Larry

On several occasions, we have tweaked the South functional categories for various projects.  South's categories were developed for early rural and frontier sites, so changes were in order for urban or industrial asemblages.  You may want to check out the following paper which includes brief descriptions of our functional categories for urban sites that often include industrial/commercial materials.

Genheimer, Robert A.
  1995	"Not All Are the Same": Pattern Recognition at Ohio Valley Urban Privies.  In Historical Archaeology in Kentucky, edited by K. A. McBride, W. S. McBride, and D. Pollack, pp. 296-314.  Kentucky Heritage Council, Frankfort.

Bob Genheimer
George Rieveschl Curator of Archaeology
Cincinnati Museum Center
1301 Western Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45203
513-455-7161


-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
McKee, Larry
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 12:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Revisiting South's functional artifact categories


Our staff is working on the analysis of artifacts from a data recovery
project on a 1910s to 1940s lumber mill town, Ravensford, on the edge of
the Great Smoky Mountains in southwestern North Carolina.  The
collection includes over 170,000 artifacts from 22 distinct house lots,
commercial lots, and several dumps. 

 

We are trying to adapt South's functional category scheme to serve as an
intermediate step in the artifact analysis. We are tweaking it to
accommodate 20th century items as well as to try (as others have done)
to minimize the inherent problems in forcing certain multifunctional or
ambiguous items into fixed categories. 

 

We are looking for references to discussions (in publications, gray
literature, dissertations, or meeting presentations) of similar attempts
at broader functional categorization of historic period artifact
collections, based on South or other approaches. 

 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions from list members.

 

 

***********************************

Larry McKee, Ph.D.

Branch Manager/Senior Archaeologist

TRC Inc.

1865 Air Lane Dr, Suite 9

Nashville TN  37210-3814

Office: 615 884-4430  Fax: 615 884-4431

Mobile: 615 482-7378

 [log in to unmask]

***************************************

 


Hurricane on the Bayou, now showing at The New Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX Theater. You'll be blown away by this moving message about the importance of wetlands conservation and the dire consequences resulting from the destruction of the Louisiana bayou.



Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition sails again at Cincinnati Museum Center; 50% larger than before and featuring more than 300 new artifacts recently recovered from the Titanic wreck site. Through May 6, 2007. Welcome aboard!