While subscribing to the digest means my daily volume of HISTARCH mail is manageable, the downside is that I never know if someone's replied to a query before I have.  
 
In any case, addressing Ron May's query about differences in Lutheran and Catholic households...  I don't personally know of any direct comparative archaeological studies relevant to North America, but certainly there are clear differences in Christian iconography between the two different denominations.  From the European perspective (and Paul and Geoff will, I hope, forgive me the gross oversimplification I'm about to commit), roughly speaking the further north and west you go, into Calvinist, Presbyterian and Scandinavian Lutheran territory, the simpler and less ornate the Christian iconography becomes, while the further south and east you go, into Catholic and Orthodox territory, the more ornate the iconography becomes.  From a purely practical perspective, any site generating artefacts associated with a complex iconography of sainthood, whether in Europe, North America or Australasia, is unlikely to be associated with Lutherans (or any other Northern European branch of P
 rotestantism).
 
However, the advent of mass-production in the second half of the 18th century can make it difficult to associate differences in general assemblage distribution with a household's religious background short of that household belonging to a church with very particular and specific religious practices.  For example, I would not expect to find large quantities of alcohol bottles in a household of strict Scottish Presbyterians or Welsh Methodists; if I did, this would make for an interesting point of interpretation.  Similarly - and I hope people will correct me if I'm wrong - it seems to me that most North American archaeology of 19th-century religious households has tended to focus on the unusual (for example Shakers, various strands of Utopianism and - allowing for the fact that Latter Day Sainters were far less common in the 19th-century - Mormons) rather than more mainstream Protestants, Catholics and Anglicans/Episcopalians.  Note that I'm intentionally  excluding specifical
 ly religious communities/sites such as missions, monasteries, cemeteries and churches from discussion, and am instead focusing on domestic households (while allowing for the fact that distinguishing the two isn't always that straightforward).
 
Using some examples from my personal experience, religious differences were essentially irrelevant in my late 1990s comparative studies of ceramics assemblages from non-conformist [ie, Protestant] rural Welsh households and Catholic Scottish Hebridean households.  Where variation occurred, it was the by-product of socio-economic status and geographical isolation rather than differences in non-conformist/Catholic household use.
 
In the six years I've been working in Australia, I've worked at both a post-1850s Moravian mission to Indigenous Australians and my current site, an 1848-58 Anglican priest's residence (both in Victoria). While there are theoretically differences between Moravian and Anglican theology (somewhat complicated by Anglicanism traditionally encompassing a very broad range of theological perspectives, particularly in the wake of 18th- and 19th-century latitudinarianism), I'd be hard pressed to ascribe any assemblage variation between the two to theological differences except that the Anglican Rev. Bean clearly enjoyed a drink and the Moravian missionaries didn't.  Indeed the limitations of Imperial supply to a comparatively remote (albeit wealthy) colony frequently limits general variation between 19th-century Victorian (in the sense of the Australian state) assemblages associated with households of European origin.  When everyone shares the same supply points, there's only so much 
 you can do to vary material culture acquisition on the basis of religious belief.
 
None of the above should be taken as stating that you can't, or shouldn't, attempt to study religious influences in assemblages associated with 'mainstream' (and I use that term advisedly) religious groups.  But I do think it's most likely to come through in either the absence of particular classes of artefacts (such as alcohol bottles) or the presence of rare, but always fun to find, artefacts of specific religious iconography (of which we're yet to find a single one at our known residence of an Anglican priest).
 
And at this point I hope I'll be forgiven for puting in a blatant plug for the Albuquerque session on religious sites I'm co-chairing this coming January.  Why, we're so ecumenical, we're including Hawaiian Buddhists and traditional Torres Strait Island (Australia) beliefs in among the usual shades of Christianity.
 
Alasdair Brooks
 
 
PS: For the sake of truth in advertising, I was personally raised Anglican/Scots Episcopalian, but attend a Russian Orthodox church these days as my wife is the granddaughter of a Moscow Patriarchate priest.
 
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This discussion provided me with insight I had never considered before, but  am actively thinking now. My Christiansen and Jensen family departed Denmark  in  the 1850s, following a civil war and freedom of religion act that led to  their ostracism for rejecting Lutheranism. I know zero about the Lutheran Church, but wonder what archaeological distinctions one might find in a Lutheran  versus Catholic residence during that period? Of course, my family were neither and  joined 89,000 emigrants to North America in that same time period. Can anyone address the question of Lutheran archaeology? This leads into the late 19th  century emerging Mormon communities in Deseret, where the 89,000 people 
landed.  I anticipate Tim Scarlet might have insight on this question.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.