The Archaeology of Institutional Life

The Archaeology of Institutional Life

The Archaeology of Institutional Life

Edited by

APRIL M. BEISAW AND JAMES G. GIBB

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2009

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typefaces: Minion & Triplex

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The archaeology of institutional life / edited by April M. Beisaw and James G. Gibb.

           p.     cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-8173-1637-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-5516-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8118-9 (electronic) 1. Social institutions—History. 2. Social archaeology. 3. Archaeology and history. 4. Archaeology—Social aspects. 5. Social history. 6. Public history. I. Beisaw, April M. II. Gibb, James G.

    HM826.A73 2009

    306.09—dc22

2008031052

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

James G. Gibb

2. Historical Overview of the Archaeology of Institutional Life

Sherene Baugher

I. METHOD AND THEORY

3. On the Enigma of Incarceration: Philosophical Approaches to Confinement in the Modern Era

Eleanor Conlin Casella

4. Feminist Theory and the Historical Archaeology of Institutions

Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

5. Constructing Institution-Specific Site Formation Models

April M. Beisaw

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

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

Owen Lindauer

III. INSTITUTIONS OF COMMUNALITY

8. The Orphanage at Schulyer Mansion

Lois M. Feister

9. A Feminist Approach to European Ideologies of Poverty and the Institutionalization of the Poor in Falmouth, Massachusetts

Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood

10. Ideology, Idealism, and Reality: Investigating the Ephrata Commune

Stephen G. Warfel

IV. INSTITUTIONS OF INCARCERATION

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

David R. Bush

12. Written on the Walls: Inmate Graffiti within Places of Confinement

Eleanor Conlin Casella

13. John Conolly's Ideal Asylum and Provisions for the Insane in Nineteenth-Century South Australia and Tasmania

Susan Piddock

14. The Future of the Archaeology of Institutions

Lu Ann De Cunzo

References Cited

Contributors

Index

Illustrations

Figures

5.1. Oella School foundation and matching school plan

5.2. Dewey School in southeastern Michigan

5.3. Blaess School site map

5.4. Town Hall School site map

6.1. Wea View Schoolhouse No. 8 as it appeared in Brainard Hooker's 1917 book

6.2. Wea View Schoolhouse No. 8 site map

7.1. Phoenix Indian School map depicting the Track Site

7.2. Artifacts from the Phoenix Indian School

8.1. Residents of the orphanage at Schulyer Mansion

8.2. Doll parts excavated from Schuyler Mansion

9.1. Falmouth Poor House building, now the Artists' Guild

9.2. Plan view of the Falmouth Almshouse

10.1. Ephrata Sisters' House and Prayer House

10.2. Plan view of Kedar posthole pattern

10.3. Plan view of Ephrata Cloister historic site

10.4. Pottery found on the Mount Zion dormitory site

11.1. Gould map of Johnson's Island Military Prison

11.2. Site map of Johnson's Island Military Prison

11.3. Hard rubber crafts from Johnson's Island Military Prison

11.4. Distribution of craft materials from Johnson's Island Military Prison

12.1. Cell graffiti from Fremantle Prison, Western Australia

12.2. Cell graffiti from Dungeons of the Palazzo Ducale and Fremantle Prison

12.3. Cell graffiti from Fremantle Prison, Western Australia

12.4. Cell graffiti from Kilmainham Gaol, Ireland

13.1. Watercolor painting of Adelaide Lunatic Asylum

13.2. Plan view of the Adelaide Lunatic Asylum

13.3. Plan view of Parkside Lunatic Asylum

13.4. Plan view of New Norfolk Hospital

Tables

5.1. One-room schoolhouse site formation process model

6.1. Artifacts found in privies at Wea View Schoolhouse No. 8

6.2. Minimum number of vessels from Wea View Schoolhouse No. 8

13.1. Conolly's ideal asylum features and their actual frequency

Acknowledgments

Baugher, Chapter 2. I wish to thank the editors, April Beisaw and James Gibb, for inviting me to be part of this book and for reading and commenting on drafts of this chapter. They also deserve many thanks for their dedication and perseverance in taking an SHA symposium, expanding the papers, and then transforming them with the addition of new chapters into this book. I wish to express my appreciation to Suzanne Spencer-Wood for her very helpful editorial suggestions. Many thanks go to Lu Ann De Cunzo for the numerous enjoyable discussions we had brainstorming about our bookend chapters and how to approach the past, present, and future of the archaeology of institutional life. Finally, I give heartfelt thanks to my husband, Robert W. Venables, for his support and encouragement. I always appreciate the insights he brings as a historian, and I enjoy his challenging questions.

Spencer-Wood, Chapter 4. I would like to thank Eleanor Casella for referring me to Nicole Rafter and other feminist penologists. My thanks also to April Beisaw for her hard work in shortening this chapter. Of course, any remaining errors are mine.

Beisaw, Chapter 5. The Michigan Archaeology Society and the Saline and Pittsfield, Michigan, historical societies, residents, and town offices, provided significant assistance with the Blaess and Town Hall School projects. Thanks to the National Park Service, Hannah Geddes Wright, Anna Agbe-Davies, Stephen Wald, and Julie Schablitsky for providing information about their research. Stanley Loomis, a former student, and Dr. Joseph Chartkoff, of Michigan State University, provided information on the Merle Beach School. Extra appreciation goes to Jim Gibb, who has served as a mentor, co-investigator, and friend during this and many other projects.

Rotman, Chapter 6. This project was possible only through the efforts of many individuals. I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to Dr. Michelle White, vice president of the Purdue Research Foundation, and Dr. Viktor Gecas, head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. I thank Brian Barrows, Matthew Beahm, Laura Black, Japhia Burrell, Kimberly Chalfant, Matthew Emery, Kristie Erickson, Clare Freeman, Craig Knox, Michelle McCormick, Matthew Musselman, and Jessica Yann for taking the field school. Special thanks also to Gail Brown, Wesley Campbell, Clara Christodoulakis, Matt Coon, Lane Fargher, Verenice Heredia, Damian Miller, Amy Patterson-Neubert, Katja Pettinen, and Alicia Stewart. Michael Nassaney and Donald Cochran provided productive feedback on early drafts of this essay.

Feister, Chapter 8. This article first appeared in Northeast Historical Archaeology, vol. 20, published by the Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology (copyright 1994). With permission, it was updated and partially reprinted here. I would especially like to thank Sister Elaine Wheeler, archivist and historian, for the attention she gave me while doing research on this topic at the St. Vincent de Paul Provincial House, Menands, New York. In addition, acknowledgments go to Joe McEvoy for photographing the artifacts, to Paul Huey for his helpful suggestions, and to the staff at Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site for their interest in this topic that is somewhat outside their primary interpretive mission.

Spencer-Wood, Chapter 9. This research was made possible by the assistance of many Falmouth residents, especially Ann Sears, executive director of the Falmouth Historical Society in 1999. My thanks also to Karen Allen for researching the First Congregational Society records, and to Bea Buxton, William Dunkle, and Col. Oliver Brown for providing their transcriptions and notes from town records. Candace Jenkins kindly shared the nomination of the site to the National Register of Historic Places, as well as the architectural report cited. Last but not least, my thanks to April Beisaw for her thoughtful editing. Of course, any errors are my responsibility.

Warfel, Chapter 10. The Ephrata Cloister Archaeology Project received financial and administrative support from the following institutions and nonprofit organizations: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, State Museum of Pennsylvania, Ephrata Cloister Historic Site, Pennsylvania State University, Elizabethtown College, Friends of the State Museum, and Ephrata Cloister Associates. I also thank the many students and volunteers who enthusiastically participated in this multiyear research program and helped discover a community lost to time.

Bush, Chapter 11. I would like to thank April Beisaw for putting together the original 2003 Society for Historical Archaeology symposium, where an earlier version of this work was given. I want to also thank her for seeing this publication through to its end. I wish to thank the hundreds of descendants of prisoners and guards who have shared their family history. Their contributions and encouragement have kept me excited about this work. Finally, I need to thank the Friends and Descendants of Johnson's Island Civil War Prison and Heidelberg College for their continued support of my work and their commitment to the preservation of this unique resource.

Casella, Chapter 12. Research for this chapter was undertaken with the support of travel grants from the University of Manchester (UK) and University of Sydney (Australia). Additionally, historical and photographic resources were generously contributed by a number of colleagues, particularly Niamh O'Sullivan and Pat Cooke (Kilmainham Gaol, Ireland), Elizabeth Kerns (Cork City Gaol, Ireland), Martin Gibbs (University of Sydney), Alistair Paterson (University of Western Australia), Leo Barker and Marty Mayer (Golden Gate National Recreation Area, U.S. National Park Service), and Jeff Burton (Western Archaeological and Conservation Center, U.S. National Park Service). Any problems of fact or interpretation are, of course, my own.

De Cunzo, Chapter 14. I am grateful to April Beisaw and Jim Gibb for this opportunity to reflect on the archaeology of institutions, and to the authors for sharing their findings and conversing about their work over the past few years as this volume took shape. Special thanks to Sherene Baugher for helping me to envision how our pieces may bookend the volume.

1

Introduction

James G. Gibb

The minor Myrtle Solomon will be henceforth regarded and treated in all respects as a child of the said Lorenzo Basile and Maria Antonia Basile, his wife, ordered surrogate court judge Abner C. Thomas, Borough of Manhattan, New York. His ruling was the last in a series of decisions made by a small group of individuals whose prior contact with one another can only be guessed. There was the judge, of course, fulfilling his responsibilities in matters of guardianship, probate, and estate administration. Representing government, he based his ruling on state law, affidavits, and the Basiles' petition for adoption. Bayard L. Peck, attorney for the New York Foundling Hospital and acting on behalf of the legal system, attested that the hospital had the authority to place children for adoption. Jane C. McCrystal (aka Sister Teresa Vincent), hospital cofounder and member of the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, stipulated that the child had been abandoned:

[O]n the 9th day of March, 1901, a woman who gave no name left an infant child at said hospital stating that she was the aunt of said child and that she was unable to care for it, and that it was born on February 14, 1901. The deponent did not know said woman, and has never seen nor heard from her since said day.

[S]aid woman when she left the child at the said hospital said that she wanted to give it to said hospital and to surrender all right to it.

[S]ince the 9th day of March, 1901, the said woman has not visited the said hospital or made any inquiries concerning said child and no enquiries have been made at said hospital concerning said child by any person whatsoever. [S]aid woman gave the name of said child as MYRTLE SOLOMON [Surrogate's Court, New York County, May 2, 1910].

The Basiles—recent immigrants from the south of Italy (Lorenzo, twenty-five, arrived in May 1899)—had served as Myrtle's foster parents since June 13, 1905. Their petition for adoption was heard and approved by Judge Thomas on May 2, 1910. The Basiles asserted that they were well capable of caring for and educating Myrtle, and that they were of the same religious faith as far as they have been able to ascertain as the parents of said Myrtle Solomon, as your petitioners verily believe. The judge overlooked the disingenuousness of the last statement.

On the face of it this was an unremarkable event, an insignificant variation on innumerable adoptions carried out in New York City from the 1850s through the 1930s. But it was a remarkable event for Myrtle and her adopted parents. Since 1872 the New York Foundling Hospital, following long-standing policies of the Children's Aid Society, shipped many orphaned children to foster families in the midwestern and western United States. Why Myrtle was not transported remains unknown. Instead, she stayed in New York, where she grew up under the name Catherine Basile, married Italian immigrant Francesco Tancredi, and gave birth to two daughters, Philomena Antoinette and Marie Antoinette, who married, respectively, James George MacMillan Gibb and Carmine Gennaro Russo. Had Myrtle ridden the Orphan Train, she (Katie) would not have met Francesco (Frank), and this introduction, if written at all, would have been written by somebody else.

Institutions permeate our lives, and their actions—and inaction—ramify for generations. They structure our lives, or, to look at it from a less deterministic perspective, they create irregular, often ill-defined boundaries to behavior. Long the subject matter of many disciplines (including history, sociology, and even art history), institutions have not been an explicit focus of New World archaeology. And yet most archaeology throughout the Anglophonic world could be described as the archaeology of institutions. Forts and trading posts were material and political expressions of imperial Spanish, French, and English expansion, and of Dutch commercial expansion. Missions and communal society settlements embodied prevailing and contested religious orthodoxies. Even domestic sites, long the backbone of North American historical archaeology, are expressions of two institutions that take center stage in modern American political discourse: family and marriage.

The reader might ask why archaeology, and especially historical archaeology, has not consistently viewed its subject matter through the lens of institutions. That historical archaeology emerged as a discipline at a time when American historians began to delve into social history and temporarily shelve political history may have had something to do with it. Attributing disciplinary interests to shifting academic fashions might also explain an emerging interest in the archaeology of institutions as historians reopen their notebooks on nation founding and the U.S. Constitution. No doubt there are other, equally supportable explanations. In any case, why or why not institutions is not the subject of this book. Further, a sociological treatise on institutions is not what we had envisioned. And for the most part, the contributors do not even offer precise definitions of institution.

In 1999 April Beisaw and I started on a path of inquiry that seemed straightforward at the time, but which we have since recognized as a complex road network. Where it leads we are still unsure. At first we were confronted with a simple, if seriously underfunded project: test the lot and foundation of a nineteenth-century school site in Baltimore County, Maryland, to determine whether they might be considered historically significant. The school had been dismantled, its walls cannibalized for building stone to restore neighboring mill housing. A few dozen shovel tests and two 5-ft-x-5-ft (1.524-m-x-1.524-m) excavation units yielded some potentially interesting material, but an intensive search of archaeological literature to provide contexts for these finds proved a disappointment. School sites simply hadn't generated much interest among professional archaeologists. The few sites that had been subject to more than cursory testing were largely underreported and, far more distressing, regularly dismissed as lacking research potential by investigators and lead agencies alike. And so began our search for colleagues who also glimpsed the potential of schoolhouse sites. Along the way we found other colleagues who, while not interested specifically in schools, offered insights from their own particular institutional sites. By the time April took the lead in organizing a conference session on the subject, and subsequently recruited the contributors whose works appear herein, our small study of a one-room schoolhouse had transformed into a broader interest in the community organizations that structure daily life. Here, we thought, was a means to examine community attitudes and identity from a vantage point other than that afforded by the single domestic site.

Any criticisms of the chapters that follow might best be directed not at the contributors but at the editors. The articles they supplied are those we asked for. Rather than abstract discussions about institutions that might resonate the works of Karl Marx and Max Weber, we wanted theoretical and methodological pieces that offered, and illustrated, practical approaches to the study of the materiality of institutions. Each of the contributors has his or her special perspective on why these sites are important and what they might reveal about the human experience. Some deal with societal power relations, expressed through coercive institutions. Others limn the depths and diversity of how individuals experienced particular institutions. To a certain extent, all of the contributions bump into that dialectical relationship that is institutional change: institutions evoking human responses, which thereby redefine institutions. Experience lies at the heart of this relationship, and the breadth of experiences belies the stereotypes evoked by different kinds of institutions. Myrtle Solomon's experience was shared by some, but by no means all.

All of the principals having died in the last century, and seemingly none of them having left an account of events, the circumstances around which an aunt brought Myrtle Solomon to the Sisters of Charity will remain unknown. With a name like Myrtle Solomon, a reasonable person might assume that one or both of her birth parents were Jewish. Why bring her to a Roman Catholic orphanage rather than the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn? Why was she not chosen among the tens of thousands of orphans transported to rural and small-town American families? How did her youthful experiences—of which she was at least vaguely aware, if absolutely silent about around her grandchildren—influence her choices about marriage and child rearing? Did she, as a young woman, volunteer for charity work? Or donate money to charitable organizations?

Myrtle's/Catherine's experiences are largely lost to us. But thousands of others aided by the Sisters of Charity and other orphanages have recorded their experiences and share them through a variety of media and national organizations. Research that examines these experiences in light of the physical plants of institutions, their settings and furnishings, is only beginning to advance. We think that the articles in this volume significantly contribute to our understanding of institutions and the human experience. We hope you will agree.

2

Historical Overview of the Archaeology of Institutional Life

Sherene Baugher

An institution is an established organization or foundation, especially one dedicated to education, public service, or culture or a place for the care of persons who are destitute, disabled, or mentally ill (American Heritage 1992:936). For archaeologists, institutions encompass communal societies (e.g., Shaker settlements), almshouses and workhouses, orphanages, hospitals, schools, settlement houses, asylums, and reformatories. Religious (e.g., houses of worship and cemeteries) and military sites (e.g., prisons and fortifications) are so diverse that they usually are categorized under their own headings. This chapter focuses on a century of archaeological fieldwork and the changes that have taken place during this time, focusing on the types of institutions discussed in this book—those of communality, incarceration, and education within the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia—with examples of what archaeologists have chosen to excavate, how they evaluated the material culture, and how their research questions have changed.

Early Developments in the Archaeology of Institutions

The archaeology of institutional life (as defined in this volume) centers on those institutions that control people's behavior and daily life. The earliest of these excavations in the early and mid-twentieth century focused on Spanish missions. The daily lives of Native American converts were highly regimented with the goal of separating them from their traditional cultural practices, clothing, material goods, spoken language, and religion in order to Westernize them. In many missions, treatment was similar to that of people in prisons or workhouses in that they did not have freedom to come and go.

Early excavations at missions in the Southwest and Alta, California (Cordell 1989:33, Costello and Hornbeck 1992:321; Hester 1992:191–211), focused on unearthing foundations of known buildings; providing the location of main buildings, outbuildings, wells, and privies; and noting the separation of sacred and secular spaces. These projects did more than aid historical preservation efforts. They also demonstrated that mission sites could contribute valuable archaeological data to research on community design or designed landscapes.

With the perspectives of the New Archaeology, the research focus shifted to social questions. Research at La Purísima Mission, California, focused on the material conditions of mission life and acculturation of the Chumash. James Deetz (1978) found differences between the material assemblage at the mission and that of a separate Chumash village. He hypothesized that men's traditional roles had changed more than those of the women at the mission, and that, on the whole, the mission residents seemed more acculturated than the village residents.

Scholars questioned these findings, as the village and mission were not contemporary, but others have tried to build on them (DiPeso 1974; Farnsworth 1992; Orser 2002). Work at the Mission of Santa Elena de Guale on St. Catherines Island, Georgia, attempts to understand mission life and the acculturation of the Guale Indians (Thomas 1993). Kathleen Deagan (1993) has evaluated the economic impact of Native American women on a mission in St. Augustine, Florida, through the women's interactions and intermarriages. Bonnie McEwan's (1993:312) excavations at San Luis de Talimali in Tallahassee, Florida, found evidence of Native American women's influence in that 90 percent of the ceramics were colono-ware. McEwan (2002:492) also found evidence of high-status Apalachee items, an impressive Apalachee council house, and other Native American structures that reflect the continuance of Apalachee cultural systems.

Institutional research broadened to utopian communities in which communal life was tightly regimented and transgressors punished (or excommunicated). Lu Ann De Cunzo and her colleagues (1996) undertook landscape archaeology at Father Rapp's Garden, in Economy, Pennsylvania, seeking to understand the value systems of the members of the Harmony Society. To the outside world this garden communicated economic success and social status, and to the members it reinforced the internal social hierarchy on which the society was founded (112). David Starbuck (2004) sought to understand the gendered landscape of Shaker sites in terms of the division of community into separate spheres for men and women. Matthew Tomaso and his associates (2006), working at the quasi-utopian settlement of Feltville, New Jersey, explored issues of class segmentation.

This shift in focus—from unearthing building footprints for reconstruction to posing research questions that focus on class, inequality, gender, race, ethnicity, and ideology—mirrored shifts in historical archaeology as a whole. Diverse research questions can be seen in the following examples of the archaeology of almshouses, asylums, prisons, reformatories, and schools. The sites range from urban to rural, from the economic and social core of the English-speaking world, London, to outposts on the periphery in the colonies.

Preindustrial Almshouses

Like any significant institution, the almshouse has a history that is a microcosm of broader social and cultural history. As a charitable institution, it has transformed from preindustrial homes for the poor, to nineteenth-century workhouses, to contemporary homeless shelters (Baugher and Spencer-Wood 2002:15). The growth of the number and size of institutions serving the disadvantaged is linked to the needs and economics of a growing population.

Archaeologists in the United Kingdom and the United States have found similarities in the site design and architecture of preindustrial almshouses/workhouses and hospitals. The complexes often had substantial and sometimes architecturally elegant main buildings with two or three outbuildings forming rectilinear compounds (Huey 2001). These structures suggest major community investments in the care of the poor. Excavations in