ASH3002y Class Notes
February 17, 1999

Colonial Arts and Material Culture

Holdovers on witch-hunting in New England:

• reports on chapters 13 (Tamara) and 17 (Katie)
• discussion of Salem episode
  • documents
  • Salem Possessed
  • Issues:
    • How anomalous was this?
    • comments about the approaches reflected by the various texts?

consideration of theoretical texts about material culture studies:

• John A. Kouwenhoven, "American Culture: Words or Things?" in Material Culture Studies in America, ed. Thomas J. Schlereth (Nashville:  American Association for State and Local History Press, 1982) 79-92.
• Thomas J. Schlereth, "Material Culture Studies in America, 1876-1976," in Schlereth, 1-75.
  • Schlereth's nine approaches to material culture studies:
    • The art history paradigm
    • The symbolist perspective
    • The cultural history orientation
    • The environmentalist preoccupation
    • The functionalist rationale
    • The structuralist view
    • The behavioralistic concept
    • The national character focus
    • The social history paradigm
• Henry Glassie, "Folk Art," in Schlereth 124-140.

applying these ideas/methods:

• mystery object
• James Deetz and Edwins S. Dethlefsen, "Death's Head, Cherub, Urn, Willow" in Schlereth 195-205.
• other objects of particular interest for historical archaelogists:  pipes, china (See James Deetz, "Recalling Things Forgotten:  Archaeology and the American Artifact," in Small Things Forgotten:  The Archaeology of Early American Life (Doubleday, 1980).

websites for further exploration:

• APVA Jamestown Recovery Project :
• what's been found:
• Colonial Williamsburg
• Laura Arnold's Museum of Material Culture
• Randy Bass's Material Culture in Colonial America
  • Thomas Kendel stone, Wakefield, MA, 1678
  • John Foster stone, Northern Burial Ground, Dorchester, MA, 1681
  • Lt. William Hescy stone, 1689
  • Thaddeus Maccarty stone, Boston, 1705
  • Buckley stone, Copp's Hill, Boston, 1716
  • Cpt. Nathanial Waldron stone, Newport, RI, 1769
  • Small Child Gravestone, Rhode Island, 1771
  • In memory of Caesar, 1780
  • Mary and John Pember stone, Franklin, CT, 1783
  • Mary Hinckely stone, Brookfield, MA, 1798
• Seventeenth-century American Architecture
• Emily Hawkins's project on American Gravestones of the Late Eighteenth Century
• Tithing-stick
• Find-a-grave
  • John Winthrop's grave
  • Trinity Church cemetery, New York, NY
    • Alexander Hamilton's grave