The archaeology of middle-class domesticity and gentility in Victorian Brooklyn

Abstract

In 1995, John Milner Associates excavated three privies and four cisterns dating to the 1860s at the Atlantic Terminal Urban Renewal Area in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York. Residents associated with the deposits were members of the burgeoning white-collar middle class. Examinations of the recovered ceramic and glass vessels, as well as children’s toys and household furnishings, show that these middle-class households used material culture to create what contemporaries referred to as a “genteel” lifestyle. By setting their tables with specific ceramic wares and vessels, these families both advertised their “respectability” to other families and taught their children the class-specific values needed to maintain their middle-class status. The analysis shows that each of the excavated households closely followed the contemporary advice literature on household furnishings and dining etiquette. Indeed, the similarities between the assemblages and conformity to the advice literature suggests that the desire to “keep up with the Joneses” and the corresponding insecurities commonly associated with the middle class during the 1950s and 1960s were firmly established one hundred years earlier.