The Material Culture of Ritual Concealments in the United States

Abstract

Research on concealed deposits with ritual significance has been conducted by scholars in continental Europe, the British Isles, and Australia. Similar evidence of the material culture of magic and folk belief in the United States is presented, focusing on ritual deposits hidden within and around domestic structures associated with European American populations. Comparative analysis of three artifact types—witch bottles, concealed footwear, and cats—highlights discrepancies between ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence, and demonstrates temporal, geographical, and spatial patterns in ritual concealments. An overview of other important artifact types illustrates the wide variety of material culture employed in folk rituals in European America. The article concludes with a discussion of regional variation in ritual concealments and the importance of family and household structure, geographic and cultural origin, and cosmology and worldview in private domestic ritual.