An Archaeological Study of Rural Capitalism and Material Life The Gibbs Farmstead in Southern Appalachia, 1790–1920 CONTRIBUTIONS TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY Series Editor: Charles E. Orser, Jr., Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF RURAL CAPITALISM AND MATERIAL LIFE: The Gibbs Farmstead in Southern Appalachia, 1790–1920 Mark D. Groover ARCHAEOLOGY AND CREATED MEMORY: Public History in a National Park Paul A. Schackel AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF HISTORY AND TRADITION: Moments of Danger in the Annapolis Landscape Christopher N. Matthews AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF MANNERS: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts Lorinda B. R. Goodwin DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND POWER: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Ecuador Ross W. Jamieson THE HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF BUENOS AIRES: A City at the End of the World Daniel Schávelzon A HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: Breaking New Ground Edited by Uzi Baram and Lynda Carroll MEANING AND IDEOLOGY IN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: Style, Social Identity, and Capitalism in an Australian Town Heather Burke RACE AND AFFLUENCE: An Archaeology of AfricanAmerica and Consumer Culture Paul R. Mullins A Chronological Listing of Volumes in this series appears at the back of this volume. A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher. An Archaeological Study of Rural Capitalism and Material Life The Gibbs Farmstead in Southern Appalachia, 1790–1920 Mark D. Groover Ball State University Muncie, Indiana KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS NEW YORK,BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW eBookISBN: 0-306-47917-6 Print ISBN: 0-306-47502-2 ©2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers NewYork, Boston, Dordrecht, London, Moscow Print ©2003 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers New York All rights reserved No part of this eBook maybe reproducedor transmitted inanyform or byanymeans,electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise,withoutwritten consent from the Publisher Createdin the UnitedStates of America Visit Kluwer Online at: http://kluweronline.com and Kluwer's eBookstoreat: http://ebooks.kluweronline.com To Charles Faulkner, scholar, mentor, and friend. This page intentionally left blank Foreword The history of archaeological research at the Gibbs site parallels chang- ing theoretical approaches in American historical archaeology that ultimately transformed this study from a local to a global perspec- tive. When excavation began at the Gibbs site in 1987, historical ar- chaeology in East Tennessee had largely focused on the study of early military sites and the homes of upper class Anglo-Americans. Some- times called “historical supplementation” (Deagan 1982), this archae- ological research was viewed as a supplement or handmaiden to local histories that also largely documented the lives of white male polit- ical and military leaders of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, during the decade of excavation at this late 18th and 19th centuryfarm- stead, a new theoretical approach in historical archaeology was adopted in East Tennessee. Humanistic historical archaeology (Deagan 1982) did not focus on political and military histories, or the most promi- nent local hero, but on the historically invisible people in American society. Because these undocumented people were not highly visible upper class Anglo-American males, the study of ethnicity and gender in the archaeological record became an important goal in the humanistic ap- proach. Fieldwork also shifted from excavation of upper class homes to the domestic remains of the laborers and servants who maintained these mansions, and the yeoman farmers who made up the majority of the rural population. The artifacts of these often historically overlooked people are found in their backyards where they spent most of their working lives. An im- portant aspect of backyard archaeology was the search for so-called ethnic markers. It was this search for ethnicity in archaeological re- mains that drew the historical archaeology program in the University of Tennessee Anthropology Department to the humble Gibbs log house. In 1987, the Nicholas Gibbs Historical Society asked me to begin ar- chaeological excavations at the Gibbs house site to locate the long for- gotten outbuildings that had supportedthis late 18th and 19th century farmstead. While certainly interested in the architectural remains at the site, I accepted their invitation largely due to curiosity about how vii viii Foreword the material culture of the German-American Gibbs family compared to that of Anglo-American settlers that had already been studied in the Knoxville area (Faulkner 1984). The focus of this initial excavation, therefore, largely centered on looking for German ethnic markers. Since I was ostensibly searching for outbuildings, fieldwork con- sisted of opening 3-×-3-foot square units in the rear yard of the house in areas where a memory map drawn by the last Gibbs family descen- dant to live on the farm showed the locations of former buildings. Coring and probing during initialfieldwork likewise indicated the presence of buried architectural remains in areas denoted on the memory map. Excavation was largely designed for an archaeological field school in which students learned how to excavate in stratigraphic levels and identify and dig architectural features that would presumably pro- duce ethnic markers distinguishing the Gibbs family from their Anglo- American neighbors. After a couple of field seasons, I was sorely disappointed. The re- mains of the buildings that we found appeared exactly like those on comparable Southern Appalachian farms inhabited by Anglo-American households, and except for a high proportion of lead-glazed redware, there appeared to be no German ethnic markers in the Gibbs material culture. The archaeological remains indicated Nicholas Gibbs and his family were scarcely different from their pioneer English and Scots- Irish contemporaries. While my field schools continued to pursue the mandate to find the remains of outbuildings on the Gibbs site into the 1990s, our study of domestic artifacts underwent a significant transformation, initially due to our failure to identify “Germaness” in the material culture of the Gibbs family, but ultimately because of an application of alternative theoretical approaches to the Gibbs data. Adopting middle range the- ory and a processual approach, two master’s theses were subsequently written with the Gibbs archaeological data. These studies addressed nail use, distribution, and condition on the site (Young 1991) and fron- tier subsistence among the Gibbs family (Lev-Tov 1994). In my own research, comparison of the Gibbs family material culture, especially refined ceramics, to those used by local upper class families revealed that while the Gibbs did not set as elegant a table (for example, Chinese import porcelain serving pieces were rare in their household inven- tory) both Gibbs and their wealthier neighbors shared the same de- sire and ability to obtain goods on the international market, despite their so-called “isolation” on the backside of the Appalachian Mountains (Faulkner 2000). The revelation that East Tennessee farmers like the Gibbs were actively engaged in the global economy and the fact that there appeared to be a general homogeneity in cultural patterns among Foreword ix yeomen of the Southern Appalachian frontier resulted in a fresh look at 19th-century life at the Gibbs farmstead. This new approach reached fruition in 1997 when Ph.D. student Mark Groover applied interpretive perspectives of ruralcapitalism and patrimony to archaeological and architectural data at the Gibbs site combined with 19th century primary documents, the latter providing a wealth of evidence to contextualize the Gibbs material culture. This approach is a classic example of what has been termed “humanistic science” in historical archaeology (Deagan 1982). Groover returned to the site where the remainder of the rear house- lot was systematically shovel tested by a field school under his direc- tion to gather additional information. Temporal changes in structures and activities on the farm, and the architecture of the Gibbs house were carefully examined to detect remodeling and additions during its 200-year history. While using theory and concepts within the world systems perspective, Groover also developed new ways of reconstruct- ing temporal process that linked material consumption and landscape events to household dynamics within four generations of the Gibbs family. The underlying catalyst of household life at the farmstead was seen to have been influenced by patrimony and rural capitalism. While one could argue that the participation of the Gibbs family in the 19th-century marketeconomy was due to other factors such as the ac- quisition of material status symbols, emergence of female expression in the household, or simply attraction to popular culture, Groover makes a strong case that maintaining the family homeplace and acquiring farmland for succeeding generations were the major reasons that they participated in the commercial economy. During the last decade the theoretical approach of humanistic science in historical archaeology has led to many innovative and promis- ing interpretations of past American culture. Mark Groover’s study is a significant contribution to historical archaeology since he convincingly demonstrates that during the 19th century in Southern Appalachia, historical change within the material culture used by yeoman farmers was largely due to external factors (like the rise of rural capitalism) plus internal factors, such as social relationships and patrimony ev- ident in primary historical documents. Additionally, this study is an enlightened contribution to American social history because it reveals that these so-called “yesterday’s people” were in reality modern players in the on-going process of economic globalization. CHARLESH. FAULKNER University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee