Reading Responses -- Sept 17

In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life

James Deetz

Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective

Fred B. Kniffen and Henry Glassie

The United States is a nation of immigrants. To understand the people and things in the United States, we need to the study the aborigines ethnic culture and lifestyle. Starting from the colonial era from 1600s, different cultural and race groups of immigrants came to the New World to seek a better life. They brought traditional beliefs and lifestyle to America from their home country. In the new country, immigrants build their homes from one generation to another. Countering all the odds, these immigrants created one of the strongest countries in the world.

Understanding the history development of United States is not only an important thing for American people. It is also an important example of the people of other countries. In this multicultural era and rapid international changing society, it is very important for us to learn from history.

James Deetz emphasis on the objects that are commonly forgotten because those objects are understand as not important or are hard to notice. For example, ceramics in our life, tombstone, and the way how house was built. The development of these small things seems to be not important but those things can give us something more to understand our society.

        The object I have in this course is a man’s top hat. An object that I will say it’s also some small things forgotten. Hats were so important for the people in 19^th century but less people are wearing hat now a days. Studying about hats allows us to understand the roles of hat in our society. Do hats become more important to our daily life or it becomes more like a functional object that we only wear it to prevent sunburn or dazzling sun shine? The problem here is, these little things were forgotten in the history, which means there are no a lot of research about it. It is always easy to find and present the history of the objects but giving the story of an object it meaning is hard and important.

The purpose of this study is to examine the basic aspect of settlements-the methods of constructing buildings. In the timber-rich eastern United States other materials commonly used in Europe was abandoned by the immigrants. How did the immigrants build their home can reflect their needs? The fence around the house means the need for safety and the way how immigrants arrange rooms in the house also reflects their family structure. The author focuses on the year from 1790 to 1850 and records the change of the method of constructing wooden house of the immigrants.

The second stage of the research should focus on the cultural meaning of the timber construction houses. The methods within different groups of people and races would be different. The studies in wooden construction gives a lot of study examples for object analyzes, especially in the ways of how the object was made.