Anthropology

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BROUGHT UP CAREFULLY: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF WOMEN, RACE RELATIONS, DOMESTICITY, AND MODERNIZATION IN ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND, 1865-1930
(2013) Knauf, Jocelyn; Leone, Mark P.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation explores the ways in which gender identity played an important role in shaping social and economic systems in post-Civil War Annapolis, Maryland. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this study examines the definition, negotiation, and contestation of normative ideas about gender and acceptable social relationships during this time period of numerous social, political, and economic changes. Emergent gender ideologies were closely connected to citywide and national priorities, and normalized identity configurations were used to determine who would be considered eligible for civil rights and the protections of citizenship, and to individualize inequalities. Utilizing historical and archaeological evidence from two streets in the historic district of Annapolis, this dissertation focuses on the ways in which negotiations of gender norms can be seen through archaeologically recovered material culture - namely historic features, ceramics, glass, and fauna. This dissertation argues that the "public" project of governance in Annapolis was accomplished partially through negotiations about "domestic" spaces and responsibilities, which are closely tied to gender and race. During the post-Civil War period, developing gender norms - including ideas about what made a man worthy of citizenship or a woman worthy of protection - played an important part in reformulated expressions of white supremacy, initiatives to modernize cities, and the organization of domestic spaces and priorities. A variety of tactics were used to negotiate gendered identities in Annapolis, and variations in the ways that gender ideologies were expressed reflect active mediations of dominant ideologies.
Chincoteague in Transition: Vernacular Art and Adaptation in Community Heritage
(2014) Sullivan, Kristin Marie; Chambers, Erve; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In addition to serving aesthetic or representational purposes, art can express values related to heritage and identity politics. This dissertation discusses the ways in which the vernacular arts of hunting decoy and decorative wildfowl carving in Chincoteague, Virginia, as well as the closely related tradition of wildfowl hunting, express understandings of various forms of heritage in touristic and community exchange, representing and helping tell the story of the ways in which this locale's rural population has adapted to, resisted, and at times encouraged changes related to tourism development and environmental regulation. In the process this project considers how embodied cultural knowledge is presented through carving and closely related practices such as hunting, how environmental and community values relate to carving and carving-related traditions, and the ways in which community members negotiate identity and maintain the integrity of their communities through the production and appreciation of localized artistic expression. Research supporting this dissertation consists primarily of systematic participant observation and key informant interviewing with hunting decoy and decorative wildfowl carvers. It was conducted over the course of nearly two years living on Chincoteague Island, developing close relationships with wildfowl carvers and others associated with this tradition, for example shop owners, arts organizations, local historians, hunters, and museum specialists.
Cultural Heritage and Climate Change Adaptation Pathways
(2018) Van Dolah, Elizabeth Rebecca; Paolisso, Michael; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation seeks to ethnographically understand the role of cultural heritage in climate change adaptation decision-making, and the mechanisms by which heritage is used to shape adaptation pathways for responding to climate-induced socio-ecological changes. Cultural heritage can broadly be understood as the practice of engaging with change through an ongoing social processing of the past. Research on cultural heritage to date has demonstrated the ways that heritage is closely linked to issues of identity, power, and sociocultural processes of change (Lafrenz Samuels 2018). In the context of climate change adaptation, heritage research has much to offer to a growing body of literature that points to the need to better understand the underlying sociocultural factors that affect social resilience and human adaptation (Cote and Nightingale 2012). This dissertation speaks to these calls in approaching heritage as a mechanism for carving climate change adaptation pathways. I explore the role of heritage as an adaptation pathway in the context of a collaborative adaptation planning project called the Integrated Coastal Resiliency Assessment (ICRA), which was carried out on the Deal Island Peninsula, a rural, low-lying area on the Maryland eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay. I utilize qualitative methods in semi-structured interviewing, participant observation, and text analysis to ethnographically elucidate a range of heritage threads and to analyze how these threads shape collaborative adaptation decision-making through the ICRA process. Findings from this research identify three overarching heritage themes that are embedded in local Methodist traditions, traditional watermen livelihood practices, and histories of isolation and independence. I demonstrate how these threads are used to frame local understandings of socio-ecological change and climate change vulnerabilities on the Deal Island Peninsula. I also demonstrate how broader heritage deployments in the Chesapeake Bay shape local experiences of vulnerability through processes of disempowerment. I conclude with a discussion of how heritage is integrated into the ICRA process to facilitate a bottom-up decision-making process that re-empowers local actors in governing their own vulnerabilities. The main conclusion from this research points to the importance of considering heritage mobilization in climate change adaptation planning.
LABORING IN STONE: THE URBANIZATION OF CAPITAL IN THE QUARRY TOWN OF TEXAS, MARYLAND, AND ITS EFFECTS, 1840 TO 1940
(2014) Fracchia, Adam; Brighton, Stephen A; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Capitalism is founded on the unequal relationship between capital and labor, a relationship that along with the expansion and accumulation of capital and labor power has come to influence everyday life and values. The quarry town of Texas, in Baltimore County, Maryland, offers an opportunity to explore this important relationship between labor and capital. Established in the mid-nineteenth century to quarry and burn limestone at a time of expanding industry and an expanding nation. The town was created to house the workers, primarily Irish immigrants and later African Americans hired to toil in this hazardous industry, and a community was formed and eventually destroyed. This study examines the logic and process of capitalism, drawing on David Harvey's theoretization of the urbanization of capital to understand how life at Texas was influenced by capitalism. The role of and changes to the quarry industry's operations are studied along with their impact on life in Texas and how industry aligned social relations in town to facilitate capitalism through the manipulation of material culture and space. Through an analysis of the built landscape and artifacts of everyday life, such as ceramic tableware and smoking pipes, in their social context, daily interactions can be studied within a wider framework and scale. Studying Texas in this manner demonstrates the utility and necessity of using a totalizing approach, as suggested by Harvey, to examine capitalism in historical archaeology.
Metonymies of Color: The Material Discourses of Race in the Irish and Mexican American Experience
(2021) Rivera, Patrick Sean; Brighton, Stephen; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Objects and artifacts are potent signs of cultural values, and in popular media they are often used as external signs of racial identity. This dissertation investigates how certain objects and settings come to be identified as characteristic of particular racial groups, and how stereotypes about material culture are then exploited to justify discriminatory political policy. I conduct an analysis of the visual representation of Mexicans and the Irish in U.S. media, beginning in 1840 and continuing to the present era. I identify when and why certain artifacts, like potatoes or sombreros, began to be used as stereotypical signs of each group. In each case, I examine how these metonymies were employed as weapons in contemporary political struggles over land, jobs, and representation. Drawing on the records of Mexican and Irish representation, I develop a theoretical model I term "the material discourses of race” to identify the three ways that objects are turned into signs of racial identity, and to explain why certain objects are repeatedly employed to construct an idealized image of whiteness in U.S. visual culture.