Barbara Henning and other interested HISTARCH parties-
 
All of us in the Midwest interested in historical agrarian and rural
development have similar concerns.  Indeed, the same inclination to look
only at documentary data could be said of most mid-19th - mid-20th century
sites.
 
There are ways of "getting" SHPOs, historians, architectural historians,
and otherwise prehistorically-inclined archaeologists (i.e., those who are
at times involved with things rural) to consider the potential and the
importance of everyday farmsteads from an archaeological perspective.  One
possible avenue is to have them think of archaeology and documents as
resulting in independent data sets, where documents are in the same league
as, say, palynology, in that it tells a story, not the only story, and one
to mesh with other stories.  Oral histories and photographs provide similar
independent but potentially complementary data sources.
 
A second  possibility is inculcating the understanding that while documents
tend to be very consciously constructed (e.g., census or tax records,
journals, maps, etc.), the construction of the archaeological record tends
not to be so conscious (neither, of course, is it random), but rather
reveals material aspects of the inhabitants they themselves can talk about
only in a "Because that's the way we do things" sense.
 
Third, many small regions of the Midwest are not representative of what we
"know" of larger regions or states.  In some cases (I think here especially
of the Central Sands area of Wisconsin) farming in a place was so far off
the mark with regards to anywhere else that a comparative documentatry
study tells what the farmers were not, rather than what they were.
Occupants were in a location for such a short time they often don't appear
to any meaningful extent (if at all) in the documentary record.  In such
cases, archaeology may be the only recourse to historical understanding of
a time and place.
 
There is a fourth part, also: farmsteads, like any archaeological site, are
non-renewable
resources.  I hope all involved are familiar with that one.
 
Criterion D can be most useful, actually.  Eligibility under D may require
special circumstances, but those circumstances do exist.  But those
circumstances need to have balanced and comparative databases.
 
Perhaps this is the sort of thing to hash out in the Spring 1999 HACUM
sessions (Historical Archaeology Conference of the Upper Midwest).  Give
Sigrid Arnott at the Minnesota Historical Society a buzz
([log in to unmask]).
 
Mark Cassell
 
p.s.- Apologies to Sigrid if this creates too much of a drain on her time!
 
----------
> From: Barbara Henning <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: farmstead sites
> Date: Friday, July 31, 1998 10:08 AM
>
> Regarding the significance of historic era farmstead sites, a Midwest
SHPO
> archeologist has opined that there are no significant research questions
that
> can be asked regarding farmstead sites that date from 1890 and later.
Broad
> research questions such as learning about lifeways or social standing are
> either insufficiently detailed to be important questions and also have
been
> (or can be) answered elsewhere.  Evidence of ethnicity, we are told, has
> seldom been revealed in most excavations.  After 1890, the documentary
record
> is said to be sufficient to document agricultural practices in the
Midwest.
> As an historian, I would certainly welcome comments from the
archeologists who
> have grappled with the significance of late 19th century and early 20th
> century farmstead sites.  Is it possible to have an NRHP-eligible
historic
> farmstead site under Criterion D?  What could the important research
questions
> be?
>
> B.J. Henning, Rivercrest Associates, Inc