The Archaeology of Institutional Life / Edition 1

by April M. Beisaw, James G. Gibb, Owen Lindauer, Eleanor Conlin Casella, Deborah L Rotman

Overview

A landmark work that will instigate vigorous and wide-ranging discussions on institutions in Western life, and the power of material culture to both enforce and negate cultural norms
 
Institutions pervade social life. They express community goals and values by defining the limits of socially acceptable behavior. Institutions are often vested with the resources, authority, and power to enforce the orthodoxy of their time. But institutions are also arenas in which both orthodoxies and authority can be contested. Between power and opposition lies the individual experience of the institutionalized. Whether in a boarding school, hospital, prison, almshouse, commune, or asylum, their experiences can reflect the positive impact of an institution or its greatest failings. This interplay of orthodoxy, authority, opposition, and individual experience are all expressed in the materiality of institutions and are eminently subject to archaeological investigation.
 
A few archaeological and historical publications, in widely scattered venues, have examined individual institutional sites. Each work focused on the development of a specific establishment within its narrowly defined historical context; e.g., a fort and its role in a particular war, a schoolhouse viewed in terms of the educational history of its region, an asylum or prison seen as an expression of the prevailing attitudes toward the mentally ill and sociopaths. In contrast, this volume brings together twelve contributors whose research on a broad range of social institutions taken in tandem now illuminates the experience of these institutions. Rather than a culmination of research on institutions, it is a landmark work that will instigate vigorous and wide-ranging discussions on institutions in Western life, and the power of material culture to both enforce and negate cultural norms.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817355166
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	03/22/2009
Edition description:	First Edition, First Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

April M. Beisaw is Research Associate, Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University. 
James G. Gibb is an archaeological consultant, Annapolis, Maryland.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

1 Introduction James G. Gibb 1

2 Historical Overview of the Archaeology of Institutional Life Sherene Baugher 5

I Method and Theory

3 On the Enigma of Incarceration: Philosophical Approaches to Confinement in the Modern Era Eleanor Conlin Casella 17

4 Feminist Theory and the Historical Archaeology of Institutions Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood 33

5 Constructing Institution-Specific Site Formation Models April M. Beisaw 49

II Institutions of Education

6 Rural Education and Community Social Relations: Historical Archaeology of the Wea View Schoolhouse No. 8, Wabash Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana Deborah L. Rotman 69

7 Individual Struggles and Institutional Goals: Small Voices from the Phoenix Indian School Track Site Owen Lindauer 86

III Institutions of Communality

8 The Orphanage at Schulyer Mansion Lois M. Feister 105

9 A Feminist Approach to European Ideologies of Poverty and the Institutionalization of the Poor in Falmouth, Massachusetts Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood 117

10 Ideology, Idealism, and Reality: Investigating the Ephrata Commune Stephen G. Warfel 137

IV Institutions of Incarceration

11 Maintaining or Mixing Southern Culture in a Northern Prison: Johnson's Island Military Prison David R. Bush 153

12 Written on the Walls: Inmate Graffiti within Places of Confinement Eleanor Conlin Casella 172

13 John Conolly's "Ideal" Asylum and Provisions for the Insane in Nineteenth-Century South Australia and Tasmania Susan Piddock 187

14 The Future of the Archaeology of Institutions Lu Ann De Cunzo 206

References Cited 215

Contributors 243

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

In understanding institutions themselves, archaeologists must engage the shifting and variable understanding of the relations in capitalistic societies because even 'minor' institutions, in many ways, reflect power relations that have been variously interpreted. For professional archaeologists and certainly for college and university libraries with graduate and undergraduate programs; the general public also will find much of interest, but also much that is stiff going. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.”
—CHOICE
 
“Addressing a long-neglected facet of the archaeology of our modern world—our institutions—this volume reveals the interesting and insightful past of a class of sites that are deeply and inextricably tied to a core aspect of modernity.”
—Jamie C. Brandon, Arkansas Archeological Survey
 

“This volume highlights the use of interdisciplinary approaches and multiple lines of evidence as crucial to understanding the material culture of institutions and the relations of power that they embody. Institutions embody a worldview and the lives of their residents, staff, and community observers are influenced and constrained by the ideology which fashioned it. Researchers of any discipline who share an interest in power relations, childhood, gender studies, community relations, and institutional history will all find food for thought within The Archaeology of Institutional Life.”
—Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology
 

From the Publisher