Archaeology of New York

Final Exam

British Colony

When did the English take Manhattan?

1664

How did the colony change in the 1700s

Dutch landowners stayed; Dutch inheritance laws remained; Religious freedom was protected; English becomes the jurisdictional language; Government shifts to an English model; slavery intensifies; Ethnically diverse: Dutch, English, Jewish Portuguese and Spanish, and Africans

How did the LANDSCAPE of colony change in the 1700s

The City expands north beyond Wall Street; Battery Park becomes the first green space in the city; the shoreline is filled in

Black, British, and immigrant populations in the 1700s

Majority British; 20% Black; High German, French, Scottish, and Ireland Scot immigration (Protestants)

What was work like in the colony?

Centered on maritime trade; artisans; cartmen (transports goods); tavern keepers. Women helped their husbands’ businesses

What was the role of oysters in the colony?

A staple food and part of the economy; could be pickled or prepared in many different ways

What were the social life and classes like?

Elite are merchants and landowners; then there are laborers; then enslaved Africans

What was the role of taverns and coffee houses?

Gathering places for men of the upper classes

Revolutionary Era

Where were British soldiers quartered?

British Barracks at the Commons, October 1757

What revolutionary activity happened in NYC before the war?

Protests against Stamp Act 1765-6; First documented liberty pole as a response to British barracks 1766; NY ignores the Quartering Act of 1767; The Townsends Acts punish NY and the merchants boycott British goods 1768; Battle of Golden Hill (unplanned skirmish) 1770; The New York “tea party” 1774

What was the Battle of Long Island?

The biggest battle in the entire war. George Washington escaped near death

What is the Marylanders Burial controversy?

The Maryland soldiers were killed protecting Washington. They were thought to have been found a few blocks away from where they were thought to have been killed, though unlikely is the case

National Identity

How is Material Culture used to produce American identity?

Prints and texts on ceramics

How are nations intentionally constructed ideas/identities?

An “imagined community” because there is a “horizontal comradeship”

What national characteristics do the ceramics produce?

Divinely blessed; ties to Greece/Rome; national comradeship; Liberty

Who lived at Beekman? Assay? How did they influence their nation?

Isaac Praul, a voyager; Claude Fortin, French glovemaker; Cortland Van Beuren, politician. Multiethnic, still a port city and a place for immigrants

What was the political and social context following the war?

A huge increase in commerce, and an increase in population

Haunted New York

Examples of palimpsests and hauntings

Demapped streets, ghost signs, bricked windows and doorways, building traces, inscriptions and cornerstones,

Why do hauntings “blur timescapes?”

Engaging with pieces of the past which are incomplete and/or erased

Why is the concept of hauntings useful in archaeology?

Allows archaeologists to “acknowledge and attempt to describe what cannot be known but is felt and experienced nonetheless.”

The Bronx and Rural NYC in 1800s

What was the city scape like?

Most of the city was rural, with agricultural economy, until the mid-19th; Outer boroughs did not become residential suburbs until the turn of the century

What were the main farms and crops?

The three types of farms were farmsteads, farm villages, and plantations, and they primarily produced wheat, corn, and oats, and raised livestock for shipment to the Caribbean

What is the role of slavery?

40% of white households had enslaved labor within 12 miles of the city, more than any southern state

Slavery, Race, and Free Black Communities

What is the connection between race and slavery?

The pseudo-scientific theory of race was developed to maintain slavery; the 1706 Act of encouraging of baptisms turned the chattel slavery from religious to racial

What is the colonial history of slavery in NYC?

Arrived within a few years of the first colony; labor included stevedores, porters, construction, domestic work, nursing, farm work; Native Americans would easily run away and blend in if enslaved;

What are the sites discussed in the Smith reading?

Seneca Village and Weeksville

What is the date of emancipation in New York State?

1827

What is the property requirement for voting?

$250 worth

What is the significance of Seneca Village and Weeksville?

Free Black communities of the middle class, were systemically erased

Immigration

How large was the scale of immigration into NYC? Which groups were the biggest in the first half of the 19th century? the second?

Irish and Germans at first, Germans and Italians later. Hundreds of thousands

Where did immigrants enter the US?

Castle Garden between 1855-89; Ellis Island between 1892-1924

What did archaeologists find at quarantine hospitals?

Mostly bones middle aged European men, with heave physical stressors

What are materiality, agency, and diaspora? And how are they relevant to Irish immigrants and soda water?

Materiality has resonance, the power of an object to evoke responses, wonder, the power to stop the viewer in their tracks, and reverberation, causing a change in the consciousness. Agency is the ability to act freely, often in contradiction to cultural structures. Diaspora is a population displaced from the homeland usually with a romanticized version of their origin. Irish immigrants used soda water as a reminder of pattern fairs and holy wells.

What is Nativism and the Know Nothing party?

Nativism is a xenophobic supremacy of native-born Americans, the Know Nothing party was their party. White protestants.

What are some tropes used to stigmatize immigrants?

Invading the country, filthy and diseased, criminals, have too many kids, will not assimilate

Poverty in NYC

How was poverty viewed? How has it changed?

Deserving vs undeserving poor. Largely the same, with an expanded definition of deserving.

How was poverty managed? How has it changed?

Almshouses for the deserving; undeserving as beggars. Relief and homeless centers, still beggars.

The Five Points

Where is it located? Who lived there? What were the stereotypes about it?

Lower East, intersection of Worth, Baxter, and Park streets. Mainly Irish immigrants. Poor, rugged, sneaky, lazy etc.

What are “lurid tales” and “homely stories? What are they based on? Why are they told and by whom?

Lurid tales are media productions that would justify missionary activity. Homely stories are based on archaeological evidence and historical documents, and present more accurate living conditions with no or little agenda

Gentrification

What is gentrification? What are its effects?

A replacement of working class resident by middle income newcomers, changing the social character of the neighborhood; economic and demographic change, developed by Ruth Glass

What are its historical structural connections?

Colonialism and anti-colonials resistance, such as historic preservations of communities

How has it been exacerbated by capitalism?

The potential profit to be made in disinvested areas, “rent-gap theory,” developed by Neil Smith

Who has the Right to the City? What does that mean?

Historic residents should have the Right to the City, which means having the common right to transform the city for themselves

What is The United Order of Tents Eastern District #3? How can historic preservation and archaeology be used as resistance?

A heritage and historic preservation organization resisting gentrification in Bed-Stuy, 87 MacDonough Street. These organizations are forms of collective effort against gentrification

Cumulative

What is Cultural Resources Management (CRM)?

Contract archaeology, established through a series of federal, state, and local laws

What are descendant communities?

A cultural and spiritual heritage

What is the importance of the African Burial Ground

Proof of slavery in NYC history. A victory for the descendant communities and proves that archaeology can be used for resistance

What is the importance of Stadt Huys?

The first major archaeological excavation in NYC; proved that archaeology in NYC can produce a great deal of history

Who were the first Indigenous inhabitants of Manhattan? How did they live?

Lenape; developed agriculture and pottery in the 1000s; fished and lived in villages; 15,000 at the time of contact; still around today

City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR)

Triggered when a development project is undertaken by the city, gets city funding

National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) section 106

If there is significance and integrity to the site, it may receive permits and funding

Site

Any place where there are physical remains of past human occupation

Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC)

The city agency that oversees archaeological work

Testing

After determining that there is significance, checking if anything survived. Soil borings, test trenches, shovel test pits, non-invasive testings: ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity, magnetometry

Mitigation

Project redesign, site monitoring, and archaeological excavation, to mitigate harm to artifacts

Context

The relationship between artifacts and their surroundings: other artifacts, soil, provenience (place of origin), and associations

Stratigraphy

Stratum (layers) of soil/earth

Artifact

Objects made, modified, or used by humans

Feature

Non-portable artifact

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

Meant that human remains of Native Americans be returned to their descendant communities