Historical Archaeology

SPRING 2009
Turlington Hall, Rm. 1315
MWF Period 3 (9:35 to 10:25 am)
Instructor: James M. Davidson, Ph.D.
Office: Turlington B128
Email: davidson@anthro.ufl.edu
Office Hours: Monday 2-5 pm (and by appointment)

Course Description and Objectives: The goal of this course is to provide a solid background in the field of historical archaeology. We will establish the basic history of the discipline, from its birth in the 1930s, to its identity crisis in the 1950s and 1960s, to the present day. Along with more theoretical papers, specific case studies will be used to address a variety of topics such as Material Culture, Artifact Patterning, Consumerism and Socioeconomics, Ethnic Identity, Ideology, etc. Our view of Historical Archaeology will be both particularistic and global.

Required Readings:
1. Orser, Charles E. Jr.
2004 Historical Archaeology (Second Edition). Pearson, Prentice Hall.

2.         James Deetz
2004    In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. Anchor (Revised and Expanded edition)

3.         Electronic documents, comprising key articles and book chapters, will also be posted throughout the semester and downloadable as pdfs from a university server.

REQUIREMENTS
Participation in class discussions is expected, and each student’s input will be crucial. Students are expected to have read the readings for that day, and come to class prepared to discuss them.

Exams: There will be three non-cumulative exams, the format of which will be a mixture of objective questions (e.g., true false, multiple choice, etc), and short answer or essay questions. There will also be a final exam, following this same format, but comprehensive and cumulative.

Synopses of Readings:
For some key readings, a synopsis (i.e., a critical summary) ranging from one to three paragraphs (not to exceed one double spaced 1 inch margins page in length for each reading) will be required and due at the beginning of each class, before we begin the discussion. Readings requiring synopses will be denoted by three bold X’s (e.g., XXX).

Seriation Take-Home Exercise:
For the take-home seriation exercise, students will download the materials from the course web site. The exercise will be posted on-line no and will include all necessary instructions. Students are welcome to team-up with classmates to work through the exercise, but each student is expected to submit their own work. Submitting a literal copy of a classmate’s work is prohibited and will be treated as an act of plagiarism.

The seriation exercise is designed to illustrate basic methods of data collection and analysis using paper examples of actual artifacts. The exercise is essentially a mock version of the same analytical methods archaeologists use to measure, organize, and interpret archaeological remains. It is designed to be both instructive and challenging, but also enjoyable. The take-home exercise is worth 5% of the total grade. Points will be deducted for late seriations.

Grading:
Exams 1 thru 3 (20% each)      60%
Attendance/Class Participation: 5%
Synopses of Key readings        10%
Seriation Exercise                     5%
Final Exam (comprehensive)     20%

A final letter grade will be assigned at the end of the semester, according to this scale:
A         (90-100%)
B+       (86-89%)
B          (80-85%)
C+       (76-79%)
C         (70-75%)
D+       (66-69%)
D         (60-65%)
E          (59% or below)

Attendance: Regular attendance is expected. Excessive unexcused absences will detract from the student’s final grade (see above).

Make-up Exams:
If an exam is missed, and the absence was pre-arranged, or in the event of illness accompanied by a physician’s note, a make-up exam will be given. No make-up exams will be given for students who miss the testing period due to unexcused absences.

Accommodating Students with Disabilities:
Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student, who in turn must provide this documentation to me when requesting accommodation.

Academic Honesty:
The University reminds every student of the implied pledge of Academic Honesty:
“on any work submitted for credit the student has neither received nor given unauthorized aid.”

THIS REFERS TO CHEATING AND PLAGIARISM, WHICH WILL NOT BE TOLERATED IN THIS CLASS

Consult the Student Guide at www.dso.ufl.edu/stg/ for further information. To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use another person’s idea, opinion, or theory; any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings (any pieces of information) that are not common knowledge; quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words; or paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

Students caught cheating will be referred to the University administration for disciplinary action, the consequences of which can include failure of this course, and possible expulsion from the University.

CLASS WILL NOT MEET ON JAN 9th;
I WILL BE ATTENDING THE SOCIETY FOR HISTORICAL ARCHAEOOGY
MEETINGS, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Week 2 (Jan 12 thru Jan 16): Introduction and Early Definitions (continued)

Readings (from website):
Binford, Lewis R.
1962 Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28(2):217-225. XXX (download here)

South, Stanley
1979 Historic Site Content, Structure, and Function. American Antiquity 44(2):213-237. (download here)

Dickens, Roy S. Jr. and William R. Bowen
1980 Problems and Promises in Urban Historical Archaeology: The MARTA Project. Historical Archaeology 14:42-57.

Heath, Barbara J. and Amber Bennett
2000 “The little Spots allow’d them”: The Archaeological Study of African-American Yards. Historical Archaeology 34(2):38-55.

Nobles, Connie H.
2000 Gazing Upon the Invisible: Women and Children at the Old Baton Rouge Penitentiary. American Antiquity 65(1):5-14. XXX

Pena, Elizabeth S. and Jacqueline Denmon
2000 The Social Organization of a Boarding House: Archaeological Evidence from the Buffalo Waterfront. Historical Archaeology 34(1):79-96.

Adams, William H.
1976 Trade Networks and Interaction Spheres – A View from Silcott. Historical Archaeology 10:99-112. XXX

South, Stanley
1978 Pattern Recognition in Historical Archaeology. American Antiquity 43(2):223-230. XXX

Shackel, Paul A. and Barbara Little
1992 Post-Processual Approaches to Meanings and Uses of Material Culture in Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 26(3):5-11.XXX

Cabek, Melanie, Mark D. Groover, and Scott J. Wagers
1995 Health Care and the Wayman A.M.E. Church. Historical Archaeology 29(2):55-76. XXX

Seifert, Donna
1991 Within Site of the White House: The Archaeology of Working Women. Historical Archaeology 25(4):83-108.XXX

Babson, David W.
1990 The Archaeology of Racism and Ethnicity on Southern Plantations. Historical Archaeology 24(4):20-28. XXX

Orser, Charles E. Jr.
1999 The Challenge of Race to American Historical Archaeology. American Anthropologist 100(3):661-668.

Voss, Barbara L.
2005 The Archaeology of Overseas Chinese Communities. World Archaeology 37(3):424-439. XXX

Week 11 (March 16 thru March 20): Capitalism and colonialism, class and consumers

Wurst, LouAnn and Robert Fitts
1999 Why confront class? Historical Archaeology 33(1):1-7.

Wurst, LouAnn
1999 Internalizing Class in Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 33(1):7-21.

Wall, Diane Dizerega
1999 Examining Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century New York City. Historical Archaeology 33(1):102-117.

Mullins, Paul
2001 Racializing the Parlor: Race and Victorian Bric-Brac Consumption. In Race and the Archaeology of Identity, edited by Charles E. Orser, Jr., pp. 158-176. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. XXX

Praetzellis, Adrian and Mary Praetzellis
1998 A Connecticut Merchant in Chinadom: A Play in One Act. Historical Archaeology 32(1):86-93. XXX

Exam covers Site Survey, Time and Space, and Material Culture articles and lectures.

Week 12 (March 23 thru March 27): Social Relations (Domination/Resistance; Culture Contact/Culture Change)

Praetzellis, Adrian and Mary Praetzellis
1998 A Connecticut Merchant in Chinadom: A Play in One Act. Historical Archaeology 32(1):86-93.

Wheaton, Thomas R. and Patrick H. Garrow
1985 Acculturation and the Archaeological Record in the Carolina Lowcountry. In The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, edited by Theresa Singleton, pp. 239-269. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.

Howson, Jeane E.
1990 Social Relations and Material Culture: A Critique of the Archaeology of Plantation Slavery. Historical Archaeology 24(4):78-91. XXX

Young, Amy
1996 Archaeological Evidence of African-Style Ritual and Healing Practices in the Upland South. Tennessee Anthropologist, 21(2):139-155.

Fennell, Christopher C.
2003 Group Identity, Individual Creativity, and Symbolic Generation in a BaKongo Diaspora. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 7(1):1-31. XXX

Davidson, James M.
2004 Rituals Captured in Context and Time: Charm Use in North Dallas Freedman’s Town (1869-1907), Dallas, Texas. Historical Archaeology 38(2):22-54.

Farrell, James J.
1980 Inventing the American Way of Death, 1830-1920. Temple University Press, Philadelphia. (Pages 16-73).

Cannon, Aubrey
1989 The Historic Dimension in Mortuary Expressions of Status and Sentiment. Current Anthropology 30(4):437-458. XXX

Little, Barbara J., Kim M. Lamphear, and Douglas W. Owsley
1992 Mortuary display and status in a nineteenth-century Anglo-American cemetery in Manassas, Virginia. American Antiquity 57(3):397-418. XXX

Jamieson, Ross W.
1995 Material culture and social death: African-American burial practices. Historical Archaeology 29(4):39-58.

Readings (from website):
Streich, Gregory W.
2002 Is There a Right to Forget? Historical Injustices, Race, Memory and Identity. New Political Science 24(4):525-542.

Dye, T. Thomas
1996 Rosewood, Florida: The Destruction of an African American Community. The Historian 58(3):605-622. XXX

Williams, John A.
1968 The Long Hot Summers of Yesteryear. The History Teacher 1(3):9-23.

Davidson, James M. and Edward Tennant 2008 A Potential Archaeology of Rosewood, Florida: The Process of Remembering a Community and a Tragedy. The SAA Archaeological Record, the Magazine of the Society for American Archaeology (January) 8(1):13-16. XXX

Ethics, Politics, Descendant Communities
Morrell, Virginia
1995 Who Owns the Past? Science 268(5216):1424-1426. XXX

Lynott, Mark J.
1997 Ethical Principles and Archaeological Practice: Development of an Ethics Policy. American Antiquity 62(4):589-599.

Franklin, Maria
1997 “Power to the People”: Sociopolitics and the Archaeology of Black Americans. Historical Archaeology 31(3):36-50.

McDavid, Carol
1997 Descendants, Decisions, and Power: The Public Interpretation of the Archaeology of the Levi Jordan Plantation. Historical Archaeology 31(3):114-131. XXX

Ethics, Politics, Descendant Communities (Continued)
Patten, M. Drake
1997 Cheers of Protest? The Public, the Post, and the Parable of Learning. Historical Archaeology 31(3):131-139.

Epperson, Terrence W.
2004 Critical Race Theory and the Archaeology of the African Diaspora. Historical Archaeology 38(1):101-108.

Final Exam Period 28C: (Tuesday – April 28 – 12:30 to 2:30 pm)
******The Final Exam is at least in part, comprehensive and cumulative******

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY ANT 4930 (Section 7786)

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
ANT 4930 (Section 7786)