A Historical Archaeology Of Delaware: People, Contexts, And The Cultures Of Agriculture
A must for both academic historical archaeologists and contract archaeologists in the field, this book constitutes a comprehensive look at the historical archaeology of Delaware from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The approach to archaeological management developed in Delaware over two decades and embodied in this book has broad applicability. Many of the nation’s historical archaeological sites are agricultural, and they present cultural resource managers with considerable challenges. Delaware’s historical archaeology program has begun to explore the “cultures of agriculture” so central to the course of American history.

Historic agricultural sites contain stories waiting to be told about the people who lived on and farmed them and about the transformation of rural societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a process played out across the eastern United States. In a startling new way, Lu Ann De Cunzo takes a holistic approach to the subject, integrating a scholarly research agenda with the program of cultural resource management. Gathering ethnographies of Delaware merchant-farmers, elite planters, middling farmers, tenants, and agricultural laborers of European and African descent, she examines the minute details of landscape, architecture, food, and material goods. These ethnographies increase our understanding of the structure and poetics of “improvement” negotiated by Delaware’s farming people.

By analyzing what she describes as richly detailed archaeological site biographies, De Cunzo reconstructs how Delaware’s farming people actively created their identities and shaped their interactions at home, at work, at church, and in the marketplace as they began to confront industrial capitalism. Informed by a contextual, interpretive perspective, this valuable work reveals the complex interrelationships among environment, technology, economy, social order, and cultural praxis that defined the “cultures of agriculture” in Delaware during the last three centuries.

Lu Ann De Cunzo is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware. She is the co-editor of Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, author of the monograph Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions, and has published articles in Historical Archaeology, Northeast Historical Archaeology, Landscape Journal, and International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

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A Historical Archaeology Of Delaware: People, Contexts, And The Cultures Of Agriculture
A must for both academic historical archaeologists and contract archaeologists in the field, this book constitutes a comprehensive look at the historical archaeology of Delaware from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The approach to archaeological management developed in Delaware over two decades and embodied in this book has broad applicability. Many of the nation’s historical archaeological sites are agricultural, and they present cultural resource managers with considerable challenges. Delaware’s historical archaeology program has begun to explore the “cultures of agriculture” so central to the course of American history.

Historic agricultural sites contain stories waiting to be told about the people who lived on and farmed them and about the transformation of rural societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a process played out across the eastern United States. In a startling new way, Lu Ann De Cunzo takes a holistic approach to the subject, integrating a scholarly research agenda with the program of cultural resource management. Gathering ethnographies of Delaware merchant-farmers, elite planters, middling farmers, tenants, and agricultural laborers of European and African descent, she examines the minute details of landscape, architecture, food, and material goods. These ethnographies increase our understanding of the structure and poetics of “improvement” negotiated by Delaware’s farming people.

By analyzing what she describes as richly detailed archaeological site biographies, De Cunzo reconstructs how Delaware’s farming people actively created their identities and shaped their interactions at home, at work, at church, and in the marketplace as they began to confront industrial capitalism. Informed by a contextual, interpretive perspective, this valuable work reveals the complex interrelationships among environment, technology, economy, social order, and cultural praxis that defined the “cultures of agriculture” in Delaware during the last three centuries.

Lu Ann De Cunzo is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware. She is the co-editor of Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, author of the monograph Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions, and has published articles in Historical Archaeology, Northeast Historical Archaeology, Landscape Journal, and International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

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A Historical Archaeology Of Delaware: People, Contexts, And The Cultures Of Agriculture

A Historical Archaeology Of Delaware: People, Contexts, And The Cultures Of Agriculture

by Lu Ann De Cunzo
A Historical Archaeology Of Delaware: People, Contexts, And The Cultures Of Agriculture

A Historical Archaeology Of Delaware: People, Contexts, And The Cultures Of Agriculture

by Lu Ann De Cunzo

Hardcover(First Edition, First Edition)

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Overview

A must for both academic historical archaeologists and contract archaeologists in the field, this book constitutes a comprehensive look at the historical archaeology of Delaware from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The approach to archaeological management developed in Delaware over two decades and embodied in this book has broad applicability. Many of the nation’s historical archaeological sites are agricultural, and they present cultural resource managers with considerable challenges. Delaware’s historical archaeology program has begun to explore the “cultures of agriculture” so central to the course of American history.

Historic agricultural sites contain stories waiting to be told about the people who lived on and farmed them and about the transformation of rural societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a process played out across the eastern United States. In a startling new way, Lu Ann De Cunzo takes a holistic approach to the subject, integrating a scholarly research agenda with the program of cultural resource management. Gathering ethnographies of Delaware merchant-farmers, elite planters, middling farmers, tenants, and agricultural laborers of European and African descent, she examines the minute details of landscape, architecture, food, and material goods. These ethnographies increase our understanding of the structure and poetics of “improvement” negotiated by Delaware’s farming people.

By analyzing what she describes as richly detailed archaeological site biographies, De Cunzo reconstructs how Delaware’s farming people actively created their identities and shaped their interactions at home, at work, at church, and in the marketplace as they began to confront industrial capitalism. Informed by a contextual, interpretive perspective, this valuable work reveals the complex interrelationships among environment, technology, economy, social order, and cultural praxis that defined the “cultures of agriculture” in Delaware during the last three centuries.

Lu Ann De Cunzo is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware. She is the co-editor of Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, author of the monograph Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions, and has published articles in Historical Archaeology, Northeast Historical Archaeology, Landscape Journal, and International Journal of Historical Archaeology.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781572332492
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
Publication date: 04/30/2004
Edition description: First Edition, First Edition
Pages: 480
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Lu Ann De Cunzo is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware. She is the co-editor of Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, author of the monograph Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions, and has published articles in Historical Archaeology, Northeast Historical Archaeology, Landscape Journal, and International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

Table of Contents

Prefacexiii
1.Brokering the Cultures of Delaware's Agricultural Communities: Archaeologists, Merchant-Farmers, and Tenants1
A Discovery1
The Cultures of Agriculture3
The Culture Broker7
Merchants as Brokers41
Brokers and Cultures and "Frivolous Trinkets"70
2.Historical Archaeology Lessons from Delaware73
History, the People, the Places73
Managing Delaware's Historical Archaeological Resources88
Delaware History91
Distinctly Delaware116
Lessons in Bridge Building120
3."Progressive" New Castle and Kent's "Golden Opportunity"121
Farming Folks121
The Historic Context124
Agricultural Places148
Archaeology of the Cultures of Agriculture156
4.Toward the Cultures of Agriculture165
Encountering the Material World165
Improving Agriculture at the Buchanan-Moffett Farm, 1846-1925166
Remembering an Ogletown Tenant Farm, ca. 1830-1950192
Gone and Almost Forgotten: Remaking the Farm on Muddy Branch, 1850-1900210
Keeping the Gate and Reforming the Farm at Mount Vernon Place, ca. 1844-1890221
5.Brokering Culture at the Intersections: Historical Archaeological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in Delaware's Agricultural Communities231
Encountering Race and Ethnicity in the Material World231
Working on Farms: An African American Family at Home, in the Community, and in Global Context, 1875-1922236
Working Other People's Land and Doing Their Laundry on a Christiana Tenancy after the Civil War270
A Home of Their Own, ca. 1887-1915285
Conclusion: An Archaeology of People, Places, Histories, and the Cultures of Agriculture295
Archaeological Perspectives on the Histories of Delaware's People, Places, and Cultures295
Brokering Improvement: Exchange in Delaware's Agricultural Communities297
Dwelling in New Castle and Kent Agricultural Communities, 1830-1940300
Fencing Capitalist Farming302
Reinventing Tradition on the Farm304
Differences of Place306
Differences of Class309
Differences of Race and Ethnicity310
Future Directions in the Historical Archaeology of the Cultures of Agriculture313
Appendix 1.Jonathon Allee's Purchases, 1809-1810317
Appendix 2.Benjamin Coombe's Purchases, 1809-1810322
Appendix 3.Jonathon Allee's Payments Received, 1809-1810326
Appendix 4.Benjamin Coombe's Payments Received, 1809-1810328
Appendix 5.Property Types in New Castle and Kent Counties, 1830-1940331
Appendix 6.Evaluation of Property Types of New Castle and Kent Counties, 1830-1940353
Notes375
Bibliography403
Index469
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