Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Dwellers by the Sea: Native American Adaptations along the Southern Coasts of Eastern North America

This comparative synthesis examines archaeological and ethnohistoric data pertaining to Native American coastal adaptations along the southern coasts of the eastern United States. We consider the totality of experiences of people living along coasts, examining such issues as technological innovation, environmental variability and change as it relates to site visibility, the built environment, the use of coastal food resources, the nature of complex coastal Calusa and Guale polities, and European contact. We link our topical discussions to broader issues in anthropology, arguing that the archaeology of southern coasts has much to contribute to our understanding of worldwide adaptations to coastal environments and broad-scale shifts in the trajectories of human societies.     

Early African America: Archaeological Studies of Significance and Diversity

This article examines archaeological studies of the cultural heritage and social dynamics of African descendant populations in the United States and Canada from AD 1400 through 1865. European colonial enterprises expanded in Africa and the Americas during that time span, effecting an accompanying movement of free and captive Africans into North America. Archaeological investigations of early African America are remarkable for the diversity of analytic scales and research questions pursued. This diversity of research efforts has yielded a highly productive, interdisciplinary expansion of knowledge concerning African diaspora histories.     

Graffiti of Ships in the Bahá’í Mansion at Mazra‘ih,Israel

Graffiti of ships were found on a wall of a courtyard of the Bahá’í mansion in the village of Mazra‘ih, near Akko, Israel. It is suggested that three graffiti depict frigates, near Akko, the largest of about 850 t burden, some time in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. This is evidence for maritime activities at Akko in these years, and for the type of ships.     

Contemporary Archaeology in Transit: The Artifacts of a 1991 Van

This article uses an assemblage of recently abandoned material culture as a medium for exploring the world in which we all live. First it is suggested that if we are to study contemporary material culture, then our methodology must be collaborative, multivocal, and innovative. Next, an assemblage of materials recovered from a 1991 Ford Transit van, used by archaeologists in the field for 8 years, is investigated as a case study. The vehicle is epistemologically dismantled, and it is demonstrated that the car part should be treated as a diagnostic artifact. A close investigation of the recovered small finds uncovers explicit information about how the van was used and by whom. As with all people in every era, archaeologists too, leave material evidence of their passing. This evidence can be subversive and brings up questions about how archaeology is practiced today. Additionally, it is found that limitations to contemporary material culture also arise and esoteric knowledge can sometimes trump archaeological inquiry.     

Respectable Rags: Working-Class Poverty and the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal Strike

This article uses the events of the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal strike and the cooperative work of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project to explore emergent historical narratives of working-class poverty and the role they play in shaping contemporary ideologies and public policy. It uses clothing as an entrée into discussions of the deserving and undeserving poor, and asks how competing groups used dress in the context of the 1913–14 southern Colorado coal strike to fashion subjects in particular ways. In so doing, it demonstrates the ineffectiveness of either-or dichotomies of deserving and undeserving that still influence current public policy.     

Poverty in the Modern City: Retrospects and Prospects

The outcome of over fifteen years research on large urban assemblages from the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne is discussed in terms of approaches to the archaeology of the modern city as they have evolved over the period. To better understand the archaeology of urban poverty we require innovations in both methods and ideas, the most far-reaching being a transnational archaeology of urban poverty founded on the analysis of migration, consumption and class formation.     

Transformative Transportation: The Early Twentieth-Century Railroad on the Southwest Florida Frontier

The Venice Train Depot is a case study for an archaeology of transportation, an examination of new places and more rapid travels over the modern period. The goal of this approach is to capture the dynamics of landscapes, agency, and movement. There have been productive discussions of transportation networks and national integration; methodological discussions have noted the need to account of the movement of things in the analysis of the material record. The case study exposes the dynamics of change for the Florida frontier in the twentieth century focused on the construction of a railroad line and station in Venice, Florida.     

A Trip to the Mountains: Travel and Social Relations in the Catskill Mountains of New York

The Catskill Mountains in upstate New York have been a tourist destination since the early nineteenth century. At a superficial level, the history of Catskill tourism follows a basic trajectory from elite destination in the nineteenth century to more inclusive tourist area in the twentieth century. This trajectory incorporates a “trickle down” theory of tourism and leisure that masks the complexity of changes in social relations. Jewish tourism in the Catskills evidences how class, ethnic, and gender relations intertwined in the creation of a specific place—the Borscht Belt. Archaeology in the Borscht Belt places tourism within larger capitalist relations in America and complicates concepts of tourism as consumption and leisure.