A while back I posted a request for information on studies of store
records.  I thought I would share my findings with the list and want
to thank everyone for their help.  Kwedar et al. was especially
helpfull with definitions of many of the items sold.  The sources are
as follows:
 
Adams, William Hampton, and Steven D. Smith.  "Historical Perspectives
on Black Tenant Farmer Material Culture: The Henry C. Long General
Store Ledger at Waverly Plantation, Mississippi."  In The Archaeology
of Slavery and Plantation Life, ed. Theresa Singleton.  New York:
Academic Press, Inc., 1985, 309-334.
 
Atherton, Lewis E.  "The Services of the Frontier Merchant."  The
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 24 (1937):153-170.
 
-------."The Cataloging and Use of Western Mercantile Records."  The
Library Quarterly 8 (1938):189-199.
 
-------."The Pioneer Merchant in Mid-America."  The University of
Missouri Studies 14, no. 2 (1939).
 
--------.The Southern Country Store, 1800-1860.  New York: Greenwood
Press, Publishers, 1949.
 
Bowen,  Joanne
 A Study of Seasonality and Subsistence: Eighteenth Century Suffield,
Connecticut.  Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1990.
 
Dublin, Thomas.  "Women and Outwork in a Nineteenth-Century New
England Town: Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, 1830-1850."  In The
Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation, ed. Steven Hahn
and Jonathan Prude.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1985, 51-69.
 
Fanelli, Doris D.  "William Polk's General Store in Saint George's,
Delaware."  Delaware History 19 (1981): 212-228.
 
Fishback, Price V.  "Did Coal Miners "Owe Their Souls to the Company
Store"? Theory and Evidence from the Early 1900s."  Journal of
Economic History 46 (1986):1011-1029.
 
Kwedar, Melinda F., John A. Patterson, and James R. Allen.
Interpreting 1830's Storekeeping in New Salem, Illinois.  Springfield,
IL: Report Submitted to the Illinois Department of Conservation,
1980.
 
Long, Amos W., Jr.  "The General Store."  Pennsylvania Folklife 39
(1990):98-116.
 
Norris, James D.  "One-Price Policy among Antebellum Country Stores."
Business History Review  36 (1962):455-458.
 
-------.Frontier Iron: The Story of the Maramec Iron Works, 1826-1876.
 The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1972. (chapter on the
company store).
 
Thanks - James
 
James Wettstaed   [log in to unmask]
 
Shared Service Archaeologist, Mark Twain National Forest
"all opinions expressed are my own etc."