or Pilgrims. The excavation of Plymouth Colony domestic sites began with J. Hall’s 1864 exploration of the Miles Standish home in Duxbury. Excavations were undertaken in the 1940s by H. H. Hornblower at the “R.M. site” in Plymouth and the Edward Winslow site in Marshfield; in 1938, S. Strickland excavated the Joseph Howland site in Kingston; in the 1950s, R. W. Robbins did so at the John Alden site in Duxbury; and in 1959– 1966, james j. f. deetz worked at the Joseph Howland and William Bradford sites in Kingston and the Isaac Allerton and William Bartlett sites in Plymouth.

The results of these excavations have contributed to an interpretation of Pilgrim life at Plimoth Plantation (a living-history museum) and to synthetic studies of New England culture and material life by Deetz. Research has focused on the transference of traditional culture and its transformation as settlers adapted to new environmental and social conditions. Archaeological evidence indicates that houses were timber-framed, single-cell or cross-passage in plan, partially cellared, and of post-in-the-ground construction or with sills set on stone foundations. Artifacts recovered included tin-glazed and coarse earthenware (of Low Countries, Iberian, north Devon, Midlands, and southern England in origin as well as locally made); German stoneware in forms for dairying, storage, and communal drinking; weaponry and gun parts; utensils; personal effects; and building hardware. Faunal remains indicate consumption of both domesticated and wild animals such as deer and bear.

In the 1970s, Deetz excavated the 1690– 1740 Samuel Smith Tavern site at Great Island in Wellfleet and portions of a 1792–1840 African American settlement at Parting Ways in Plymouth, moving beyond the home sites of the seventeenth-century “Pilgrim fathers” of English descent to consider cultural change and ethnic diversity. The Wellfleet tavern assemblage, with high proportions of smoking pipes and drinking vessels, differed markedly from the typical domestic assemblages. At Parting Ways, Deetz found the African heritage of the site’s occupants expressed in traditional West African architecture, pottery forms, foodways, and mortuary practices.

Mary C. Beaudry

See also

United States of America, Prehistoric Archaeology

References

Beaudry, M. C. 1984. “An Archaeological Perspective on Social Inequality in 17th-Century Massachusetts.” American Archeology 4, no. 1: 55–60.

Beaudry, M. C., and D. C. George. 1987. “Old Data, New Findings: 1940s Archaeology at Plymouth Reexamined.” American Archeology 6, no. 1: 20–30.

Bowen, J. V. 1976. “The Parting Ways Site: A Preliminary Report on Foodways.” Report on file, Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, MA.

Brown, M. R. 1972. “Ceramics from Plymouth, 1621–1800: The Documentary Record.” In Ceramics in America, 41–74. Ed. I. M. G. Quimby. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Deetz, J. 1960a. “Excavations at the Joseph Howland Site (C5), Rocky Nook, Kingston, Massachusetts, 1959: A Preliminary Report.” Supplement to the Howland Quarterly 24, nos. 2–3: 1–12.

———. 1960b. “The Howlands in Rocky Nook: An Archaeological and Historical Study.” Supplement to the Howland Quarterly 24, no. 4: 1–8.

———. 1968. “Late Man in North America: Archeology of European Americans.” In Anthropological Archeology in the Americas, 121–130. Ed. B. J. Meggers. Washington, DC: Anthropological Society of Washington.

———. 1969. “The Reality of the Pilgrim Fathers.” Natural History 78, no. 11: 32–44.

———. 1970. “Plymouth and the Pilgrims.” Collier’s Encyclopedia Yearbook.

———. 1972. “Ceramics from Plymouth, 1620–1835: The Archaeological Evidence.” In Ceramics in America, 15–40. Ed. I. M. G. Quimby. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

———. 1976. “Black Settlement: Plymouth.” Archaeology 29, no. 207.

———. 1977. In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

———. 1979. “Plymouth Colony Architecture: Archaeological Evidence from the Seventeenth Century.” In Architecture in Colonial Massachusetts: A Conference Held by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts,