Drawing on a wide range of examples from New York City urban life to California mining camps, this compact study examines the material culture of capitalism in America and illustrates its development from the colonial to the modern eras. It is the first comparative treatment in historical archaeology to do so.
Author Christopher Matthews, an archaeologist at Hofstra University, worked on the Annapolis, Maryland project that produced dramatic new information about life in that city using historical archaeology. In this book, Matthews focuses on the topics like the material construction of individuals as commodities and the orientation of social life to the market. He includes studies on early Native-European relations, early colonial culture change, urbanization, mass consumption, and heritage tourism that are presented in a theoretical framework of capitalism as defined by Karl Marx and Max Weber.
Archaeological evidence of sabotage at a cutlery factory indicates worker conflict with management, as does evidence from slave sites that indicates resistance to the plantation system.
Matthews treats archaeology as an artifact of capitalism by linking the study of material culture to its creation within a capitalistic society. He ends with a challenge to the archaeological community to develop an ethical framework that promotes the public welfare. The Archaeology of American Capitalism will challenge the reader to view American archaeology from a new perspective that may or may not be appreciated.
