The Plymouth Colony Archive Project

"My interest in historical archaeology, over the last thirty years and more, has been concerned with culture change -- how relationships perceived in the designs and forms of different sets of artifacts relate to organizing principles that tie a whole society together, and how, over time, these shift. But changes have been taking place within anthropology that appear to impact adversely upon this approach. Remember Kent Flannery's Old Timer, who was forced into early retirement because he believed in culture as the central paradigm in archaeology? This unfortunate event was precipitated by the theoretical shift that has taken place in anthropology, in which explanations for behavior are no longer traced to culture. I find this situation both sad and deeply alarming. Leaving aside the simple fact that behavior can be seen as a product of culture, regardless of the many definitions we choose to employ, such a perspective is a rejection of a century or more of thoughtful insight. Are we really prepared to jettison the works and thoughts of people such as E.B. Tylor, Franz Boas, A.L. Kroeber, Leslie White or Claude Lévi-Strauss, to name but a very few? I think not."

"Of the many definitions of culture put forth since E.B. Tylor, the one I prefer, and find most useful in my work, is that of Walter Taylor, in his 1948 Study of Archaeology. Taylor sees culture as a mental construct, not directly observable, but understandable through its various objectifications, be it ritual practice, social structure, or the m aterial world. It is a definition that permits a structural perspective that I find to be a particularly powerful approach to the study of material culture and cognition. Folklorist Henry Glassie, in his study of folk housing in the Virginia Piedmont, used the methods of structural anthropology (originating with Claude Lévi-Strauss) to analyze and explicate the profound changes worked on the world view of Virginians between the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This approach underlies my own studies, both in New England and the Virginian Tidewater from the early seventeenth century, and on the nineteenth century English frontier in South Africa."

Specializations: "Historical archaeology of the Virginian Tidewater, the Eastern Cape frontier of South Africa, and seventeenth century Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts. The greater understanding of culture, cognition, and the impact of mind on the shape, form, and use of the material world. English colonial and post-colonial artifacts and Native American basketry." James Deetz, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Virginia, 2000

Jim Deetz provided a more expansive discussion of these views, and a related consideration of his interpretations of the Parting Ways archaeological site, located in Plymouth, in his 1995 Keynote Address to the Society for Historical Archaeology.

For a more detailed account of Jim Deetz's personal and professional history, see our chronology of his accomplishments, positions, and key events in his life's work. Set out below is our current list of Jim's many publications. If you are aware of an article or other publication that is not listed here, or can expand existing references, please email us the details, so we can add them to this compilation. Special thanks to William B. Lees and Kathryn Crabtree for revisions sent to us.

1964    The Construction and Uses of a Laboratory Archaeological Site. American Antiquity 29(3):328-337.

1977    The Construction and Uses of a Laboratory Archaeological Site. In Experimental Archaeology, Daniel Ingersoll, John E. Yellen and William MacDonald, editors, pp. 252-268. Reprinted from 1964 American Antiquity edition. Columbia University Press, New York.

1964    Chumash Indian Art. Exhibit Catalogue, Art Gallery, University of California, Santa Barbara.

1965    A Corpus of Chumash Basketry. UCLA Archaeological Survey Annual Report, pp. 193-275. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.

1958    The Archaeology of Western Mexico. Middle American Archaeology Seminar Papers (Anthropology 211), Vol. 1, pp. 1-58. Manuscript, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

1958    A Brief History of the Discovery of Neanderthal Man. Papers on Neanderthal Man (Anthropology 202). Manuscript, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

1960    An Archaeological Approach to Kinship Change in Eighteenth Century Arikara Culture. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

1960    Excavations at the Joseph Howland Site (C5), Rocky Nook, Kingston, Massachusetts, 1959: A Preliminary Report. Howland Quarterly 24(2&3):1-12.

1960    The Howlands at Rocky Nook: An Archaeological and Historical Study. Howland Quarterly 24(4):1-8.

1962    Abstract of an Archaeological Approach to Eighteenth Century Arikara Kinship Change. Abstracts in New World Archaeology 2, Society for American Archaeology.

1963    Archaeological Investigations at La Purisima Mission. Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1962/1963, pp. 161-241.

1963    Style Change in New England Colonial Gravestone Design: An Experiment in "Historic Archaeology" (Archaeological Materials and Techniques). Manuscript, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

1964    A Datable Chumash Pictograph from Santa Barbara County, California. American Antiquity 29(4):504-506.

1965    The Dynamics of Stylistic Change in Arikara Ceramics. Illinois Studies in Anthropology, No. 4. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Il.

1965    Old Tools as New Tools. Anthropology Curriculum Study Project Newsletter 4:6-7. Chicago.

1966    Stone Tools, Anthropology Curriculum Study Project. Excerpt in Origins of Humanness: Patterns in Human History, Edwin Dethlefsen, editor, pp. 74-84. Macmillan & Co., New York.

1967    Invitation to Archaeology. Natural History Press [Doubleday] for The American Museum of Natural History, Garden City, NJ.

1968    Cultural Patterning of Behavior as Reflected by Archaeological Materials. In Settlement Archaeology, Kwang Chih Chang, editor, pp. 31-42. National Press Books, Palo Alto, CA.

1968    The Inference of Residence and Descent from Archaeological Data. In New Perspectives in Archaeology, Lewis R. Binford and Sally Binford, editors, pp. 41-48. Aldine Press, Chicago.

1968    Late Man in North America: Archaeology of European Americans. In Anthropological Archaeology in the Americas, Betty J. Meggers, editor, pp. 121-130. Anthropological Society of Washington, Washington, D.C.

1969    Hunters in Archaeological Perspective. In Man the Hunter, Irven DeVore and Richard Lee, editors, pp. 281-285. Aldine Press, Chicago.

1969    The Reality of the Pilgrim Fathers. Natural History 78(9):32-44.

1970    Archaeology as a Social Science. In Current Directions in Archaeology, Bulletin of the American Anthropological Association 3(3), pt. 2:115-125.

1970    A New World Viewpoint. In Introductory Readings in Archaeology, Brian M. Fagan, editor, pp. 10-13. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

1970    Prehistoric Social Systems. In Introductory Readings in Archaeology, Brian M. Fagan, editor, pp. 339-347. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

1971    Must Archaeologists Dig? In Man's Imprint from the Past: Readings in the Methods of Archaeology, James Deetz, editor, pp. 2-9. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

1971    Late Man in North America: Archaeology of European Americans. In Man's Imprint from the Past: Readings in the Methods of Archaeology, James Deetz, editor, pp. 208-218. Reprint of 1968 edition in Anthropological Archaeology in the Americas. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

1971    The Changing Historic House Museum: Can it Live? Historic Preservation 23(1):50-54.

1972    Archaeology as a Social Science. In Contemporary Archaeology: A Guide to Theory and Contributions, Mark P. Leone, editor, pp. 108-117. Reprint of 1970 edition in Bulletin of the American Anthropological Association. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.

1972    Ceramics from Plymouth, 1620-1835: The Archaeological Evidence. In Ceramics in America, Ian M. G. Quimby, editor, pp. 15-40. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

1974    A Cognitive Historical Model for American Material Culture, 1620-1835. In Reconstructing Complex Societies -- An Archaeological Colloquium, Charlotte B. Moore, editor, pp. 21-29. Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 20.

1976    Black Settlement: Plymouth. Archaeology 29(3):207.

1976    What is archaeology? In The Evolution of Human Adaptations: Readings in Anthropology, John J. Poggie, Jr., Gretel H. Pelto, and Pertti J. Pelto, compilers, pp. 26-39. Macmillan, New York.

1977    In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life. Doubleday, Anchor Press, New York.

1977    Archaeology as a Social Science. ASA Journal 1(2):5-14. Reprint of 1970 article in Bulletin of the American Anthropological Association.

1977    Material Culture and Archaeology - What's the Difference? In Historical Archaeology and the Importance of Material Things, Leland Ferguson, editor, pp. 9-12. Special Publication Series, 2. Society for Historical Archaeology.

1978    Late Man in North America: Archaeology of European Americans. In Historical Archaeology: A Guide to Substantive and Theoretical Contributions, Robert L. Schuyler, editor, pp. 48-52. Reprint of 1968 article in Anthropological Archaeology in the Americas. Baywood, Farmingdale, NY.

1978    Archaeological Investigations at La Purisima Mission. In Historical Archaeology: A Guide to Substantive and Theoretical Contributions, Robert L. Schuyler, editor, pp. 160-190. Reprint of excerpts of 1963 edition of Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1962/1963. Baywood, Farmingdale, NY.

1978    A Cognitive Historical Model for American Material Culture, 1620-1835. In Historical Archaeology: A Guide to Substantive and Theoretical Contributions, Robert L. Schuyler, editor, pp. 284-286. Reprint of 1974 article in Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Baywood, Farmingdale, NY.

1979    Plymouth Colony Architecture: Archaeological Evidence from the Seventeenth Century. In Architecture in Colonial Massachusetts: A Conference held by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, September 19 and 20, 1974, pp. 43-59. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Boston [Distributed by the University Press of Virginia].

1980    Other People's Garbage. TV Guide, May 10, 1980:33-34.

1980    Guessing Who Came to Dinner. Canadian TV Guide, May 17, 1980:27-28.

1980    A Sense of Another World: History Museums and Cultural Change. Museum News 58(5):40-45.

1981    The Link from Objects to Person to Concept. In Museums, Adults and the Humanities: A Guide for Educational Programming, Zipporah W. Collins, editor, pp. 24-34. American Association of Museums, Washington, D.C.

1982    Households: A Structural Key to Archaeological Explanation. American Behavioral Scientist 25(6):717-724.

1983    Scientific Humanism and Humanistic Science: A Plea for Paradigmatic Pluralism in Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology of the Eastern United States: Papers from the R.J. Russell Symposium, Robert W. Neuman, editor. Geoscience and Man 23: 27-34.

1983    The Artifact and Its Context. Museum News 62(1):25-26.

1987    Plymouth Colony Room-by-Room Inventories, 1633-1684. Manuscript abstracted in Early American Probate Inventories. Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings, vol. 12:182. Boston.

1987    Scientific Humanism and Humanistic Science: A Plea for Paradigmatic Pluralism in Historical Archaeology. In Mirror and Metaphor: Material and Social Constructions of Reality, Daniel W. Ingersoll, Jr. and Gordon Bronitsky, editors, pp. 367-380. Reprint of 1983 article in Geoscience and Man 23: 27-34. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland.

1987    Harrington Histograms versus Binford Mean Dates as a Technique for Establishing the Occupational Sequence of Sites at Flowerdew Hundred, Virginia. American Archaeology 6(1):62-67.


1988    Invitation to Archaeology. Japanese translation. Tuttle-Mori Agency Inc., Tokyo.

1988    History and Archaeological Theory: Walter Taylor Revisited. American Antiquity 53(1):13-22.

1988    American Historical Archaeology: Methods and Results. Science 239:362-367.

1988    Material Culture and World View in Colonial Anglo-America. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter, Jr., editors, pp. 219-233. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

1989    In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life. Reprint of 1977 edition. Doubleday, New York.

1989    Archaeography, Archaeology, or Archeology? American Journal of Archaeology 93(3):429-435.

1989    Foreword. In Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture, Richard E. Meyer, editor, pp. ix-xiv. UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, MI.

1990    Landscapes as Cultural Statements. Prologue in Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archaeology, William M. Kelso and Rachel Most, editors, pp. 1-4. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

1991    Introduction: Archaeological Evidence of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Encounters. In Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective, Lisa Falk, editor, pp. 1-9. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

1992    Foreword. In Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture, Richard E. Meyer, editor, pp. ix-xiv. Reprint of 1989 UMI Research Press volume. Utah State University Press, Logan, UT.

1993    Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

1994    Foreword. In A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves: A Study in Historical Archaeology, by Anne Elizabeth Yentsch, pp. xviii-xx. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

1995    Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864. Reprint of 1993 edition. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

1996    In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. Expanded and revised version of 1989 edition, originally published in 1977. Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York.

1997    Introductory Archaeology: An Identity Crisis in the Temple of Doom. In The Teaching of Anthropology: Problems, Issues, and Decisions, Conrad P. Kottak, Jane J. White, Richard H. Furlow, and Patricia C. Rice, editors, pp. 232-238. Mayfield, Mountain View, CA.

1997    Preface. In Archaeology at Monticello, by William M. Kelso, pp. 11-13. Monticello Monograph Series. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Charlottesville.

1998    Discussion: Archaeologists as Storytellers. In Archaeologists as Storytellers, Adrian Praetzellis and Mary Praetzellis, editors. Historical Archaeology 32(1):94-96.

1999    Archaeology at Flowerdew Hundred. In "I, Too, Am America": Archaeological Studies of African-American Life, Theresa A. Singleton, editor, pp. 39-46. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

1963    Basketry from the James Abels Collection. Museum Talk 38(2):17-23.

1972    The Ethnogastronomy of Thanksgiving. Saturday Review of Science, November, pp. 29-38.

2000    The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony. W.H. Freeman, New York.

2000    Rocking the Plymouth Myth. Archaeology 53(6):16-17.

2001    The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony. Reprint of 2000 W.H. Freeman edition. Anchor Books, Random House, New York.

1963    Soil pH as a Tool in Archaeological Site Interpretation. American Antiquity 29(2):242-243.

1971    Some Social Aspects of New England Colonial Mortuary Art. In Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices, James A. Brown, editor, pp. 30-38. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, 25. American Antiquity 36(3), pt. 2:30-38.

1965    The Doppler Effect and Archaeology: A Consideration of the Spatial Aspects of Seriation. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21(3):196-206.

1967    Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow. Natural History 76(3):29-37.

1972    Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow. In Contemporary Archaeology: A Guide to Theory and Contributions, Mark P. Leone, editor, pp. 402-410. Reprint of 1967 edition in Natural History. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL.

1977    The Doppler Effect and Archaeology: A Consideration of the Spatial Aspects of Seriation. In Experimental Archaeology, Daniel Ingersoll, John E. Yellen and William MacDonald, editors, pp. 133-144. Reprint of 1965 article in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology. Columbia University Press, New York.

1977    Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow. In Man's Many Ways: The Natural History Reader in Anthropology, Richard A. Gould, editor, pp. 88-93. Reprint of 1967 edition in Natural History. Harper & Row, New York.

1978    Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow. In Historical Archaeology: A Guide to Substantive and Theoretical Contributions, Robert L. Schuyler, editor, pp. 83-89. Reprint of 1967 edition in Natural History. Baywood, Farmingdale, NY.

1995    Documents, Historiography and Material Culture in Historical Archaeology. In The Written and the Wrought: Complementary Sources in Historical Archaeology. Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Mary Ellin D'Agostino, Elizabeth Prine, Eleanor Casella and Margot Winer, editors. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 79:110-115. Kroeber Anthropological Society, Berkeley, CA.

1966    Death's Heads, Cherubs and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries. American Antiquity 31(4):502-510.

1967    Eighteenth Century Cemeteries: A Demographic View. Historical Archaeology 1:40-42.

1977    Death's Heads, Cherubs and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries. In Passing: The Vision of Death in America, Charles O. Jackson, editor, pp. 48-59. Excerpted from 1966 American Antiquity edition. Contributions in Family Studies, 2. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.

1998    Experimentación Arqueológica en Cementerio Colonial: Diseños de Calaveras, Querubines y Sauces [cover title "Arqueologia Experimental en Cementerios Coloniales]. Jaime Miasta Gutiérrez, translator, pp. 31-55. Translation of 1966 American Antiquity edition of Death's Heads, Cherubs and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries. Lecturas "Emilio Choy”, 15. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Seminario de Historia Rural Andina, Lima, Peru.

1970    Wellfleet Tavern. Natural History 80(7):48-57.

1990    The Chronology of Oudepost I, Cape, as Inferred from an Analysis of Clay Pipes. Journal of Archaeological Science 17(3):269-300.

1990    Building, Furnishings and Social Change in Early Victorian Grahamstown. Social Dynamics 16(1):76-89.

1990    The Transformation of British Culture in the Eastern Cape, 1820-1860. Social Dynamics 16(1):55-75.

1992    The Transformation of British Culture in the Eastern Cape, 1820-1860. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 73/74:41-61.

1991    Buried Treasure: Household Archaeology in the Eastern Cape. Phoenix: Magazine of the Albany Museum 4(2):5-13.

1971    Man's Imprint from the Past: Readings in the Methods of Archaeology. Little, Brown & Co., Boston.

1967    The North American Indians: A Sourcebook. Macmillan, New York.

2001    Cultural Dimensions of Ethnicity in the Archaeological Record. Keynote Address, 28th Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C., 1995. In The Plymouth Colony Archive Project, Patricia Scott Deetz and Christopher Fennell, editors. University of Virginia, Charolttesville. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/plymouth/JDeetzmem6.html

2000    Seventeenth-Century Timber Framing. In The Plymouth Colony Archive Project, James Deetz, Patricia Scott Deetz and Christopher Fennell, editors. University of Virginia, Charlottesville. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/plymouth/framing.html

2001    Death's Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow. Reprint of 1967 edition in Natural History, with 19 additional illustrations from the James F. Deetz Archaeological Slide Collection (maintained by J. Eric Deetz). In The Plymouth Colony Archive Project, Patricia Scott Deetz and Christopher Fennell, editors. University of Virginia, Charlottesville. http://etext.lib.virginia/plymouth/deathshead.html

1998    Vernacular House Forms in Seventeenth Century Plymouth Colony: An Analysis of Evidence from the Plymouth Colony Room-by-Room Probate Inventories 1633-85. In The Plymouth Colony Archive Project, James Deetz, Patricia Scott Deetz and Christopher Fennell, editors. University of Virginia, Charlottesville. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/plymouth/folkhouse.htm

1995    The Written and the Wrought: Complementary Sources in Historical Archaeology. Essays in Honor of James Deetz. Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, 79. Kroeber Anthropological Society, Berkeley, CA.

1992    The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.