Regarding Mark Branstner's intriguiing comment,
Perhaps a UGRR site wouldn't have much to tell us about the escaped
slaves, but couldn't the sites have great potential to inform us about
the lives of the (non-normative) radical group who helped them? After
all, although most Northerners were against the expansion of slave
states in the Union, most people were not politically (or in this case
religiously?) radical enough to actually risk their lives to help Black
slaves live freely among themselves in the North. Didn't radical
abolisionists have links to the sufferage movement and come out of the
Second Great Awakening? I think it could be quite interesting to
understand how this sub-group of the educated upper-middle class
expressed themselves materially, and how a UGRR site would compare to
sites representing other social elites from the same time.
 
Sigrid Arnott
Historical Archaeologist
Minnesota Historical Society
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>----------
>From:  Mark C. Branstner[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent:  Thursday, June 04, 1998 2:53 PM
>To:    [log in to unmask]
>Subject:       Re: UGRR Archaeological Sites
>
>Alright folks, this query has prompted me to play devil's advocate for a
>moment...  No offense intended to Debbie or anyone else!
>
>What the heck's the deal with Underground Railroad sites?  What are you (we)
>expecting to find at these sites? What are the research questions that are
>being asked or potentially answered?  What are the potential archaeological
>contributions to these questions?
>
>Too oversimplify the issue (for arguments sake)...  How would one recognize
>an
>underground railroad site without documentary evidence?  After all, these
>"stations" are for the most part just white folks basements and/or barns,
>where transients with virtually no personal possessions stayed on a very
>temporary basis...  What exactly is it that you hope to find that would
>distinguish such a temporary presence from a normative mid-nineteenth century
>domestic assemblage?
>
>I just don't get it...  Do you expect to uncover smashed leg irons and
>abolitionist literature?  And if you don't find something that obvious, what
>exactly do you hope to find...  And if you do find something, what
>significance would it have other than particularistic historic data for
>display in a local museum?
>
>Yes, it sounds pretty cool (and very PC) to say you're working on an UGRR
>site, but if we're gonna do archaeology, it better be for a reason...
>
>Mark Branstner
>Great Lakes Research Associates, Inc.
>