The Archaeology of Prostitution and Clandestine Pursuits synthesizes case studies from various nineteenth-century sites where material culture reveals evidence of prostitution, including a brothel in Five Points, New York City's most notorious neighborhood, and parlor houses a few blocks from the White House and Capitol Hill. Rebecca Yamin and Donna Seifert also examine brothels in the American West?in frontier sites and mining camps in Sandpoint, Idaho; Prescott, Arizona; and Fargo, North Dakota; and in urban Los Angeles. The artifact assemblages found at these sites often contradict written records, allowing archaeologists to construct a more realistic and complicated picture of daily life for working-class women involved in commercial sex.Recognizing the agency involved in practicing a profession that has never been considered respectable, even when it wasn't outright illegal, Yamin and Seifert also look at the agency of other individuals who participated in illicit activities. Some defied society in public?drinking on the job or smuggling?while others acted in private?scratching messages in window panes or hiding caches of magical artifacts. The authors demonstrate the various ways disempowered groups?including immigrants, African Americans, women, and the poor?wielded autonomy while constrained by cultural norms. They also consider similar, contemporary expressions of agency, with particular attention to ongoing arguments surrounding the legalization of prostitution. Juxtaposing today's debates alongside the clandestine pursuits of the past reveals how dominant moral standards determine what individual choices are publicly permissible. A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney.

Case studies of nineteenth-century sites from New York City to the American West The Archaeology of Prostitution and Clandestine Pursuits synthesizes case studies from various nineteenth-century sites where material culture reveals evidence of prostitution, including a brothel in Five Points-New York City's most notorious neighborhood-and parlor houses a few blocks from the White House and Capitol Hill. Rebecca Yamin and Donna Seifert also examine brothels in the American West-in urban Los Angeles and in frontier sites and mining camps in Sandpoint, Idaho; Prescott, Arizona; and Fargo, North Dakota. The artifact assemblages found at these sites often contradict written records, allowing archaeologists to construct a more realistic and complicated picture of daily life for working-class women involved in commercial sex. Recognizing the agency involved in practicing a profession that has never been considered respectable, even when it wasn't outright illegal, Yamin and Seifert also look at the agency of other individuals who participated in illicit activities, defying society privately or even publicly. The authors demonstrate the various ways disempowered groups including immigrants, African Americans, women, and the poor wielded autonomy while constrained by cultural norms. They also consider similar, contemporary expressions of agency, with particular attention to ongoing arguments surrounding the legalization of prostitution. Juxtaposing today's debates alongside the clandestine pursuits of the past reveals how dominant moral standards determine what individual choices are publicly permissible. A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The essays collected in this volume represent exciting new directions in the study of America's landscapes. Written from a post-processualist viewpoint, these analyses go beyond directly observable phenomena to explain the particular significance that people have attached to the environments they create for themselves. As the editors note, This volume includes many searching looks at the landscape, not just to understand ourselves, but to understand the context for other peoples' lives in other times, to unravel the landscapes they created and explain the meanings embedded in them. The book's overall approach is interpretive and interdisciplinary, drawing not simply on archaeological evidence but on oral history, written sources, ethnographic data, and human experience. The contributors examine a variety of questions and methods for recovering and interpreting past landscapes. How, for example, did an elite family in eighteenth-century New Jersey express its status and values through its manipulation of the landscape and how, indeed, do archaeologists derive that information from remains in the ground? What do the ruins left standing in a rural landscape say about attitudes toward time and family? How do the fields and yards of small farms reveal sociopolitical forces affecting the society at large?