Historical Archaeology

Architectural History 3604/7604 Anthropology 3850/7850	Place: Campbell 105
University of Virginia	Wednesday:4:30-7:00
Fall 2009	Fraser D.Neiman

Description Historical archaeology is the archaeological study of the continental and transoceanic human migrations that began in the fifteenth century, their effects on native peoples, and historical trajectories of the societies that they created. This course offers an introduction to the field. It emphasizes how theoretical models, analytical methods, and archaeological data can be combined to make and evlaluate credible inferences about the cultural dynamics of the past. The class combines lecture and discussion with computer workshops, in which students have a chance to explore historical issues raised in the reading and lectures. Our principle historical focus this semester is change in the conflicting economic and social strategies pursued by Europeans, Africans, and Native-Americans, and their descendents in the 17th-century and 18th-century Chesapeake. The course is designed to teach students in architectural history, history, and archaeology how to use theoretical models, simple statistical methods, and software applications, including spreadsheets, databases, and GIS, to address important historical questions The course is structured around three projects. In the first we will look at change over time at Jamestown in one of the world's earliest mass-produced consumer goods: clay tobacco pipes. We will use the seriation method, models of consumption, and some simple statistical techniques to measure and explain variation in imported and locally-made pipe assemblages. What factors led to the rise and demise of locally made pipes in the Chesapeake during the 17th century? What can this tell us about changing social structure? In the second project we will investigate variation in early plantation house plans and the use of space around them. We will evaluate hypotheses about the social use of space, based on plans, against independent evidence from the spatial distribution of artifacts around houses, using computer mapping techniques. What can we learn from plans and artifact distributions about changing social relationships between elites and the servants and slaves that worked for them during the 17th and early-18th centuries? In the final project we use space-syntax analysis to explore variation between the plans of 18th and early 19th-century houses built by elites in the Chesapeake, Caribbean, and England. To what extent did slavery influence the layout of elite living space in the two slave societies compred to England?

Course Schedule and Reading The schedule and readling list for the course are available here. Nearly all journal articles and book chapters will be found on Collab.

Problem Sets Problem Set 1:Seriation at the Clifts Plantation Site.

Projects Project 1: Stylistic Dynamics of White and Red-Clay Pipes. Project 2: House Plans, Site Structure, and the Use of Space. Project 3: Gentry house plans in the Chesapeake and England.

Datasets Clifts Plantation Data JamestownPipeData.xls. An Excel file that contains stem-hole diameter data for imported and locally made pipes from Jamestown Island sites. Source: Cotter, John 1958, Archaeological Excavations at Jamestown Virginia , National Park Service, Washington DC. JamestownPlan.pdf. Archaeological Plan of National Park Service Excavations at Jamestown. Source: Cotter 1958. www.chesapeakearchaeology.org A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture Rich Neck Plantation Data Compton Plantation Data St.John's Data Burle's Townland Data House plans in .dxf format

Software Tools Excel Tutorial Excel skills a bit rusty? Try this tutorial. Scatterplot Labels for Excel An Excel Add-In that allows you to label scatterplots (something that Lotus-123 could do in 1982, but Excel cannot, 20 years later). Download to a folder on your hard drive, double click the self-extracting archive label_97.exe . Checkout readme.doc for further instructions. Pipestem means and standard deviations in Excel Data from Harrington 1954. Frequency-Seriation Diagrams An Excel spreadsheet with VBA code by Bill Hunt that draws frequency-seriation diagrams a la Jim Ford. Graph Theory Tool Stand alone shareware application for drawing graphs and extracting adjaceny matrices. Matrix 2.3 Link to an Excel Add-In that, among other things, computes shortest-path distances from adjacency matrices.

Requirements I expect you to do the assigned reading on time on time, attend every class, and participate thoughtfully in all class discussions, and turn written work in on time. Written work for the course consists of the three class projects,6-10 pages each. There will also be occasional short homework assignments. The class projects are due at the beginning of class on the day specified in the Course Schedule. Each student is responsible for doing a brief (~20 minutes), illustrated presentation to the class on the results of one of the projects. Presentations will be given on the due-date of the project. Late Work Policy I will deduct 1 letter grade for each day that written work is late, without written documentation from a physician or Dean attesting to your physical incapacity. Please plan your work accordingly.

Evaluation Class participation: 10%; the three class projects: 25% each for undergraduates, 20% ech for graduates students; the final paper (grad students only): 15%; the project presentation: 10%; homework: 5%.