Abstract
This book is about the historical archaeology of capitalism. However, historical archaeologists don’t dig up capitalism per se, and most Americans don’t give much thought to capitalism per se. Archaeologists dig up broken dishes (and all sorts of other things), and modern Americans (including archaeologists) live all sorts of lives. Of course, a great deal of material culture can be interpreted as a commentary on the economic (and cultural) regime under which it is (or was) produced, just as many aspects of contemporary daily life can be interpreted as commentaries on the economies (and cultures) in which they take place. So, when one of Mark Leone’s crew members in Annapolis digs up the fragments of a creamware plate and then uses those fragments as visual aids for a site tour given to a group of out-of-town visitors, what’s really going on is the spectacle of capitalism coming face to face with itself.1
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Potter, P.B. (1999). Historical Archaeology and Identity in Modern America. In: Leone, M.P., Potter, P.B. (eds) Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4767-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4767-9_3
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