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Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic by
A 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title New scholarship provides insights into the archaeology and cultural history of African American life from a collection of sites in the Mid-Atlantic This groundbreaking volume explores the archaeology of African American life and cultures in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, using sites dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Sites in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York are all examined, highlighting the potential for historical archaeology to illuminate the often overlooked contributions and experiences of the region's free and enslaved African American settlers. Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic brings together cutting-edge scholarship from both emerging and established scholars. Analyzing the research through sophisticated theoretical lenses and employing up-to-date methodologies, the essays reveal the diverse ways in which African Americans reacted to and resisted the challenges posed by life in a borderland between the North and South through the transition from slavery to freedom. In addition to extensive archival research, contributors synthesize the material finds of archaeological work in slave quarter sites, tenant farms, communities, and graveyards. Editors Michael J. Gall and Richard F. Veit have gathered new and nuanced perspectives on the important role free and enslaved African Americans played in the region's cultural history. This collection provides scholars of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, African American studies, material culture studies, religious studies, slavery, the African diaspora, and historical archaeologists with a well-balanced array of rural archaeological sites that represent cultural traditions and developments among African Americans in the region. Collectively, these sites illustrate African Americans' formation of fluid cultural and racial identities, communities, religious traditions, and modes of navigating complex cultural landscapes in the region under harsh and disenfranchising circumstances.
Call Number: Penn Museum Library. E185.9 .A73 2017ISBN: 9780817319656Publication Date: 2017
Digging New Jersey's Past by
When people think of archaeology, they commonly think of unearthing the remains of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Central or South America. But some fascinating history can be found in your own New Jersey backyard ¾ if you know where to look. Richard Veit takes readers on a well-organized guided tour through four hundred years of Garden State development as seen through archaeology in Digging New Jerseys Past. This illustrated guidebook takes readers to some of the states most interesting discoveries and tells us what has been learned or is being learned from them. The diverse array of archaeological sites, drawn from all parts of the state, includes a seventeenth-century Dutch trading post, the site of the Battle of Monmouth, the gravemarkers of freed slaves, and a 1920s railroad roundhouse, among others. Veit begins by explaining what archaeologists do: How do they know where to dig? What sites are likely to yield important information? How do archaeologists excavate a site? How are artifacts cataloged, stored, and interpreted? He then moves through the states history, from the contact of first peoples and explorers, to colonial homesteads, Revolutionary War battlefields, cemeteries, railroads, and factories. Veit concludes with some thoughts about the future of archaeological research in New Jersey and with suggestions on ways that interested individuals can become involved in the field.
Call Number: F136 .V45 2002ISBN: 0813531128Publication Date: 2002
Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600-1850 by
The Delaware Valley is a distinct region situated within the Middle Atlantic states, encompassing portions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. With its cultural epicenter of Philadelphia, its surrounding bays and ports within Maryland and Delaware, and its conglomerate population of European settlers, Native Americans, and enslaved Africans, the Delaware Valley was one of the great cultural hearths of early America. The region felt the full brunt of the American Revolution, briefly served as the national capital in the post-Revolutionary period, and sheltered burgeoning industries amidst the growing pains of a young nation. Yet, despite these distinctions, the Delaware Valley has received less scholarly treatment than its colonial equals in New England and the Chesapeake region. In Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600-1850, Richard Veit and David Orr bring together fifteen essays that represent the wide range of cultures, experiences, and industries that make this region distinctly American in its diversity. From historic-period American Indians living in a rapidly changing world to an archaeological portrait of Benjamin Franklin, from an eighteenth-century shipwreck to the archaeology of Quakerism, this volume highlights the vast array of research being conducted throughout the region. Many of these sites discussed are the locations of ongoing excavations, and archaeologists and historians alike continue to debate the region's multifaceted identity. The archaeological stories found within Historical Archeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600-1850 reflect the amalgamated heritage that many American regions experienced, though the Delaware Valley certainly exemplifies a richer experience than most: it even boasts the palatial home of a king (Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon and former King of Naples and Spain). This work, thoroughly based on careful archaeological examination, tells the stories of earlier generations in the Delaware Valley and makes the case that New England and the Chesapeake are not the only cultural centers of colonial America.
Call Number: F157.D4 H56 2014ISBN: 9781572339972Publication Date: 2014
New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones by
From the earliest memorials used by Native Americans to the elaborate structures of the present day, Richard Veit and Mark Nonestied use grave markers to take an off-beat look at New Jersey's history that is both fascinating and unique. New Jersey Cemeteries and Tombstones presents a culturally diverse account of New Jersey's historic burial places from High Point to Cape May and from the banks of the Delaware to the ocean-washed Shore, to explain what cemeteries tell us about people and the communities in which they lived. The evidence ranges from somber seventeenth-century decorations such as hourglasses and skulls that denoted the brevity of colonial life, to modern times where memorials, such as a life-size granite Mercedes Benz, reflect the materialism of the new millennium. Also considered are contemporary novelties such as pet cemeteries and what they reveal about today's culture. To tell their story the authors visited more than 1,000 burial grounds and interviewed numerous monument dealers and cemetarians. This richly illustrated book is essential reading for history buffs and indeed anyone who has ever wandered inquisitively through their local cemeteries.
Call Number: F135 .V45 2008ISBN: 9780813542355Publication Date: 2008
Acorns and Bitter Roots by
Starch grain analysis in the temperate climates of eastern North America using the Delaware River Watershed as a case study for furthering scholarly understanding of the relationship between native people and their biophysical environment in the Woodland Period People regularly use plants for a wide range of utilitarian, spiritual, pharmacological, and dietary purposes throughout the world. Scholarly understanding of the nature of these uses in prehistory is particularly limited by the poor preservation of plant resources in the archaeological record. In the last two decades, researchers in the South Pacific and in Central and South America have developed microscopic starch grain analysis, a technique for overcoming the limitations of poorly preserved plant material. Messner's analysis is based on extensive reviews of the literature on early historic, prehistoric native plant use, and the collation of all available archaeobotanical data, a review of which also guided the author in selecting contemporary botanical specimens to identify and in interpreting starch residues recovered from ancient plant-processing technologies. The evidence presented here sheds light on many local ecological and cultural developments as ancient people shifted their subsistence focus from estuarine to riverine settings. These archaeobotanical datasets, Messner argues, illuminate both the conscious and unintentional translocal movement of ideas and ecologies throughout the Eastern Woodlands.
Call Number: E78.E2 M47 2011ISBN: 9780817356491Publication Date: 2011
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Cheyenne Riehl
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Cheyenne Riehl
Museum Library Collections and Outreach Intern, 2019-2020
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Museum Library Collections and Outreach Intern, 2019-2020
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
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Deb Stewart
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Deb Brown Stewart
Head, Museum Library
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Head, Museum Library
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215 898-4021
Subjects: Anthropology & Archaeology