March 2

Colonial Arts and Material Culture

EARLY AC HOMEPAGE | LECTURE NOTES

Reading:

• John A. Kouwenhoven, "American Culture: Words or Things?" in Kouwenhoven, Half a Truth Is Better Than None (University of Chicago, 1982) pp. 11-29.
• James Deetz, "Recalling Things Forgotten: Archaeology and the American Artifact," in Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: The Archeology of Early American Life ( Doubleday, 1980), pp. 2-25.

Other materials for lecture:

• APVA Jamestown Recovery Project :
• what's been found:
• Colonial Williamsburg
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's gallery of 18th-century images and objects
• 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
• Tithing-stick
• another object
• Find-a-grave
  • John Winthrop's grave
  • Trinity Church cemetery, New York, NY
    • Alexander Hamilton's grave

   Other useful texts:

• Schlereth, Thomas J.  Material Culture Studies in America.  Nashville:   American Association for State and Local History, 1982. (A useful anthology.)
• Schlereth, Thomas J.   "Material Culture Studies in America, 1876-1976."  Material Culture Studies in America.  Nashville:   American Association for State and Local History, 1982. 1-75.
  • Schlereth lays out a history of material culture studies. 
  • He also lists 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
• Deetz, James and Edwin S. Dethlefsen.  "Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow."    Material Culture Studies in America.  Nashville:   American Association for State and Local History, 1982.  195-205.

  EARLY AC HOMEPAGE | LECTURE NOTES