Archaeological Investigations of an Early American Farmstead: The Wiley Smith Site (31MG2098)
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Date
2019-07-02
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Authors
Schmitz, Kelsey A
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Publisher
East Carolina University
Abstract
While farmsteads are relatively abundant in the historic and archaeological record, there are many issues with the current practices used to identify, evaluate, record, and study them. However, farmsteads represent a way of life that was once customary to much of the American population, and therefore deserve adequate archaeological attention. This thesis studied a late colonial/early federal period farmstead located in the Uwharrie National Forest in Montgomery County, North Carolina, that was once owned by the sheriff of Montgomery County, Wiley Smith. This project utilized artifact analyses, historical documentation, and comparative analyses to test whether or not this farmstead operated as a truly subsistence-based unit, or whether the Smith household was instead a part of the ever-growing consumerist population of the early nineteenth century. High frequencies of decorated, mass-produced historic ceramics serve as indication that the Smith household had moved well-beyond a colloquial, subsistence lifestyle and was actively participating in the emerging consumerist and commercialist American that had begun to dominate American society. Finally, a comparative analysis of multiple historical homesteads/farmsteads within the Uwharrie National Forest identify five patterned traits. These traits relate to the landscape, geography and topography, and artifacts from farmsteads in this region, and provide the groundwork for additional, broader comparative research to establish a North Carolina Piedmont farmstead pattern.