Overview

American things, American material culture, and American archaeology are the themes of this book. The authors use goods used or made in America to illuminate issues such as tenancy, racism, sexism, and regional bias. Contributors utilize data about everyday objects - from tin cans and bottles to namebrand items, from fish bones to machinery - to analyze the way American capitalism works. Their cogent analyses take us literally from broken dishes to the international economy. Especially notable chapters examine how an archaeologist formulates questions about exploitation under capitalism, and how the study of artifacts reveals African-American middle class culture and its response to racism.

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9780306460678

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Matthew Johnson's commentary does an excellent job of pulling the articles ... together, exploring the problems that they raise, and placing their concerns in an even broader temporal and spatial context. As he points out, writing a historical archaeology of capitalism is a complex and difficult task. This volume is a welcome and useful contribution to that task.' Journal of Anthropological Research, 56 (2000)

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