Stephen A. Mrozowski

Colonization and the Commodification of Nature

This paper explores some of the theoretical issues surrounding the commodification of nature and its value as a research topic. In particular it examines the relationship between European colonization, the rise of capitalism and the increased use of abstract space. An appeal is also made for adding environmental history to the research agenda of historical archaeology. Case studies from South Africa and Virginia illustrate the manner in which abstract notions of space and the environment contributed to the commodification of nature. The Virginia case study from Jamestown Island provides a particularly vivid example of how micro- and macro-level environmental changes can be linked to important political and economic events.

Differential Pollen Preservation in a Seventeenth-Century Refuse Pit, Jamestown Island, Virginia

Pollen that falls on soil surfaces is moved down through the deposit by percolating groundwater. As it moves, the pollen is progressively destroyed by oxygen in the groundwater and by aerobic fungi. In the Chesapeake Bay region, the deepest pollen in unsheltered archaeological site profiles is about 100 years old. A comparative study of a stratigraphic pollen profile exposed to the elements at the surface and a series of pollen samples sheltered by artifacts was conducted with materials from a 17th-century refuse pit at Jamestown, Virginia. Pollen was recovered both from under rocks and artifacts lying flat or concave side down and from around iron objects. The shallowest pollen spectrum recovered from under an artifact was 25 cm below the deepest pollen preserved in the exposed stratigraphic profile. No pollen was found in unsheltered pollen samples at the same depths as the artifacts. The distributions demonstrate that the pollen associated with the 17th-century artifacts is contemporaneous with those artifacts; it did not percolate down from later deposits. The artifact pollen spectra were arranged by depth into an artificial profile and appear to record a series of edaphic changes in the pit and a landclearance episode in the Jamestown area.

Historical archaeology as anthropology

The title of this paper is not meant as the trumpet fanfare for a new debate over whether historical archaeology should be history or anthropology. Its purpose is to suggest that historical archaeology can be more than a social history that relies upon material culture as one of its primary sources of data. We need to ask historically important questions, but we should also emphasize the comparative approach employed in anthropology and focus on those topics that have cross-cultural applicability over both time and space. Two major problem domains are outlined: world urbanization and environmental history. Subsidiary topics, including the impact urbanization has had on the work of both men and women are also addressed. These topics are well suited for investigation by historical archaeologists, assuming that we expand our repertoire of methods. With the latter point in mind the importance of a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach is discussed within the context of our two problem domains. It is argued that both world urbanization and environmental history are topics involving socially and politically significant questions to which historical archaeology can make important contributions.

Pragmatism and the Relevancy of Archaeology for Contemporary Society

Pragmatism is at heart the belief that it is better to compromise and move forward even if means not getting everything you want. This chapter works with the philosophy of pragmatism in relation to anthropology and archeology, particularly how the character of these disciplines has and can alter from being detached producer of knowledge to that of more collaborative fields that tries to find solutions to complex problems. Archeology has the capacity to step out of what Dewey called the spectator theory of knowledge, which is the idea that science needs to essentially reproduce the world before it could understand it, and rather work dialectically between the many points of view that have contributed to the outcomes of the past. Specific applications developed in this chapter include modes of addressing historical silence and assisting Native American Tribes in the US Federal Recognition process, such as described for the Nipmuc Tribe of Massachusetts.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARASITES AS INDICATORS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN URBANIZING LANDSCAPES: IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL STATUS

Using archaeological data of two human intestinal parasites from seventeenth- to early twentieth-century contexts, we explore the intersection of biological and cultural variables that shaped the ecology of cities in northeastern North America during the modern period. These parasites are useful because they require a developmental period in the soil, thus providing a link between human activities and changing environments. Prior to the last decades of the eighteenth century, Trichuris eggs dominate the archaeoparasitological assemblage. Around 1800, there is a shift to increasing proportions of Ascaris eggs, which appears to be largely complete by 1850—a period of increasing urbanization in the northeast United States. Both environmental and behavioral factors play a role in this shift and include the relationship between parasite biology and changing microenvironments, attempts to deal with waste, and use of urban spaces. During this period, poorer households would likely have been at greater risk of parasites because of the ways they used yard spaces, their delayed access to sanitary technology, and the changing nature of urban vegetation in densely occupied neighborhoods. Utilizando datos arqueológicos sobre dos parásitos intestinales humanos recuperados en contextos que datan desde el siglo XVII hasta principios del siglo XX, exploramos la intersección entre las variables biológicas y culturales que dieron forma a la ecología de las ciudades en el noreste de América del Norte durante el período moderno. Estos parásitos son indicadores útiles porque requieren un período de desarrollo en el suelo, proporcionando así un vínculo entre las actividades humanas y su entorno cambiante. Antes de las últimas décadas del siglo XVIII, los huevos de Trichuris dominan el conjunto arqueo-parasitológico. Esto cambia alrededor de 1800 con un incremento en la proporción de huevos de Ascaris, aumento que parece concluir alrededor de 1850 —un período de urbanización creciente en el noreste de Estados Unidos—. Factores ambientales y comportamentales influyeron en este cambio. Estos incluyen la relación entre la biología de los parásitos y los microambientes cambiantes, las diferentes estrategias de manejos de desechos y el uso de los espacios urbanos. Durante este período es probable que los hogares más pobres estuvieran en mayor riesgo de tener parásitos debido a la forma en que se utilizaban los espacios abiertos, retrasos en el acceso a la tecnología sanitaria y la naturaleza cambiante de la vegetación urbana en los barrios densamente ocupados.

“This great wild tract”: Henry David Thoreau, Native Americans, and the archaeology of Estabrook Woods

In an 1857 journal entry, Henry David Thoreau described a visit to what he described as a Native American cornfield in Estabrook Woods, a remote portion of Concord, Massachusetts. He noted that the individual hills extended “in straight rows over the swells and valleys ... like the burial ground of some creatures.” Recent archaeological investigations in Estabrook Woods have explored both the cornfield and an adjacent 18th-century farmstead. This paper draws links between landscape change in Concord and larger scale agricultural changes that reshaped the rural communities around Boston. We situate Thoreau’s descriptions of Estabrook Woods in a context of wider 19th-century economic turbulence, as well as his lifelong fascination with Native American culture. The article concludes with reflections on the contemporary conflict between development interests and those who admire Thoreau, and the effect of that conflict on the research agenda.

Reimagining political economy as a foundation for archaeologies of the past, present and future

SUMMARY: This paper examines some of the philosophical and epistemological issues surrounding current theories of political economy. By focusing on the historicism that postcolonial theorists have employed to critique the writings of Karl Marx and the lack of focus on the environment on the part of many political theorists, this paper argues for a political economy that accommodates the role of the disenfranchised and the environment as part of an archaeology of the future.

The Archaeology of Climate Change: Is Unbridled Commodity Production Sustainable?

Much of the discussion concerning climate change has understandably focused on providing proof that it is an empirically verifiable process whose trajectory has been accelerating. This chapter focuses on one of the prime drivers, commodity production, and asks whether it is sustainable. What the historical archaeology of the modern era clearly has established is the critical role that commodity production has played in the growth of an ever-expanding world economy. The impact this has had on the environment from the micro- to the macro-scale is also revealed by this archaeology. Ultimately, we may be confronted by the need to drastically curtail commodity production. Here I will explore the ramifications of such a future and what it suggests about issues such as universal employment.

Capitalism in Motion

In this article, we take up Oilman’s (2014) challenge that historical archaeology should explore the motion of capitalism both in space and time. We discuss capitalism as a dynamic totality and use this to develop the implications for historical archaeology in two different but interconnected ways. First, we use the rich context of Lowell, Massachusetts, to provide a detailed analysis of how capitalism developed in a single place. The second case uses several archaeological sites from across the U.S. to highlight capitalism’s motion from the perspective of a single commodity, coal. We link labor and the environment, past and present, to highlight the folly of seeing the exploitation of workers and the environment is as an accepted part of capitalist economic development. Understanding capitalism in motion is more than just a future research direction for historical archaeology because without these critical understandings people may not have a future at all.