The French Counts of St. Hubert is a group of aristocrats who left France for homesteads in the Canadian North-West during the late nineteenth century. They settled near and within the town of Whitewood, Saskatchewan, most notably along the Pipestone Valley. The aristocrats attempted to carve out a living in the Prairie West while at the same time maintaining their connections with Europe. Their attempted numerous business ventures all ended in failure, including forays into sheep-herding, horse-raising, cheese production, coffee manufacturing, and sugar beet refining. The Counts also brought with them a large number of French immigrants to act as labourers and establish a Francophone settlement. St. Hubert would become a vibrant community throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The participation of the aristocrats, however, was short-lived. All returned to France by the early 1900s.<p> One of the homesteads associated with the French aristocrats is called Bellevue (Borden No. EbMo-5), a home erected by Comte de Rouffignac in 1888 and eventually transported to another location in 1926. The location of the original homestead was the subject of excavations by the author in the summer of 2006. Over 3000 artifacts were recovered from 17 square metres of excavation. While most of these artifacts are fragmentary in nature, a number of them have implications for understanding the social identity of the French aristocrats.<p> This thesis discusses the social identity of the French aristocrats as framed through the theoretical perspective of practice theory. This social identity is formulated through the expectations they carried into an unfamiliar social space that required experience and compromise to negotiate a position within the social field accepted by all parties. Ethnicity, class, ideology, and gender all played roles in the formulation of this identity. Artifacts from the Bellevue excavation are used to highlight the materiality of the French aristocratic social identity in the Prairie West.

The French Counts of St. Hubert is a group of aristocrats who left France for homesteads in the Canadian North-West during the late nineteenth century. They settled near and within the town of Whitewood, Saskatchewan, most notably along the Pipestone Valley. The aristocrats attempted to carve out a living in the Prairie West while at the same time maintaining their connections with Europe. Their attempted numerous business ventures all ended in failure, including forays into sheep-herding, horse-raising, cheese production, coffee manufacturing, and sugar beet refining. The Counts also brought with them a large number of French immigrants to act as labourers and establish a Francophone settlement. St. Hubert would become a vibrant community throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The participation of the aristocrats, however, was short-lived. All returned to France by the early 1900s.<p> One of the homesteads associated with the French aristocrats is called Bellevue (Borden No. EbMo-5), a home erected by Comte de Rouffignac in 1888 and eventually transported to another location in 1926. The location of the original homestead was the subject of excavations by the author in the summer of 2006. Over 3000 artifacts were recovered from 17 square metres of excavation. While most of these artifacts are fragmentary in nature, a number of them have implications for understanding the social identity of the French aristocrats.<p> This thesis discusses the social identity of the French aristocrats as framed through the theoretical perspective of practice theory. This social identity is formulated through the expectations they carried into an unfamiliar social space that required experience and compromise to negotiate a position within the social field accepted by all parties. Ethnicity, class, ideology, and gender all played roles in the formulation of this identity. Artifacts from the Bellevue excavation are used to highlight the materiality of the French aristocratic social identity in the Prairie West.

This dissertation focuses on mid- to late-19th-century Philadelphia immigrants, their experiences, and how their lives have been remembered or, as in this case, forgotten. During the course of this study Elfreth’s Alley in Old City Philadelphia is used as a lens through which to critically examine elements of immigrant experience and memory construction from an archaeological perspective. Designated as a National Historic Landmark, Elfreth’s Alley is credited with being one of the oldest, continuously-occupied residential streets in the nation. Formed in the early-18th century, Elfreth’s Alley became home to a large immigrant population, predominantly from Ireland and Germany, during the mid- to late-19th century. In the 20th century the narrow thoroughfare was selectively recognized as an important historic site in Philadelphia based on its colonial origin and early American architecture. Within this context, this dissertation expounds two interconnected lines of rediscovery at Elfreth’s Alley. The first is the rediscovery of the physical world in which immigrants lived; the second is the rediscovery of the abstract landscape of memory in which they were forgotten. The archaeological analysis of 124 and 126 Elfreth’s Alley in this text focuses on deconstructing the physical built environment on the street to understand the lived experience of immigrant occupants, while an examination of the public archaeology program implemented on the Alley explores how programming helped reshape memory at the historic site and fostered dialogue about the presentation of history and contemporary immigration. Through combining the results of documentary research, urban archaeological excavation, and public programing, this dissertation reveals the complexity of urban immigrant life and memory at Elfreth’s Alley specifically and Philadelphia at large. / Anthropology

This thesis presents an archaeological, historical, and ethnohistorical study of the nineteenth-century BaPhuthi, a peripatetic, horticulturist chiefdom with a political economy premised upon cattle raiding and active in southern Africa's Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains. The BaPhuthi appear as a valuable case study for exploring how 'tribes' and cultural identities (particularly when rooted in subsistence strategies) are historically and archaeologically constructed. Firstly, the thesis explores how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sociocultural taxonomies were crafted by colonists and colonial subjects alike, with ethnonyms acting as ciphers for political and economic behaviours and locational traits rather than emic identifications. The BaPhuthi's choice to combine traits of hierarchical chiefdoms with pronounced mobility and heterodox, 'outlaw' activities (i.e. voluntarily becoming barbarians) confounded these taxa, as the BaPhuthi failed to conform to expectations of forager, farmer, chiefly, or 'savage' behaviour, rendering them historically marginal or invisible. The thesis thus employs a range of archival evidence to reconstruct BaPhuthi lifeways and historical trajectories. The BaPhuthi emerged and thrived in the borderlands between Moshoeshoe I's Basotho state, the eastern Cape Colony, and the Orange Free State: they exploited the ambiguities of colonial authority to build an extensive network of alliances premised upon cattle raiding, aided by their ability to turn the inhospitable terrain of the Maloti-Drakensberg to their advantage. This analysis illuminates the BaPhuthi as a culturally hybrid, ethnogenetic polity that attracted and discharged a disparate following as needed, while maintaining a degree of solidarity and chiefly hierarchy. The thesis details the BaPhuthi's peripatetic settlement strategy: BaPhuthi leaders established multiple dispersed political seats throughout their territories south of the Senqu River, which they would frequently activate and deactivate, enabling them to settle their heterogeneous following within their territories. The thesis then explores archaeological corollaries of BaPhuthi lifeways: historical analysis suggests that the BaPhuthi's archaeological footprint would be ephemeral (despite their polity's regional significance), and archaeological approaches to Iron Age Farming Communities (based in the historical identities described above) currently do not fully accommodate polities such as the BaPhuthi. The thesis discusses a methodology designed to address the archaeology of the BaPhuthi polity and its results. Considering how the BaPhuthi fashioned a diverse, heterodox chiefdom that manipulated the ambiguities of colonial rule encourages re-visiting prevailing conceptions of how cultural identities and economies are rooted in contingent historical circumstances; drawing on comparative cases from North and South America suggests revising longstanding views of the Maloti-Drakensberg as a marginal colonial theatre and re-positioning heterodox actors as capable of influencing the terms of colonial encounters.

The Battle of New Hope Church was fought on May 25-26, 1864 as part of the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War. This research utilizes historical records along with archaeological fieldwork in order to better understand the battlefield landscape. In particular, I seek to answer whether soldiers behaved in, perceived of, and constructed the battlefield landscape based on a set of cultural norms imposed on them by the strict structure of the military. This research offers insight into the construction of the battlefield landscape at New Hope Church, how it is connected to related battlefield landscapes, and how it has been memorialized as a landscape of conflict.

Surprisingly, clean mains water has only been universally available to the population of Oxfordshire since the second half of the 20th century. This thesis explores the different methods by which water was obtained between the end of the medieval period and the establishment of the contemporary water companies; it shows how archaeological remains can inform understanding of how different groups lived and interacted during that period. It attempts for the first time to catalogue water supply features within the county, having 910 entries to date. Patterns emerging from the data have been used to suggest themes for further study. Statistics and GIS mapping have demonstrated that the availability and quality of water, including the incidence of early holy and healing wells, are dominated firstly by geology and then by differences between the social classes and between urban and rural areas. Themes explored include the relationship between water and disease, whether water supplies differ between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ parishes, the evolution of holy wells into spas, water in leisure activities, its association with memorials and changing attitudes to hygiene. The thesis also examines the various designation systems in place for protecting historic monuments, the level of recording of water features on local and national lists of monuments and how appropriate this framework is for helping the conservation of a valuable resource.

This research explores the subtle distribution of power within early American industrial capitalism, as seen in the nineteenth-century company town of Fayette, Michigan. Research methods for the project include GIS-based analysis of the built environment and artifact patterns; the development of a historical ethnography for the town; and archaeological excavations of household refuse excavated from three class-based neighborhoods (an artifact database is attached to this document in CD format). Issues surrounding power and agency are explored in regard to three heuristic categories of power. In the first category, the company imposed a system of structural, class-based power that is most visible in hierarchical differences in pay and housing, as well as consumer behavior. A second category, bio-power, addresses disciplinary activities surrounding health and the human body. The class system extended to discrepancies in the company's regulation of employee health, as observed in medicinal artifacts, disposal patterns of industrial waste, incidence of intestinal parasites, and unequal access to healthcare. In addition, landscape analysis shows how the built environment served as a disciplinary technology to reinforce hegemonic and naturalized class divisions, to regenerate these divisions through symbolic violence and workers' daily practices, and to impose self-regulation. The third ensemble of power relations is pluralistic, heterarcical, and determined by personal identity (e.g., consumer behavior and gender). Individuals drew upon non-economic capital to bolster social status and express identity apart from the corporate hierarchy. This research explores the social impacts of our industrial heritage and the potential repercussions of industrialization today.

Following years of speculation about the potential economic value of mineral deposits in northeastern Minnesota, the first full-scale attempts to exploit that potential began in 1882. That year, the Minnesota Iron Company (MIC) imported dozens of miners to start extracting iron ore from the Soudan Mine on the south shore of Lake Vermilion. They concurrently imported hundreds of men to Agate Bay on the north shore of Lake Superior, approximately 70 miles south of the mine. The MIC selected Agate Bay as the spot for their ore shipping port and they needed men to start the simultaneous construction of an ore dock in the harbor and a railroad north from the harbor to the mine. Immediately after choosing Agate Bay as the spot for their shipping port location, the MIC bought up all the land along the north and west sides of Agate Bay except for a four-acre parcel that owner Thomas Sexton refused to sell. As the MIC-controlled community of Two Harbors developed around it, Sexton's parcel, which he platted as the community of Agate Bay, remained outside of company control. It quickly developed a reputation as a sea of iniquity that eventually became known as "Hell's Four Acres," which included a particularly notorious section called Whiskey Row. Sexton's platted community of Agate Bay existed for just a few years before the iron company acquired it early in 1886. At that point the company removed or demolished all of the remaining structures and covered much of what had been the settlement of Agate Bay with a coal storage platform. This project examines the town site of Agate Bay by looking at the documentary information in the historical record as well as the material culture remains recovered during archaeological excavations. Agate Bay is examined in terms of its position in a world economy (World Systems Theory) with consideration of the potential impacts of industrial capitalism.

This dissertation addresses how Victorian class hierarchy persisted on the frontier, and manifested in aspects of military life at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Historians have argued that Victorian culture was omnipresent, but forts were located on the frontier, which was removed from the cultural core. While social status differences were a central aspect of Victorian culture, few studies have investigated how resilient class divisions were in differing landscapes. The U.S. western frontier was a landscape of conflict, and under the continual stress of potential violence, it is possible that Victorian social status differences weakened. While status differences in the military were primarily signaled through rank insignia and uniforms, this research focuses on subtle everyday inequalities, such as diet and pet dogs. Three independent lines of evidence from Fort Laramie, Wyoming (1849–1890) suggest that Victorian social status differences did persist despite the location. The Rustic Hotel (1876–1890), a private hotel at Fort Laramie, served standardized Victorian hotel dishes, which could be found in urban upper-class hotels. Within the military, the upper-class officers dined on the best cuts of beef, hunted prestige game birds, and supplemented their diet with sauger/walleye fish. Enlisted men consumed poorer cuts of beef, hunted smaller game mammals, and caught catfish. Officers also owned well-bred hunting dogs, which were integrated into the family. In contrast, a company of enlisted men frequently adopted a communal mongrel as a pet. This project increases our knowledge of the everyday life on the frontier and social relationships between officers and enlisted men in the U.S. Army. It also contributes to a larger understanding of Victorian culture class differences in frontier regions.

Prior to the Civil Rights movement, most cities in the United States had at least one racially segregated neighborhood--a place where the "others" lived. This was typically a geographic location designated by the European American community as the area non-European Americans could reside. In Boise, Idaho, non-Whites lived in the River Street Neighborhood, a place where African Americans, Basque, Japanese, Eastern Europeans, and poor Whites established homes and businesses. River Street existed as a segregated enclave where, out away from prying eyes, African Americans, Basques, and other non-White people could escape overt segregation. This multi-disciplinary dissertation examines the River Street Neighborhood as a 'region of refuge'—a geographic place where residents formed a subculture where many of the racial mores of the time could be subverted and, in many ways, exploited. The dissertation also addresses the ways material culture, oral histories, archival documents, and community based participatory research (CPBR) can coalesce for advocacy for the preservation of minority historic properties.