to Women in Antiquity consider the theoretical problems involved in discerning what the archaeological evidence tells us about gender roles in antiquity. The book includes chapters on the history of gender research, historical texts, mortuary analysis, household remains, hierarchy, and ethnoarchaeology, with each chapter teasing out the inherent difficulty in interpreting ancient evidence as well as the promise of new understanding. Women in Antiquity offers a fresh, accessible account of how we might grasp the ways in which sexual roles and identities shaped the past.

"This book begins the attempt to answer many of the archaeological questions we are finally asking about the long-ignored but crucially important and ever-present social roles of gender among native Americans in the Southeast." -- Nancy Marie White, University of South Florida, coeditor of Grit-Tempered: Early Women Archaeologists in the Southeastern United States In the first book about the archaeology of gender in native societies of southeastern North America, these lively essays reconstruct the different social roles and relationships adopted by women and men before and after the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century. Case studies explore the ways in which gender differences affected people's daily lives by examining material evidence from archaeological sites, including grave goods, human remains, spatial configurations of burials and architecture, and evidence for economic specialization and the division of labor within households. Contents Introduction: Gender and the Archaeology of the Southeast, by Christopher B. Rodning and Jane M. Eastman 1. Challenges for Regendering Southeastern Prehistory, by Cheryl Claassen 2. The Gender Division of Labor in Mississippian Households: Its Role in Shaping Production for Exchange, by Larissa Thomas 3. Life Courses and Gender among Late Prehistoric Siouan Communities, by Jane M. Eastman 4. Mortuary Ritual and Gender Ideology in Protohistoric Southwestern North Carolina, by Christopher B. Rodning 5. Those Men in the Mounds: Gender, Politics, and Mortuary Practices in Late Prehistoric Eastern Tennessee, by Lynne P. Sullivan 6. Piedmont Siouans and Mortuary Archaeology on the Eno River, North Carolina, by Elizabeth I. Monahan Driscoll, R. P. Stephen Davis, Jr., and H. Trawick Ward 7. Auditory Exostoses: A Clue to Gender in Prehistoric and Historic Farming Communities of North Carolina and Virginia, by Patricia M. Lambert 8. Concluding Thoughts, by Janet E. Levy Jane M. Eastman is visiting assistant professor of anthropology at East Carolina University. Christopher B. Rodning is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.