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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2008
The publication of The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology, a festschrift in honour of James Deetz, makes a useful starting point for assessing the remarkable development of American historical archaeology over the last four decades. The discipline of ‘historical archaeology’ is the New World equivalent of British post-medieval archaeology. It is the study of the material culture of colonial and industrial America. Unlike its highly marginalised British counterpart, the discipline has seen an enormous growth in America over the last two decades, reflected in the creation of numerous posts both in universities and public-sector archaeology. This article seeks firstly to discuss some of the main contributions to the festchrift and areas of promise for future research. Secondly it will assess the relevance of some recent contributions on the history of consumption to Deetz's concept of the ‘Georgian world view’ and the notion of radical change in eighteenth-century material culture.
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3. Hume, I. Noël, Artifacts of Colonial America (New York, 1970).Google Scholar However, a major weakness in recent American as opposed to Canadian work is the relative lack of interest in fundamental artifact research; Deagan's, KathleenArtifacts of Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, vol. 1; Ceramics, Glassware and Beads (Washington, 1987)Google Scholar is a notable exception.
4. Hume, I. Noël, Martin's Hundred (New York, 1982).Google Scholar The last decade has also seen a series of monographs on other early settlements along the James River including, Outlaw, A. C., Governor's Land (Richmond, 1990)Google Scholar; Kelso, W. M., Kingsmill Plantations 1619–80 (Orlando, 1984)Google Scholar and Deetz, J., Flowerdew Hundred (Richmond, 1993)Google Scholar though only the first is a technical excavation report on the British model with detailed information on artifacts and stratigraphy.
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13. Deetz's antipathy to critical analysis, due to its Marxist roots, is stated explicitly in Flowerdew Hundred, p. 154.
14. Kelso, W., ‘In Big things remembered’, in Beaudry and Yentsch 1992, pp. 141–3.Google Scholar
15. Deetz's In Small Things Forgotten, emphasises examples of ethnic survivals while Upton, D., ‘White and Black landscapes of eighteenth century Virginia’, Places 2:ii (1985), 59–72 (reprinted in St. George, Material Life, pp. 357–70)Google Scholar is a useful analysis of power in the landscape. See also Singleton, T., (ed.), The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life (Orlando, 1985).Google Scholar
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