Anne Yentsch

• Ph.D. Brown Univ, Anthropology
• Retired at Armstrong Atlantic State University

A basic social division in family homes has been between women’s work, its space, and men’s work and space. Initially pottery, consisting of both plain earth-toned vessels and decorative earth-toned ware was separated by both decoration and style. With advancements in ceramic technology, pottery vessels could be manufactured using clays that were w...

Archaeologists assume a relationship between the life cycle, changes in material culture, and the use of space. Those with lesser status are seen as leaving minimal footprints in material form and lesser imprints on space than those with socio-economic or political power. Is this a result of gender identity or other factors? The case study here det...

This article describes a study of New England cookbooks as a data source for historical archaeologists. The database for this research consisted of single-authored, first-edition cookbooks written by New England women between 1800 and 1900, together with a small set of community cookbooks and newspaper advertisements. The study was based on the bel...

The evidence for the Biddle graperies as recorded through archaeology together with an analysis of historic records. Of particular interest were the below ground remains of the graperies' foundation, its heating mechanisms, and drainage system. The research was conducted by Anne Yentsch and Judson M. Kratzer under the aegis of Armstrong Atlantic St...

This study is based on the belief that recipes in New England cookbooks could be seen as a series of artifact assemblages and analyzed using the archaeological concepts of seriation, TPQ, presence/absence, horizon, and chaine opératoire. The initial focus, drawn from research by Deetz and Dethlefsen (Deetz 1968, 1977; Dethlefsen and Deetz 1966), wa...

Using a woman-centered approach, artifact assemblages and background documents are analyzed to discern gender behavior and ethnic variations in women's work-cooking, dining, housecleaning-in more frivolous areas-flowers, pets, girls' toys-and personal adornment. Issues of gender bias are discussed. The data show that negative evidence (absence vs....

Historical Archaeology. Hall Martin and Silliman Stephen , editors. 2006. Blackwell Publishing, Maiden, MA. xvii + 341 pp. $44.95 (paper), ISBN-13 978-1405107518. - Volume 73 Issue 3 - Anne Yentsch

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An overview of American material culture, drawn from information on Native American, African American, and Anglo-American cultures, is presented. Analytical points of view and theoretical perspectives are discussed.

‘The essence of eighteenth-century Romanticism was escape through the imagination from the reality of the moment.’1 There was much in everyday American life that wealthy families might sometimes wish to escape and, like their British counterparts, they used gardens and their vistas as ‘sites where this imagination [could] be particularly nourished’...

A variety of field techniques for the recovery of buried landscapes has been successfully and unsuccessfully used in the Midatlantic. Using examples from Morven, the utility of several are surveyed here. Of particular service was the practice of recording elevations as feet (ft.) above-sea-level readings; it permitted planned variations in garden c...

The knowledge that beads are among the artifacts found at slave sites is not new, but the association has been sexless and the behavior beads denoted has not often been considered worthy of study. Initially beads were taken as signs of European male/Indian interaction (Deagan 1987). Gradually as beads were found at slaves sites where no Indian ever...

This paper moves between two fields-modern artifact analysis (with its practitioners) and 18th-century culture-to show the veils in place that make certain sectors of the population less visible in present-day artifact interpretation. The article assumes that artifacts were not and are not passive entities, but items useful in a variety of ways: as...

The analysis presented here is a progress report prepared as part of research on the Calvert artefact collection. It illustrates, despite the lack of a truly consistent data base, that the process of change itself, measured temporally from the early 17th century into the 18th, is visible in minimum vessel lists from Chesapeake sites: The Maine, Pas...

This is a brief discussion of a below-ground storage cellar in Africa described by an English traveler who saw one and asked a Ibo man about it. It was written at a time when few historical archaeologists were mining ethnographic data for African information that might be relevant to understanding the African-American experience

This paper discusses one segment of an empirical study of pottery and porcelain vessels from Cheasapeake sites, with comparanda from English and New England sites. The focus is whether in defining recursive relations between objects and social status during an era of rapid change, small shifts are visible in archaeological data that can be used to...