Abstracts Sociology

Domestic activities and household variation at Catawba New Town, ca. 1790-1820

by Theresa McReynolds. Shebalin

The Catawba Nation's endurance to the present day can be attributed in large part to its members' creative adaptations to the dynamic sociopolitical, economic, and demographic circumstances of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Archaeological data from the New Town community indicate that during the post-Revolutionary War Federal Period (ca. 1781-1820), Catawba families employed a variety of different social and economic strategies to survive in a homeland that had become dominated by Anglo-American yeoman farmers. My research explores this evidence for intracommunity variability at New Town and its implications. It integrates archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence to reconstruct the organization and use of domestic space by individual Catawba households. The results reveal that families living in the southern hamlet at New Town embraced western social and economic ideas and practices to a greater extent than their northern neighbors, who may have intentionally emphasized or even exaggerated differences between their lifestyles and those of their Anglo-American neighbors.