Beneath the modern city of Philadelphia lie countless clues to its history and the lives of residents long forgotten. This intriguing book explores eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Philadelphia through the findings of archaeological excavations, sharing with readers the excitement of digging into the past and reconstructing the lives of earlier inhabitants of the city.Urban archaeologist Rebecca Yamin describes the major excavations that have been undertaken since 1992 as part of the redevelopment of Independence Mall and surrounding areas, explaining how archaeologists gather and use raw data to learn more about the ordinary people whose lives were never recorded in history books. Focusing primarily on these unknown citizens-an accountant in the first Treasury Department, a coachmaker whose clients were politicians doing business at the State House, an African American founder of St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church, and others-Yamin presents a colorful portrait of old Philadelphia. She also discusses political aspects of archaeology today-who supports particular projects and why, and what has been lost to bulldozers and heedlessness. Digging in the City of Brotherly Love tells the exhilarating story of doing archaeology in the real world and using its findings to understand the past.

The first synthesis of the archaeological heritage of Baltimore Below Baltimore provides the first detailed overview of the rich archaeological heritage of the people and city of Baltimore. Drawing on a combined five decades of experience in the Chesapeake region and compiling 70 years of published and unpublished records, Adam Fracchia and Patricia Samford explore the layers of the city’s material record from the late seventeenth century to the recent past. Fracchia and Samford focus on major themes and movements such as Baltimore’s growth into a mercantile port city, the city’s diverse immigrant populations and the history of their foodways, and the ways industries—including railroads, glass factories, sugar refineries, and breweries—structured the city’s landscape. Using insights from artifacts and the built environment, they detail individual lives and experiences within different historical periods and show how the city has changed over time. Synthesizing a large amount of information that has never before been gathered in one place, Below Baltimore demonstrates how urban archaeology can approach cities as larger collective artifacts of the past, where excavations can uncover patterns of inequality in urbanization and industrialization that connect to social and economic processes still at work today.

Historical and archaeological records show that racism and white supremacy defined the social fabric of the northeastern states as much as they did the Deep South. This collection of essays looks at both new sites and well-known areas to explore race, resistance, and supremacy in the region. With essays covering farm communities and cities from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, the contributors examine the marginalization of minorities and use the material culture to illustrate the significance of race in understanding daily life. Drawing on historical resources and critical race theory, they highlight the context of race at these sites, noting the different experiences of various groups, such as African American and Native American communities. This cutting-edge research turns with new focus to the dynamics of race and racism in early American life and demonstrates the coming of age of racialization studies.

In the past few years, sensory archaeology has become more prominent, and Making Senses of the Past is one of the first collected volumes of its kind on this subject. The essays in this volume take readers on a multisensory journey around the world and across time, explore alternative ways to perceive past societies, and offer a new way of writing archaeology that incorporates each of the five senses.

Historical archaeology of landscapes initially followed the pattern of Classical Archaeology by studying elite men's gardens. Over time, particularly in North America, the field has expanded to cover larger settlement areas, but still often with ungendered and elite focus. The editors of this volume seek to fill this important gap in the literature by presenting studies of gendered power dynamics and their effect on minority groups in North America. Case studies presented include communities of Native Americans, African Americans, multi-ethnic groups, religious communities, and industrial communities. Just as the research focus has previously neglected the groups presented here, so too has funding to preserve important archaeological sites. As the contributors to this important volume present a new framework for understanding the archaeology of religious and social minority groups, they also demonstrate the importance of preserving the cultural landscapes, particularly of minority groups, from destruction by the modern dominant culture. A full and complete picture of cultural preservation has to include all of the groups that interacted form it.

The Delaware Valley is a distinct region situated within the Middle Atlantic states, encompassing portions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. With its cultural epicenter of Philadelphia, its surrounding bays and ports within Maryland and Delaware, and its conglomerate population of European settlers, Native Americans, and enslaved Africans, the Delaware Valley was one of the great cultural hearths of early America. The region felt the full brunt of the American Revolution, briefly served as the national capital in the post-Revolutionary period, and sheltered burgeoning industries amidst the growing pains of a young nation. Yet, despite these distinctions, the Delaware Valley has received less scholarly treatment than its colonial equals in New England and the Chesapeake region. In Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850, Richard Veit and David Orr bring together fifteen essays that represent the wide range of cultures, experiences, and industries that make this region distinctly American in its diversity. From historic-period American Indians living in a rapidly changing world to an archaeological portrait of Benjamin Franklin, from an eighteenth-century shipwreck to the archaeology of Quakerism, this volume highlights the vast array of research being conducted throughout the region. Many of these sites discussed are the locations of ongoing excavations, and archaeologists and historians alike continue to debate the region’s multifaceted identity. The archaeological stories found within Historical Archeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850 reflect the amalgamated heritage that many American regions experienced, though the Delaware Valley certainly exemplifies a richer experience than most: it even boasts the palatial home of a king (Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon and former King of Naples and Spain). This work, thoroughly based on careful archaeological examination, tells the stories of earlier generations in the Delaware Valley and makes the case that New England and the Chesapeake are not the only cultural centers of colonial America.

This volume is based on a session at a 2005 Society for Historical Archaeology meeting. The organizers assembled historical archaeologists from the UK and the US, whose work arises out of differing intellectual traditions. The authors exchange ideas about what their colleagues have written, and construct dialogues about theories and practices that inform interpretive archaeology on either side of the Atlantic, ending with commentary by two well-known names in interpretive archaeology.