While household archaeologists view the home as a social unit, few move their investigations ""beyond the walls"" when contextualizing a household in its community. Even exterior aspects of a dwelling-its plant life, yard spaces, and trash heaps-uncover issues of domination and resistance, gender relations, and the effects of colonialism. This innovative volume examines historical homes and their wider landscapes to more fully address social issues of the past. The contributors, leading archaeologists using various interpretive frameworks, analyze households across time periods and diverse cultures in North America. Including case studies of James Madison's Montpelier, George Washington's Ferry Farm, Chinese immigrants in a Nevada mining town, Hawaiian ranching communities, and Southern plantations, Beyond the Walls offers a new avenue for archaeological study of domestic sites.

Thought-provoking and engaging, Beyond the Walls provides new and relevant theoretical perspectives and specific case studies for archaeologists conducting research related to household archaeology. Essential for both students and professionals."-Mark D. Groover, author of The Archaeology of North American Farmsteads From ranching stations in Hawai'i to slave quarters in South Carolina, the essays in Beyond the Walls crosscut time and space to consider the interrelationships between households and the wider regional and global networks in which their residents were enmeshed, presenting new insights relating to identity, consumerism, and modernity."-Barbara J. Heath, coeditor of Jefferson's Poplar Forest: Unearthing a Virginia Plantation While household archaeologists view the home as a social unit, few move their investigations "beyond the walls" when contextualizing a household in its community. Even exterior aspects of a dwelling-its plant life, yard spaces, and trash heaps-uncover issues of domination and resistance, gender relations, and the effects of colonialism. This innovative volume examines historical homes and their wider landscapes to more fully address social issues of the past. The contributors, leading archaeologists using various interpretive frameworks, analyze households across time periods and diverse cultures in North America. Including case studies of James Madison's Montpelier, George Washington's Ferry Farm, Chinese immigrants in a Nevada mining town and Southern plantations, Beyond the Walls offers a new avenue for archaeological study of domestic sites.

Emphasizing the important social relationships that form between people who participate in small-scale economic transactions, contributors to this volume explore often-overlooked networks of intimate and shadow economies?terms used to describe trade that takes place outside formal market systems. Case studies from a variety of historical contexts around the world reveal the ways such transactions have created community and identity, subverted power relations, and helped people adopt new social realities. In Maine, woven baskets sold by Native American artisans to Euroamerican consumers have supported Native strategies for cultural survival and agency. Alcohol exchanged by Scandinavian merchants for furs and skins enabled their indigenous trading partners to expand social webs that contested colonialism. Slave households on Caribbean sugar plantations contain evidence for trade networks that extended far beyond the boundaries of individual plantations. From moonshiners in Appalachia to seal hunters in Antarctica, the examples in this volume show how historical archaeologists can use the concept of intimate economies to uncover deeply meaningful connections that exist beyond the traditional framework of global capitalism.