Christina J. Hodge

Non-bodies of knowledge: Anatomized remains from the Holden Chapel collection, Harvard University

In response to the violence of the Revolutionary War and affirming Enlightened philosophies, Harvard University founded its Medical School in 1783. Excavated materials from a trash feature at Holden Chapel, site of Harvard’s early medical lectures, include anatomized human remains. There, new regimes of medical authority were created through the manipulation of bodies via transgressive practices of dissection, display, and disposal. Existing studies of nineteenth-century cadavers strongly focus on their emotional and evidentiary qualities. Close attention should also be paid to instructional bodies. Instructional human remains, uncannily both subject and object, person and specimen, were distinct from other kinds of bodies – and distinctly troubling. The Holden collection historicizes concepts of the body, permits an archaeology of early medical authority, and destabilizes archaeologists’ usual approaches to human remains, corporeality, and the individual.

A new model for memory work: nostalgic discourse at a historic home

To make domestic heritage sites useful to their communities, we must acknowledge discourses, define structures and critically examine the interplay of our own and others’ practices of commemoration. How do agendas of remembering and forgetting intersect at historic dwellings? These issues are explored through the Elihu Akin House, a late eighteenth‐century house museum in a New England coastal village. Existing site narratives are dissected through the social theories of Peirce and Bourdieu, revealing nostalgia as a structuring element of cultural logics. The author argues that mechanisms of nostalgia, approached critically, offer interpretive common ground for memory work at historic homes (and beyond). As a material and emotional discourse, nostalgia binds memory, place and experience. This study proposes a new model for heritage‐makers seeking to alter site narratives without undermining a site’s established worth. They might identify then disrupt pre‐existing nostalgic narratives, finally bridging those disruptions through additional, critical nostalgic discourses. New and established narratives can coexist, in harmony and in tension, and visitors should be invited into the interpretive process.

Dwelling: transforming narratives at historic house museums

Dwellings have been hailed as ‘arguably the single most important artefact for reconstructing past societies’ (Samson 1990, p. 2). Inspired by the persistent centrality of houses to heritage and our own professional experiences, we use this outlet to reflect on the intersection of public and civic agendas, heritage management and social theory at historic homes and house museums. There are moments – opportunities – during which established heritage narratives both transform and are transformed by expert and stakeholder practices. As experience and memory intersect, heritage professionals are implicated in the politics of the past. But to whom and how are we accountable as we engage in history-making? What mediates the essential interplay of stakeholder and professional values? Most of the papers collected here were first assembled at the Theoretical Archaeology Group annual meeting in Palo Alto, California, in 2009. All the papers attend to dwellings as compelling sites of collective and individual memory-making that afford a powerful, organising presence. We explore intersections of progressive agendas and the sometimes conservative realities of historic home sites through on-the-ground, in progress and personal case studies of heritage as practice.

Widow Pratt’s Possessions: Individuality and Georgianization in Newport, Rhode Island

The widow and shopkeeper Elizabeth Pratt lived in Newport, Rhode Island, during the first half of the eighteenth century, as Newport grew from a minor port to a commercial and cultural center (Fig. 1). Pratt was one of many entrepreneurial traders in the town. During the 1720s and 1730s, her store of goods included finished clothing, accessories, at least 16 types of coarse and fine textiles, and comestibles such as chocolate, sugar, pepper, butter, and coffee. Pratt sometimes rented a shop for her goods. She also likely sold items from her small house on Spring Street. Pratt lived there from 1723 through at least 1739, probably through 1749. This small lot, now known as the “Wood Lot,” is part of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard historic site, which is owned and maintained by the Newport Historical Society. The existence of Widow Pratt and her household was forgotten until recent archaeological excavations (Hodge, 2007).

“A Small Brick Pile for the Indians”: The 1655 Harvard Indian College as Setting

The 1655 construction of a brick building to educate “English and Indian youth in knowledge and godliness” radically transformed fledgling Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with repercussions to this day. The structure was a calculated statement of institutional identity and a prospective vision of Harvard’s legacies. It was also an experimental space, prone to manipulation, redefinition, and appropriation by individuals operating within diverse cultural and intellectual contexts. Based on documentary and archaeological sources, Harvard’s 1655 Indian College is analyzed as a physical setting that fostered particular practices and social relationships. The structure dramatically altered possibilities at the seventeenth-century school. Because of what and where it was, the Indian College fostered new kinds of intercultural authority and intellectual exchange. More broadly, this study models the application of notions of practice and affordance to a multicultural colonial setting.