This study explores childhood through materiality and the death event, focusing on the sentimentalization of children through funerary elaboration, the dressing of the corpse, and the inclusion of material objects in the grave. Specifically, I will explore the burial contexts of children (ages 0-15) from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries to illuminate the ways in which parents chose to memorialize and sentimentalize their deceased children and what this may mean for the broader experience of childhood during this time. My exemplar site is Freedman’s Cemetery, an African American cemetery located in Dallas, Texas, that was utilized from 1869 to 1907. My comparative sample is constructed using a non-exhaustive list of historic American cemeteries that span time, space, class, and race/ethnicity to illuminate the varied experiences of childhood and its relationship to funerary treatment within these differing contexts.

Finnish burial clothing between the 17th and 19th centuries exists in two forms: (1) re-purposed items used in life and reused as burial clothes, and (2) re-made items assembled from second-hand materials specifically for burial. While some items are consistently re-purposed or re-made, others - such as the caps considered here - can be either re-purposed or re-made.

Comparing re-made versus re-purposed caps’ materials, crafting methods, and performance characteristics provides a window into the mourning process. Materials range from wool and bast to valuable silks; crafting methods include careful stitching and hasty assembly. In unique cases, there is no cap at all. As such, the finished products vary widely.

This dichotomy explores the difference between private and public grief at the loss of a loved one, ways local beliefs, religious practices, and community expectations guide the mourning process, and what “providing for the dead” means on symbolic and practical levels.

From 1855 to 1935, the Mississippi State Asylum occupied a tract of land north of downtown Jackson. Graves discovered during construction in 1992 and 2012 on the University of Mississippi Medical Center campus represent a burial ground established for patients who died in the asylum. The current cemetery excavation has found ample evidence of the uniform burial practices expected in an institutional cemetery. Patients were dressed in simple garments fastened with pins and placed in coffins constructed in the asylum carpentry shop. However, the presence of manufactured coffins; the inclusion of personal items, clothing, and jewelry in asylum-made coffins; and the discovery of ceramics in some grave shafts all point to the involvement of family members, staff, and perhaps fellow patients in funerary preparations. This paper will review evidence of mortuary variation at Asylum Hill and present interpretations based on information gleaned from institutional records.

In 2006, the state of Idaho began its largest archaeological project to date: the Sandpoint Archaeology Project. Emerging from 500 units, over 550,000 artifacts tell the story of the town’s “Restricted District,” home to two houses of sex work, two saloons, and a dance hall. The adjacent proximity of a brothel and a bordello allows researchers the opportunity to comparatively analyze the complex realities of sex work in the American West. Moreover, these locations are also relevant to a larger disciplinary conversation surrounding the roles gender and sexuality play in creating and challenging social norms. This paper presents preliminary archival and material culture-based research on Sandpoint’s “Restricted District” to interrogate how residents negotiated Victorian norms and ideals in conjunction to their participation in the sex work industry.

Where today is a grove of trees and a mountainous mine tailing, was once the brothels of Central City. Once a prominent and affluent mountain mining town, now a sleepy casino town, the brothels served the needs of the surrounding mining towns. Despite being pushed ‘out of town’ soon after establishment, these businesses were located a mere quarter mile from the commercial center of town and were immediately visible from prominent ‘respectable’ landmarks. Recent archaeological excavations and historic investigations looks at the material and historic evidence of the relationship between these brothels and their surrounding urban landscape.

Sex work in the American west held a precarious position during expansion and as urban centers sought to establish themselves as legitimate cultural and economic centers in the nation at large. The relationship of the sex district in Central City, Colorado and its residents to their neighbors was no exception. Preliminary research into the sex district in Central City and the material culture recovered during the 2023 field school excavation suggests a disconnect; while the brothel sites might have been viewed as opulent respites for the surrounding miners and businessmen, the often-violent resistance of Central City residents to the presence of the sex district is also evidenced in the historical and archaeological record.