Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: A Diachronic Investigation of Farmstead Labor Relations

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

A central goal of this research is to understand the mechanisms which, on a local scale, affect interaction between employers and employees. The focus in this proposal is on small-scale family level practices. Because archaeology has the potential to examine the development of such relations within a controlled context and often across centuries it can provide a unique perspective. Under the direction of Dr. Mark Hauser, Bradley Phillippi will examine how changing labor relations altered the everyday lives of diverse people living in a plural community in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century rural Northeast North America. Mr. Phillippi will undertake one season of archaeological excavations at the Thompson House, a plural farmstead on the North Shore of Long Island in Suffolk County, New York. The site was occupied continuously by five generations of the Thompson family (ca 1700-1885). Living and laboring alongside the Thompsons were enslaved, and after 1827, free laborers of African descent. The Thompson house is of particular interest because it provides the opportunity to analyze and compare contexts of slavery and freedom on a single site. Mr. Phillippi will use archaeological and spatial methods to recover macro and micro artifacts, as well as soil chemical and micromorphological data, to identify the daily practices that made the transition to wage labor possible. It is widely accepted that, initiating around 1780, wage earners began replacing the dominant division of labor between family members and slaves on rural farmsteads in the Northeast; however, little is known about how this transition in labor relations altered farmers' and laborers' everyday life and contributed to emerging identities. Mapping changes in space, household production, and practices of consumption before and after the transition to free labor is essential to understanding the social implications of changing labor relations. Although this project focuses on one specific site, the underlying principle of how status differences are maintained in changing social conditions strikes at a fundamental aspect of social organization and has relevance in today's world. The advantage of this particular study is that it allows the process to be followed over a significant period of time. This project will document spatial and temporal patterns of household activities by assessing the frequency and distribution of macro and micro artifacts and chemical signatures from different occupation layers of the house yard. To characterize every aspect of consumption, this project will analyze glassware, cutlery, kitchen utensils, construction and furniture hardware, and items of personal adornment and hygiene, in addition to ceramics and faunal remains. Finally, to map the architectural and spatial history of the house, Mr. Phillippi will use archival documents and microstratigraphic analyses. Combining these data into a GIS will provide a more complete and diachronic picture of changing daily practices at the plural farmstead. By emphasizing space and labor, this project will advance methods and theory in the archaeology of plural sites and communities, a worthy endeavor that relies strongly on isolated spaces and objects to make meaningful statements about the diverse people who lived there. In so doing, this project will broaden the understanding of the African American experience, a diverse experience that in archaeology is obscured by an emphasis on slave life on Southern plantations. The results will also expand knowledge of rural life in the Northeast by contributing an element of practice and everyday life to cultural historical descriptions. In addition, this project will be part of a larger collaborative effort between archaeologists and the local descendent community, both of whom are dedicated to creating a broader and deeper awareness of the cultural and historical legacy of the community's contributions to local history. The results from this project will be disseminated in peer-reviewed publications and at professional conferences, while the raw data will be made available on The Digital Archaeological Record. Mr. Phillippi's research will also be displayed in a permanent exhibit at the Thompson House Museum. This project will advance the training of undergraduate-student anthropologists by teaching them the basics of archaeological excavations in a field-school format and will culminate in Mr. Phillippi's PhD dissertation.