Glimpses Into the Dialectics of Antebellum Landscape Nucleation in Agrarian Michigan

Author: Sayers D.O.

Source: Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Volume 10, Number 4, 200312 , pp. 369-432(64)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

This paper explores the transforming antebellum (ca. 1834–60) landscape, political economy, and progressive ideologies that existed at the Shepard farmstead site (20CA104) in Battle Creek, Michigan. Through this study of agrarian capitalist transformations, a picture emerges of complex dialectic interdependencies between gender, class, progressive philosophies, and the nucleated and alienating farmscape. To explore these issues, a model of agrarian transitions is developed and compared and contrasted with primary documentary, landscape, and archaeological data. This approach allows for an analysis and interpretation of transitional dynamics that have been ignored by scholars of the historical American countryside.

Keywords: agrarian capitalism; social relations and alichation; landscapes; political–economic transformations

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia;, Email: dosaye@wm.edu

Publication date: 2003-01-01