Skip to main content

The Importance of an Ordered Landscape at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village: Past and Present Issues

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes
  • 1107 Accesses

Pleasant Hill Shaker village in central Kentucky, an interpreted historic site open to the public for day visits, overnight lodging, and conferences, is a powerful and complex place to visit. As I have explored it archaeologically since the early 1990s, I have observed both a high density of architectural features and some very unusual ones. In this chapter, I try to find a context to better understand some unusual archaeological features at a washhouse at Pleasant Hill and to make sense of its overall gendered landscape. I begin with a brief historical overview of the community, followed by an analysis of the archaeological material and the new insights it provides. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges in the preservation of the gendered landscape.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Andrews, Edward Deming 1953The People Called Shakers. Oxford University Press, Oxford, expanded edition in 1963 by Dover Publications, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benningfield, Wendy R. 2004Appeal of the Sisterhood: The Shakers and the Woman’s Rights Movement. Ph.d. dissertation, University of Kentucky, Lexington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berry, Brian J. 1992America’s Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blinn, Henry 1873Journey to Kentucky in the Year 1873. Manuscript journal at the Western Reserve Historical Collection, reprinted in Shaker Quarterly 5 and 6, 1965–1966.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boice, Martha, Dale Covington, and Richard Spence 1997Maps of the Shaker West. Knot Garden West, Dayton, Ohio.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brewer, Priscilla J. 1986Shaker Communities, Shaker Lives. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Thomas D. and F. Gerald Ham 1968Pleasant Hill and its Shakers. Pleasant Hill Press, Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Lewis 1847Historical Sketches of Kentucky. F. A and U. P. James, Cincinnati, Ohio.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, James Fenimore 1828Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a Travelling Bachelor (2 vols). Henry Colburn, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deiss, Ron 1987Shaker Bricks Types from South Union, Kentucky. Proceedings of the Symposium on Ohio Valley Urban and Historic Archaeology V:90–95. Archeology Program, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emlen, Robert P. 1987Shaker Village Views: Illustrated Maps and Landscape Drawings by Shaker Artists of the Nineteenth Century. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ham, Francis Gerald 1955Pleasant Hill: A Century of Shakerism, 1805–1910. M.A. thesis, University of Kentucky, Lexington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irvin, Helen Deiss 1981The Machine in Utopia: Shaker Women and Technology. Women’s Studies International Quarterly 4:313–319.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Janzen, Donald E. 1981The Shaker Mills on Shawnee Run: Historical Archaeology at Shakertown at Pleasant Hill, Mercer County, Kentucky. Pleasant Hill Press, Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirk, John T. 1997The Shaker World: Art, Life, Belief. Harry N. Abrams, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lancaster, Clay 2001Pleasant Hill – Shaker Canaan in Kentucky: An Architectural and Social Study. Warwick Publications, Salvisa, Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leal, Ronald 1968Rub A Dub: A Short History of Home Laundry. Mankind 1(10):50–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leone, Mark P. 1981The Relationship between Artifacts and the Public in Outdoor History Museums. In The Research Potential of Anthropological Museum Collections, edited by A. M Cantwell, N. Rothschild, and J. B. Griffin, pp. 301–313. New York Academy of Sciences, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leone, Mark P., Parker Potter, Jr. and Paul A. Shackel 1987Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28(3):283–302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McBride, Kim A. 1995 Archaeology at the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill: Rediscovering the Importance of Order. In Historical Archaeology in Kentucky, edited by K. A. McBride, W. S. McBride, and D. Pollack, pp. 391–408. Frankfort, Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • 2005 Lessons from Two Shaker Smoking Pipe Fragments. In Unlocking the Past: Celebrating Historical Archaeology in North America, edited by L. A. De Cunzo and J. H. Jameson, Jr., pp. 136–138. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, William D. 2006Interpreting the Shakers: Opening the Villages to the Public, 1955–1965. CRM Journal 3(1):449–469.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murphy, James 1978Shaker Reed Stem Tobacco Pipes. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 48(1–2):48–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nickless, Karen Kay 2004“A Good Faithful Sister”: The Shaker Sisters of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parrish, Thomas 2005Restoring Shakertown: The Struggle to Save the Historic Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. University of Kentucky Press, Lexington.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rhorer, Marc A. 2007Believers in Dixie: A Cultural Geography of the Kentucky Shakers. Ph.d. dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 2006A Feminist Theoretical Approach to the Historical Archaeology of Utopian Communities. Historical Archaeology 40(1):152–185.

    Google Scholar 

  • Starbuck, David 2004Neither Plain nor Simple: New Perspectives on the Canterbury Shakers. University Press of New England, Hanover, New Hampshire.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stein, Stephen J. 1992The Shaker Experience in America. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Sam W. and James C. Thomas 1973The Simple Spirit. Pleasant Hill Press, Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

    Google Scholar 

  • Treays, Jane, director and producer 1990I Don’t Want to Be Remembered as a Chair. Documentary produced for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wylie, Alison 1985Putting Shakertown Back Together: Critical Theory in Archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4:133–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Shaker Journals Cited

  • Most Shaker journal entries have been cited from notes on file or complete copies of journals at the research library at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, Inc. Locations of originals are provided below.

    Google Scholar 

  • Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky

    Google Scholar 

  • Centre Family Journal, Pleasant Hill, 1843–1868

    Google Scholar 

  • Vol. 5, Temporal Journal Book B

    Google Scholar 

  • Western Reserve Historical Society Shaker Collection, Cleveland, Ohio

    Google Scholar 

  • Journal of Trip to West taken by Prudence Morrell and Elissa Share, Reel 6

    Google Scholar 

  • Journey to Kentucky in the Year 1873, by Henry C. Blinn

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kim A. McBride .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

McBride, K.A. (2010). The Importance of an Ordered Landscape at Pleasant Hill Shaker Village: Past and Present Issues. In: Baugher, S., Spencer-Wood, S. (eds) Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1501-6_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1500-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1501-6

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics