Pottery and Pig’s Feet: Space, ethnicity, and neighborhood in Washington, D.C., 1880–1940

Abstract

In the eyes of the social reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the migration of Afro-Americans from the rural former slave states to urban areas like Washington brought social problems. Modern scholars suggest that the behavior noted by the reformers was not deviant but the result of different cultural behavior based in the rural and ethnic experience of the Afro-Americans. In order to determine if there was a distinct ethnic culture among the Afro-Americans that lived in alleys, their material culture and household income strategies were compared to that of white households which were located on the street in a working class neighborhood. The comparisons determined that ethnic-based differences could be isolated while economic-based differences could not. This strengthens the conclusion that the Afro-Americans had distinctive behavior patterns that they were utilizing to adapt to the urban environment. It also suggests that where the economic variable can be controlled, differences based on ethnic behavior rather than on income will characterize archaeological assemblages from black households.