Measuring the Advent of Gentility
Paper Presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in York, England.
As you have heard from Catherine Alston and the other
speakers in this session, the Comparative Archaeological
Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture is an attempt to
explore the material conditions of domestic life in the
Chesapeake Bay region—Virginia and Maryland—during the
period spanning the 17th and early 18th centuries. Compiling
a data base that is widely accessible to scholars is
viewed as an important tangible benefit of this effort,
but the primary goal is to address a broad range of issues
relating to early Chesapeake society. The questions at
hand are hardly new, beginning with a desire to document
how the different groups making up that society—Englishmen,
Africans, and Native Americans—used material culture
to shape their daily lives, as well as to order their
everyday relationships with each other. My own long-term
interest has been to trace the process by which English
cultural norms were adapted to New World conditions,
to provide insight into why that adaptation occurred,
and to assess the role of material culture in effecting
that change. As such these are the kinds of questions
that have been in the air at least since the 1970s, but
which require a rich corpus of comparative and regionally
representative evidence in order for archaeologists to
have any hope of success in answering them.
This session represents an interim report, if you will,
on where we stand in this effort. The usual caveats apply,
and they at least need to be acknowledged at this point.
We were looking for assemblages deriving from well-excavated
sites, and where the excavators took care to extract
a representative sample of artifacts from plowed contexts.
The latter criterion was deemed crucial in enabling us
to analyze spatial patterns of artifact distributions
at each site, and then to make inter-site comparisons.
Because the number of sites that fit those characteristics
is limited, we were not at liberty to further refine
the sample set by organizing it according to other important
factors, such as geographic distribution, level of wealth,
length of occupation, richness of supporting documentation,
and the like. In addition, as Catherine mentioned, we
still need to resolve some issues in terms of the catalogue
data—more on that later.
Probably the first really serious interest in these matters on the part of archaeologists was spurred by the writings emanating from the pens of the Chesapeake school of social historians in the 1970s. After reading what Ed Morgan, Lois Carr, Lorena Walsh, Cary and Barbara Carson, and their colleagues had to say about the volatile mix of social, cultural, and political currents that shaped life in 17th-century VA and MD, archaeologists naturally wanted to join the fun. To a greater or lesser degree, most of these scholars adopted a frontier settlement model as an organizing device for their interpretations of Chesapeake social history. According to this formulation, Chesapeake society followed a series of developmental steps, evolving from a period of cultural impoverishment characteristic of the years beginning just after initial settlement, followed by rapid adaptation in the face of New World conditions, and concluding with a fully realized social and economic structure.
James Deetz’s conception of the development of the “Georgian mindset,” presented in his influential book In Small Things Forgotten, and the “consumer revolution” model espoused most eloquently by Cary Carson, beginning in the late 1980s, elaborated on the frontier model in ways that were particularly evocative for archaeologists. Both models postulated that the trajectory of changes that had been identified by documentary historians had their corollary in patterns of development in material culture that could be used to paint a fuller picture of life in the early Chesapeake.
Carson and others adapted the findings of English scholars who proposed that a profound change in social norms had occurred in England beginning in the 16th century, resulting in the breakdown of traditional means of marking status, and the selection of a whole new class of objects to serve as standards of social intercourse. This movement, dubbed the “consumer revolution,” spread overseas along with the thousands of emigrants to the New World, Carson and others argued, and found particularly fertile ground in which to grow in the turbulent social and economic conditions of the 17th-century Chesapeake.
The first archaeological data in play in support of this thesis consisted of the identification of novel characteristics of Chesapeake building forms and methods, and patterns in their modification over time. Briefly, in response to specific regional conditions, and in particular the adoption of a region-wide economic strategy of a monoculture based on the cultivation and export of tobacco, Chesapeake housing took on a variety of characteristics selected for their low construction costs. Houses of this type represented a remarkable step backward for most English settlers. Experimentation in terms of house size and layout continued over the ensuing decades, however, and by the last years of the century significant changes had occurred. These were both functional and stylistic in nature, and they have been interpreted as reflecting both the ascendance of a native-born gentry elite, and their desire to more clearly delineate their owner’s status, both real and desired.
Even more important support for the interpretation of
a region-wide consumer revolution has been provided by
analyzing data derived from probate inventories. To summarize,
the probate data suggests that across the board the standards
of living for English immigrants to the Chesapeake was
considerably lower than what they had experienced back
home, and that those settlers who enjoyed even significant
advantages in wealth did not demonstrate their economic
standing by owning distinctive and costly types of objects.
Rather, they simply owned more of the same types of things
that were found in the households of those of more modest
means. Based on an analysis of probate inventories from
southern Maryland, Lorena Walsh and Lois Carr conclude
that it was not until about 1715 that the tidewater elite
began to acquire a greater array of material goods that
facilitated a style of living that more clearly set them
off from ordinary folk. Evidence for this development
was found in an increase in items to which they gave
the term “amenities,” such things as fine ceramics, table
knives and forks, books and clocks, and the like.
Given the popularity of ceramics as a topic of study
among archaeologists, it is not surprising that their
next attempts to provide insights into these matters
was based on identifying patterns in the types and use
of ceramic vessels found on Chesapeake sites. Following
the lead of Anne Yentsch, a number of years ago I was
able to compile relatively detailed data relating to
ceramic vessels found at 17 sites spanning the period
circa 1620 to 1730. The results also seem to indicate
a period of functional adjustment and a long trajectory
of stylistic elaboration. Essentially, when the assemblages
are tabulated according to broad functional types, a
clear trend appears, with food preparation vessels declining
as the dominant type, and with beverage vessels becoming
more prevalent after circa 1680. According to Yentsch,
and in combination with faunal evidence for dietary patterns
provided by Henry Miller and others, these changes in
the proportions of vessel types reflect the increasing
presentation of individualized servings of food and drink
at dining, which in turn indicates a major shift in foodways,
that began several decades earlier than was suggested
by the probate data alone.
The introduction of specialized wares in support of the newly fashionable activity of tea drinking is especially noteworthy in this regard, as the influx of those wares make up a significant percentage of the increasing portion of beverage vessels after 1690, and it serves to exemplify the notion of cultural elaboration. Adopting the tea ceremony as a prime means of social mediation among the elite was a novel departure from traditional practices, and thus reflects the type of new, socially driven change that is at the heart of the consumer revolution model.
A related concept is that of segmentation—the
insertion of additional activities and related implements
within traditional social spheres. Identifying such novelties
is helpful in understanding the larger cultural processes
at work, and evidence for them should be discernible
in the archaeological record. For example, the introduction
of a new table utensil, such as the fork, to traditional
habits of dining qualifies as such, and like the adoption
of tea wares suggests a deeper cultural meaning.
As a means of expanding on these insights, back in the
early 1990s I compiled a sample of household-level, archaeologically
recovered artifact assemblages in order to measure the
presence or absence of selected categories of objects.
In doing so, I consciously attempted to replicate as
best I could the “amenities” selected by Walsh and Carr
for their study of changing living standards. My categories
included such things as fine and coarse earthenwares,
knives, spoons, candles, and a variety of other household
items. I was for evidence of elaboration and segmentation
over time that would support the consumer revolution
model, as well as to test the contention that it was
not until the 18th century that the elite began to acquire
different, more socially distinctive items. Finally,
I hoped to provide a perspective on the issue of the
timing and trajectory of changes in living standards
that was independent of inventory data.
Unfortunately, limitations in the sample—especially
the lack of detailed information available to allow me
to make finer distinctions between certain artifact types—hindered
me in this attempt. Other than the appearance during
the last quarter of the 17th century of such novel items
as table forks, few definitive patterns were discernible.
However, one important outcome seems to be beyond doubt.
According to my admittedly small sample, the interpretations
of scholars using probate data as a measure of living
standards appear to be biased by the habitual under-representation
of certain types of objects in their documents. Contrary
to the findings that a wide array of household items
do not appear in inventories, those same items were found
with regularity in the archaeological assemblages that
were examined. For example, according to inventories,
only 13% of Maryland’s poorest households and roughly
76% of the wealthiest owned any ceramics made of earthenware
of stoneware. Furthermore, only 5% of the wealthiest
households owned “fine ceramics,” a category which includes
tin-glazed earthenware. In contrast, a full 100% of the
sites selected for my original study, as well as the
18 sites included in the present project, yielded both
coarse and fine ceramics. And the list goes on. When
it came to table spoons and knives, and such seemingly
necessary objects as hoes, the inventories habitually
missed them, as they appear at all but the very poorest
archaeological sites.
As a means of addressing these issues anew, I developed an expanded range of types of artifacts, a new amenities list, if you will. These consist of 40 types of artifacts arranged in seven general classes—relating to food, furnishings, entertainment, sewing, clothing, horse furniture, weaponry, and architecture. Unfortunately, due to cataloging issues that are yet to be resolved, I was only able to use 11 of the 18 sites for this analysis, but I am encouraged that the preliminary results will indicate the value of this overall approach.
Once again, on the basis of sheer numbers alone, no
strong temporal trends are apparent. But when the assemblages
are examined according to artifact class, several interesting
patterns suggest themselves, and will bare further investigation.
Note in particular the high peaks for two sites, Jordan’s
Point, an early 17th century site on the James River
in Virginia, and for King’s Reach, in Calvert County,
Maryland, occupied during the last years of the 17th
century. Also note the marked difference between Jordan’s
Point and the site that is temporally closest to it,
CG8, home to an anonymous and apparently impoverished
household that settled a few miles downstream from Jordan’s
on the north bank of the James.
The Jordan’s site is the earliest of the sites in our
sample, having been occupied from circa 1620 to 1635,
and was an enclosed settlement with at least four dwellings
and associated storage buildings. The early date of its
occupation, and the nucleated layout that is similar
to that found at other early sites, such as Jamestown,
Martin’s Hundred and Flowerdew Hundred, suggests that
the associated artifact assemblage would exhibit characteristics
that were quite different from those found at later sites,
such as King’s Reach. And in fact, this is the case.
Food related items such as pots and pot hooks, skillets
and spits, etc., are the single most numerous category,
but probably the most distinctive result is the high
number of weaponry and military related objects, such
as armor, swords and dagger parts, and gun parts, the
highest of any of the sites studied here, and the total
absence of entertainment related objects.
In contrast, the very sparse architectural evidence found at CG 8, interpreted as a single dwelling with an adjoining enclosed yard, together with the paucity of recovered artifacts, indicates that the site probably was occupied by a single household of quite limited means. When the data for the seven categories are compared with that from Jordan’s, the difference is dramatic. The excavators of the site, led by Andy Edwards, have concluded that CG8 is representative of that rarest and most easily overlooked of domestic complexes, the homelot of a household operating at the lowest levels of Chesapeake society. When compared to others in our sample, the associated artifact assemblage certainly supports that interpretation. Yet, even so the recovery of the remnants of 18 ceramic vessels—including stoneware and tin-glazed earthenware—once again is contrary to the expectations based on inventories.
King’s Reach is a tobacco plantation homelot occupied from circa 1690 to 1710, and probably was the home of Richard Smith, Jr., a wealthy colonist who served for a time as the Attorney General of Maryland. Although Smith was well-to-do, he lived in an earthfast structure like those of most of his neighbors, apparently investing his wealth in a variety of household goods rather than in architectural embellishments.
The artifact assemblage recovered from King’s Reach is remarkably rich, especially given the fact that the great majority of the subsurface features were not fully excavated. Julie King has referred to the site as “the small finds capital of Maryland,” given both the large numbers as well as the variety of household items found there. Once again, this chart only indicates the presence of selected items, not their frequency, and thus provides only a hint of the numbers involved. For now, simply note the significance of food related items, along with strong representation in the sewing and horse related categories, and the not unexpected relative lack of weaponry.
Just to demonstrate the variety of items in question—and
to get a few pictures of artifacts into a paper supposedly
dedicated to them—here you see spoons and what
I believe to be a table knife, personal items like a
jaw harp, buckles, cufflinks, beads, pins and a thimble,
and a copper finger ring. The horse related items include
both stirrups and spurs, bridle bits, harness buckles,
and brass harness bosses. Also present are a variety
of iron tools, architectural hardware, and more.
The contrast between the overall patterns of the King’s
Reach and Jordan’s assemblages is marked, and I believe
clearly speaks to the changing social conditions occurring
over the course of the century. Once again, the Jordans’s
assemblage is dominated by food, sewing, and weaponry
related items. At King’s Reach, the food and sewing categories
are comparable, most likely demonstrating the universal
significance of those activities that seemingly changed
little over time, but weaponry has declined, undoubtedly
reflecting the more settled nature of the region. In
addition, entertainment, clothing, and horse related
objects represent an increased proportion of the King’s
Reach assemblage, and they all are categories that have
been identified as becoming more important over time
and reflecting a maturing society.
Mattapany was the home of Charles Calvert, the Governor of Maryland and the heir of Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietor of the colony. As such, Calvert was one of the wealthiest as well as the most powerful man in the colony. Calvert built one of the largest homes in Maryland, a structure that was even more noteworthy given the fact that it was constructed of brick. Less than 200 yards from the dwelling, a series of trash filled pits yielded an artifact assemblage that seems likely to be associated with Mattapany, and I have included those items in this study. But even after adding the artifacts recovered from the pits, the overall Mattapany assemblage is surprising for its relative paucity of amenities. In their analysis of the Mattapany artifact assemblage, Julie King and Ed Chaney concluded that Calvert clearly invested heavily in the construction and presentation of his dwelling, to the apparent sacrifice of his household goods.
Finally, I would like to briefly discuss some patterns of intrasite variability that appear to present further interpretive opportunities. The Clifts site, located near the Potomac River on the Northern Neck of Virginia, was occupied for a remarkably long span of years, from circa 1670 to 1730, and thus presents the opportunity to study changing patterns of behavior at one site, and where comparability of data should be less of a concern. Four distinct phases of deposition have been identified, and a comparison of the frequencies of the selected categories of artifacts according to phase presents some interesting results. Most noteworthy may be the fact that there appears to be little change over time for several of the categories—sewing, architecture, even food and entertainment—but the greater incidence of horse related materials and clothing items in the final phase is suggestive and, along with the declining significance of weaponry, go along with patterns from the other sites.
So, where do we go from here? First of all, we need better data, and more of it. To a degree this will undoubtedly occur as more sites are added to the study set, but previous experience indicates that more detailed information will need to be gleaned from all of the assemblages as well. As an example, consider the question of the segmentation of dining utensils that I alluded to earlier. With the introduction of table forks during the last decades of the 17th century, the function of table knives clearly was affected. How can we explore this change, and more to the point, how can we measure and interpret it? At the most basic level, we would like to be able to identify knives according to their function, but at present there is no objective means to do so. The likeliest approach to this problem is to attempt to capture meaningful dimensions of data from the knives themselves. Here is what we are faced with—rusty fragments of knife blades that don’t seem very forthcoming. Since the knives that we recover are seldom complete, I have started by measuring the height and width of the blade fragments, in hopes that relative size still will be a helpful characteristic and that those measurements will cohere in a rational pattern. This scatterplot represents the measurements obtained from 20 knives from the King’s Reach and Rich Neck sites. If size alone were the dominant functional characteristic, then I would expect to see a stronger pattern of differentiation, possibly a bimodal distribution reflecting the difference between table and utility knives. Clearly it is not that simple, however, although these charts showing the range of variation among the two dimensions—knife height on the left and width on the right—suggest that size still may be helpful, as the range between largest and smallest is significant.
This drawing shows four of the knives that appear as outliers in this distribution, and the variations are clearly suggestive of differences in function. Hopefully, with the creation of a more robust sample of data pertaining not only to knives, but to the entire range of domestic furnishings from throughout the region, we will take an important step forward in our goal of more fully explicating the interplay of cultural dynamics that were at work in the development of early Chesapeake society.