Date of Award
6-1-2012
Document Type
Campus Access Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Historical Archaeology
First Advisor
Stephen A. Mrozowski
Second Advisor
Stephen W. Silliman
Third Advisor
David Landon
Abstract
This thesis examines maritime firearms curation practices in the Atlantic world in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, using assemblages from six shipwreck sites dating between 1686-1718. Binford's (1979) original construction of the curation concept ,later critiques and revisions are reviewed and Shott's (1996) definition is adopted for this study. Binford's original five categories of curation practices are adapted for use with late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century firearms users. An overview is provided of the nature of shipwreck sites and their ability to provide fine-grained assemblages for study, and the reason for using them to study firearms curation practices are presented in terms of Martin's (2001) call to combine generalist and particularist approached in historical archaeological studies. A detailed analysis of six sites is conducted, focusing on the firearms in each, along with other gun-related artifacts. The sites are: the 1686 French colony ship La Belle from Texas, the 1690 New England militia transport Elizabeth and Mary from Quebec, the presumed 1691 Spanish merchantmen Pedro Bank V site from Jamaica, the 1697 Portuguese frigate Santo Antonio de Tanna from Kenya, the 1704 French privateer La Dauphine from France, and the presumed 1718 pirate ship Beaufort Inlet site from North Carolina. Evidence to support the broad adoption of three of these categories is presented and recommendations are made for future work.
Recommended Citation
Rodley, Edward John, "Firearms Curation in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth Century Maritime Contexts: A Comparative Study" (2012). Graduate Masters Theses. 113.
https://scholarworks.umb.edu/masters_theses/113
Comments
Free and open access to this Campus Access Thesis is made available to the UMass Boston community by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this thesis through resources like Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global or through Interlibrary Loan. If you have a UMass Boston campus username and password and would like to download this work from off-campus, click on the "Off-Campus UMass Boston Users" link above.